Equanimity, Part II: “F- Your Blog”

When the Neda video first found its way onto the #iranelection Twitter discussion, I immediately thought it was fake. Not so much a matter of staging or the fluctuating claims of the identity of the victim, but my own inability to comprehend (1) the inhumanity of spending one’s dying moments with two or three cameras in their face for the purpose of political exploitation, (2) the motivation of an individual to record this intimate moment, instead of trying to render a superfluous amount of aid.

Thinking about the events of Tonight’s Loss of Equanimity a day later, I can’t deny that the ‘documentarian impulse,’ was much more an ‘exhibitionist impulse.’ I’m concerned that the values conveyed by blogging are voyeurism and exhibitionism instead of action. Asking the question posed in the original article to the people around me, there was a clear generational divide. Younger respondents were ambiguous, whereas the response of less socialized acquaintences was clear and unequivocal:

“Fuck your blog.”

The notion of being behind the camera in such events is truly terrifying: for the assailants, I would have most certainly existed, but for the poor Turkish tennis players I would have might as well been at home. The latter option would have truly been an act of sadism.

More germane to the general theme of the blog, a quite surreal conversation overheard between one of the victims and the responding officer.

• Victim: “I took a picture of the guys with my iPhone.”
• Officer: “Oh great, can you email those to me?”

Note to self: factor conduciveness of environmental lighting for low-megapixel cameras into the equation of potential future crimes.