Page 77 - Courting the Media Contemporary Perspectives on Media and Law

68 Christina Spiesel

making the event seem ―only a picture‖ and therefore ―unreal.‖ In the video-
equipped Taser we have a device that records photographically but one that
draws on different media habits for deployment – the rapid reflexes of
aggressive video games where the task is somehow to control or eliminate
―others‖. These ―others‖ in the real world of people getting tased are often
mentally ill, foreign or not competent in the local language, members of
6
minorities, women, the elderly, and the young.
In this fantasy space, a ―harmless‖ Taser makes talk unnecessary – there
needs to be no communicative relationship between the person of authority
(whoever has the stun gun) and the other. With no talk needed, there is no
debate, there are no alternative points of view that need to be resolved. There
is just power, all action; it‘s very simple in this reductive universe. There are
many reasons to be concerned about this use of technology. If we begin to
assimilate this as the way things are, then how will we be able to object to the
use of robots for law enforcement? [Marks]
In courtrooms with screens showing all kinds of moving pictures, will we
be able to make critical and informed judgments based on photographic
material that is now being generated in a culture where the old norms of
photojournalism are seriously frayed, where people know that pictures can be
altered? Will we be able to watch and step back from the gratification of our
own sadism to think critically about the Taser picture? Alternatively, will
police forces reject the supervision that tasercam might provide and therefore
fail to equip stun guns with this feature? Will we be able to respond to counter
stories about those very pictures? Are we concerned with justice or do we
simply want to restore order after a threat of chaos, and if so, how far are we
willing to go with regimes of control? How will we determine the proper role
of pictures in the pursuit of justice? How these questions are answered will
help to define whether we sink completely into an authoritarian culture of
control or rescue our democratic ideals. History gives us some pause and some
reason for cheer.
In The Story of Cruel and Unusual, Colin Dyan links the conditions of
America‘s current penal system to the old institutions of slavery and both to
the debates on torture that spanned the end of the Bush administration and the
beginning of the Obama presidency. She asks, ―What do prisoners, ‗security
detainees,‘ and ‗illegal enemy combatants‘ in U.S. custody all have in
common? They are all bodies. Few are granted minds. The unspoken

6
It is also probably a mistake to assume that medical risks, and therefore potential harms, are the
same for all these groups. We certainly need much more data in this matter.