Body and Soul on perceptions of
war news:
Yesterday, I linked to several intriguing posts over at Silver Rights, about the media’s obsession with the story of Jessica Lynch, and the relative lack of attention paid to minority soldiers — men and women both. I’m not sure J. is right, although I must say that I had found myself wondering, too, if the situations were reversed and Lori Piestewa, the Hopi woman who was killed in Iraq, had been rescued, and Jessica Lynch had died, if we would not now be seeing the tragic death as more important than the rescue. If we wouldn’t be thinking, yes, thank God that one woman was rescued, but we must not forget the brave, blonde girl who died at the hands of evil men, and fight all the harder in her memory. The word “wondering” is the key there. I’m aware of how often the issues and concerns of anyone who isn’t white, male or middle class (preferably all three) get shoved to the margins, and when something like this happens, it’s pretty hard not to notice that the media is obsessed with one particular woman, and that her pigmentation is different from that of the majority of women in the military. Does that “prove” that the media is biased? Of course not. But it’s part of a pattern that, at the very least, makes the issue worth raising. The obsession with “Jessica” (the oddness of using her first name has already been thoroughly analyzed by a large number of the blogs I read) feels an awful lot like previous media obsessions with kidnapped or missing girls and young women, and if you’ve noticed in the past that that mania doesn’t seem to take hold when the missing and murdered children are poor and black, it’s impossible not to feel like the same thing is happening in a different arena.
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I think that’s a stick that’s used to beat up women and minorities all too often: you’re letting your own personal obsessions get in the way of seeing what everyone else sees. As if not to see what the majority sees were mere obstinacy. As if “everyone else” weren’t equally influenced by personal experiences, and even eccentricities. The difference, of course, is that white, male, middle-class experiences are defined as the norm. We’re all supposed to look through that lens.