Country Music + Reflection for your Saturday morning?

On a recommendation by a fellow colleague, I have been making my through the TV series 'Justified'.

Not my usual show, and I find myself questioning how I can barrack for a protagonist who clearly acts as a the law onto himself. In that sense the show is not completely unlike Dexter, but I cannot abide that show at all! The moral grey area that inhabits does not sit well with me.

Nonetheless, Rayland, the old-school-Kentucky cowboy US marshall is an interesting character and the supporting cast is multilayered, intriguing and keeps you involved.

The show's soundtrack is (to my ears) true Southern country, but this particular song - You'll Never Leave Harlan Alive - caught my ear. Harlan, the town wherein the show is based, is an old coal town and this particular tune sings a sad melody around the trials of digging coal.

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This time last year I spent a little over a month in Houston, Texas, training for work. To be honest, travelling to the 'deep south' was something I had not really grown up wanting to do but I treated it like I treat everything: an adventure and an opportunity to learn something about the way other people see the world.

I took away a number of things from the experience, there is no doubt about that. One of the most unexpected takings however, was an appreciation for country music (did I really just type that?!). It was the first time I had spent time around people who listened to country regularly (almost exclusively!) and what was the draw card? The songs were about the lives, loves and dramas of life. There seemed to be a depth to the music that is not always present in the top 40 pop charts, and so I began to appreciate, just a little...

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But the times got hard and tobacco wasn't selling And ole granddad knew what he'd do to survive He went and dug for Harlan coal And sent the money back to granny But he never left Harlan alive

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Something about the song struck a note. Our parents, their parents, generations before us knew, seem to have known that life was hard and just worked through it, fighting for better but accepting that was how life was. The obsession with 'happiness' played itself out a little differently. Art and music of those days are drenched with tales of woe and sacrifice. What my own parents did, in leaving Sudan and traveling to the other side of the world! for the future of their children - that level of sacrifice is unimaginable.

So the question is this: is our generation different? Are we so caught up as a society in the pursuit of our own happiness that the level of sacrifice we have seen is no longer, or are we going to be alright? What does this mean for us as communities?

Only time will tell...

Shoot the Messenger?

"Everybody, at the end of the day wants to come back with the best shot." The Bang Bang Club.

Wow, does this film give some food for thought.

Where …are they getting the guns?

What …do you care man, it doesn’t matter. Just take the picture!

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The movie, The Bang Bang Club, follows the lives of four war photographers during the apartheid in South Africa and their adventures while they attempted to record and broadcast the events of the conflict through image.

Although the film did capture part of the emotional journey, the film makers did not interrogate the moral and ethical dilemmas as deeply as they could have.  Instead, the film chooses to follow the stories of the men more generally and to refer to greater issue indirectly.

This doesn’t detract completely however from the question underlying the film: what is the role of photojournalist in a war zone, a person driven by humanity or by the passion and job description?

How then, does that fit in with moral and ethical expectations that we have as a society?

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Kevin Carter, one of the four members of the club profiled in the film, committed suicide shortly after being awarded the Pulitzer Prize for taking a photo of a starving child in Southern Sudan.

The guilt of not doing anything to save the child, and moreover being constantly asked and berated for his “inhumanity” was said to be his undoing.

…But who are we, as mere observers, to tell people like conflict photographers what they should and shouldn’t do in the line of duty?  How would we know what we would do in such a position?

The more important question is…Should they interfere? Are we allowed to judge them as we do if they do not?

It is interesting to read interviews with the journalists themselves, years after the fact.  For example Greg Marinovich speaks below about the piece “Mob Attack”.

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…the door was flung open and this guy with a scarf tied like a turban around his head came dashing out. He looked me straight in the eyes, and then took off.

All these other men started chasing him, and he hadn't gone far when he was brought down. About 15 or 20 men were all around him, hitting and stabbing and clubbing. And I was right there, photographing it. On the one hand, I was horrified, and at the same time I was thinking: what should the exposure be?

It was the old days: analogue, manual focus, crappy cameras. I felt torn between the horror of what I was seeing and trying to capture it. I was also thinking, how am I going to survive this? Because sooner or later these people are going to say, "There's this guy taking pictures of us committing murder." I was 1km from my car and the nearest outsider.

They killed him. And then one of them turned and said, "The white guy's photographing." Everyone leapt away, and I said, "No, it's fine, it's fine. Why did you kill him? Who is he?"

It was my first exposure to such a thing. And although, as a journalist, my reaction was fine, as a human being I felt I'd really let myself down [emphasis added]. It wasn't how I'd expected I'd react – I thought I'd try to intervene, or do something more noble. Yet I hadn't. I was really quite torn up about that. I was gutted that I'd been such a coward. From that moment, I was determined that, no matter what, I'd try to intervene and save someone if I could.

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Greg’s Photo

It cannot be easy, and it isn’t an area with black and white distinctions; war never is.  It is easy for those sitting in comfortable chairs at home to disparage decisions made in the heat of the moment of an intense conflict zone.  The fact of the matter remains that without photojournalists, journalists and the men and women who put themselves in the line of fire to report, we would never have records of the atrocities that occur around the world.

As a society, we send soldiers out to fight on behalf of our “freedom”, but then avoiding dealing with the effects of war on a conscious.  Similarly, I believe these photographers, and many journalists in similar situations around the world, sacrifice a part of themselves for what they believe is a greater cause.  It is a sacrifice they have volunteered, and sometimes, they pay the ultimate price.

Whether we agree with their actions in the heat of the moment is a speculative, and a question of morals and values based on the individual.  Either way, we as a society should be grateful.

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Read more about this fascinating topic via the links below:

NPR Podcast

New York Times

Greg Marinovich

Joa Silvia

Movieline Review