The vividly contrasting images of American soldiers Jessica
Lynch and Lynndie England, one portrayed as a heroic victim and the
other as depraved villain, symbolize the souring of US opinion of
the Iraq war, experts say.?
Between the time Lynch was rescued from an Iraqi hospital in
April 2003 and England was revealed posing in pictures of prison
abuse at Abu Ghraib this spring, public opinion has traveled a
parallel path from hopeful to skeptical over the American role in
Iraq, they say.
"You couldn't pick a better example to illustrate what a
difference a year makes," said Robert Thompson, professor of media
and popular culture at New York's Syracuse University.
Images of the two women -- both petite, youthful and from
hard-scrabble Southern backgrounds -- tell larger stories about the
events in Iraq, he said.
"The Jessica Lynch story wasn't just about Jessica Lynch. It was
about a whole attitude and a whole sense of optimism. Then Lynndie
England carries a much more ominous and arch sort of thing," said
Thompson. "If a novelist were writing this, they couldn't have done
much better than these as metaphors."
As the images have degenerated from the US government-touted
tale of Lynch's rescue to gruesome scenes of sexual humiliation,
recent polls indicate just how far the American public's backing of
the war has declined.
An ABC News/Washington Post poll showed 57 percent of
respondents are angry about the situation in Iraq, up by 27 percent
from March 2003. Those describing themselves as hopeful dropped to
62 percent from 80 percent and those using the term "proud" fell to
41 percent from 53 percent.
"How the war has been going is being portrayed particularly by
those two women," said Jack Lule, professor of journalism at Lehigh
University in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania. "As we've come to question
the war and question what it means for our own values ... we have
an image of a woman who raises those very questions.
"It's amazing how much symbolism is packed into those photos,"
he said.
What images the media choose to portray the story relies heavily
on those polls, said Tom Rosenstiel, director of Washington's
Project for Excellence in Journalism.
"Which image they select is usually influenced by their sense of
public attitudes, so polls tend to have a very substantial impact
on framing the way journalists think," Rosenstiel said.
An unflattering picture of a candidate may get no coverage if he
is ahead but be widespread if he is losing, he said. Thus, he said,
declining support for the war is reflected in what we see.
"You see things in an event that you might not have seen before,
when you thought the president could do no wrong," he said. "It's
almost human nature."
In practice, images of Lynch and England get greater "play" when
conditions are right, said Holly Stuart Hughes, editor of Photo
District News, a trade magazine for photographers.
So, when Saddam Hussein's statue was being pulled down, editors
wanted pictures of liberation rather than images of wounded and
dead civilians, she said.
But with the situation more difficult, "photo editors and their
bosses are asking for pictures of how hard it is to maintain the
peace," she said.
The images don't merely illustrate but intensify opinion, said
Lule, noting that opposition to the Vietnam war grew as memorable
pictures were seared on the public psyche. Few can forget the
picture of a running naked girl burned by napalm or the shooting of
a Vietcong man by a Saigon police chief.
"These pictures are surfacing because people are questioning the
war," Lule said of the prison abuse. "I don't think the media ever
gets too far ahead of public opinion."
And the lasting image, with all its political implications, said
Hughes, is likely to be that of Lynndie's cocky smirk, with a
cigarette in her mouth and her booted foot resting on the body of a
naked prisoner.
"The photographs with the most political impact are not the
set-up photo ops. It's always in the unexpected moment," she said.
"Jessica Lynch was kind of manufactured for the press, and its
impact has completely faded in light of these uncontrolled,
unpredicted photos."
(China Daily via agencies, May 28, 2004)