Last night I came across a documentary on youtube called The Falling Man. It is the story of a photograph taken by an AP photographer the day the World Trade Center fell. The photo is of a man plummeting 106 floors to his death. It was printed the following day in several newspapers and became one of the most controversial pictures in history. Soon after, it disappeared. The film follows journalist Tom Junod on his mission to identify the man.
This documentary is fascinating to me for three reasons. The first is that the image was controversial at all. There were other shots of people crying, people screaming, people covered in blood, people covered in ash, yet, this photo, which amazingly had a sense of calm about it, was the one people didn't want to see. Some who had written letters to the editor purporting their anger read them on screen. They were incensed upon opening their newspapers to the back page, where they had been faced with the man, yet they gave no reason for their anger, stating only that the photo was "in poor judgment".
The second reason is that many were indignant about the fact that people had jumped. One family of a man suspected to be The Falling Man heartily refused to believe it due to their Catholic faith. They stated that their husband/father would never betray them like that, as, in their religion, committing suicide is the fast route to Hell. They denied that it was him so strongly that when faced with the photo, the oldest daughter stated, "That piece of shit is not my father." Once it was discovered that they were not the family of the man, they asked that his name be "cleared". From this and the controversy, a stigma was created around those who did fall, as though they had done something bad or wrong. This is what disturbs me, not the picture.
The final reason is encompassed in the conclusion of the film. After making an almost certain identification of the man, Junod comes to the realization that who it is doesn't matter after all. As the narrator so aptly clues us in in the final scene: "The power of the image came not because the falling man could be identified, but because he couldn't."
The dichotomy that is raised here is voyeurism vs. self-examination. It is my belief that the people who were so deeply offended by this photograph felt that, like rubberneckers on a highway, anyone who looked at it was acting as a voyeur- using another's pain for their own entertainment. But that is only scratching the surface. Those of us who are able to get past our anger- I myself was appalled when I first saw the sculpture, Tumbling Woman by Eric Fischl, are able to then ask ourselves, why such curiosity? Perhaps it is not so perverse after all.
We as a species hold onto life so stringently that we can't imagine anyone giving it up, giving into that fear, that unknown. We ourselves are so overcome by fear of pain and death that it almost disgusts us to see someone giving into it. The intriguing part is that we are faced with scenes and stories of murder all the time, of one person taking another person's life. But when one chooses to take his own we are astonished, confused. Not only that, but the people who perished inside the towers were faceless; we were not a direct part of their suffering. In the book The Upside of Irrationality, Dan Ariely explains through his research that people are more apt to be charitable when they know the story and see the picture of the person that they are helping. In this particular case, we are almost a part of this person's life. Simply by witnessing his final seconds on Earth, we are drawn into his plight, and we don't want to face that. We don't want to face it because it forces us to face our own mortality.
Tom Junod's article for Esquire magazine- undoubtedly one of the finest pieces of writing I have ever encountered:
http://www.esquire.com/features/ESQ0903-SEP_FALLINGMAN
The Falling Man documentary, Part 1 of 8 (you can access the successive parts from the menu on the right):
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eo6bIb_yiKs
To commemorate the fear that leads to censorship, I have chosen not to post a photo, but instead blankness.
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1 comments:
This is a great post. I think this is interesting because I do not consider the people jumping from the already falling building suicide. In fact To me it seems that there would be more faith in someone who can peacfully resign themselves to death given the circumstance. I cannot imagine judging someone who made such a descision, especially a family member. I tried just watching the part where the camera man was recalling the day and just watching his distress when speaking was too much for me. I see the photograph as documentation only and if people are disturbed by the photo they should not look at it, just as I chose to not continue to watch the documentary because I knew it would be upsetting.
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