Jill, I agree. Do you think we should do that without acknowledging or dealing with the personal distress that the video communicates?

I take your point, but… Well, yes, the video was deeply personal and emotional, but it was also an explicit entry in the debate on what blogging is and what writing one’s life online is. He states that he sees this as art, and he offers an artistic, emotional expression of his take on personal publication as art and truth.

When I wrote about my daughter’s friend’s probable death, I wasn’t offering a critique of an artistic tradition or a subjective yet theoretical discussion of the nature of the internet and personal publication. I suppose people could still discuss the aesthetics of the post, sure, why not, but it seems less relevant than discussing the theoretical or artistic meaning of Justin’s video.

Surely if we take Justin seriously we should see his video as far more than personal distress.

Btw, he’s still publishing his life on flickr.

I think it can be legitimate to consider the Abu Ghraib photos from an aesthetic standpoint, and to present an aesthetic comment on a video or a blog entry detailing a personal calamity.

But I think you have to do that while acknowledging the reality of torture (in the first case) or the personal situation (in the second), and I think there’s an appropriate time for that discussion. If someone posts a blog entry about the probable death of her daughter’s friend, it doesn’t seem appropriate for your immediate comment about this to only mention the beauty of her syntax or the cleverness of her metaphors. That would signal that you consider her post to be only an aesthetic object, not a personal communication. If someone really sort of had a breakdown, in his own words, posting an immediate comment about the qualities of his video documenting it doesn’t strike me as the right reaction. To provide another analogy: It would be like replying to a email that said “I just got fired” with “Your message was a marvel of succinctness and clarity…”

Now, some people might think that the placement of the video on Justin’s links strongly invited that type of response right away. Perhaps Andrew and I interpreted the context of the video differently. Still, I feel that before we move to discuss the aesthetics of Justin’s video, we should deal with or at least acknowledge the underlying personal situation that the video is trying to depict, this situation that exists in the social world that we live and communicate in.

Which implies that we should treat him like an actor performing — which implies that if we take the performance at face value (after the show is over) we’re being duped, right?. So we detach ourselves from belief, like the New Critics tell us to do, and treat the video as an independent thing, and the author as dead.

People who know Justin say, no, you can’t do that. He’s not performing, this is true — so if you treat this as a text and a performance, you’re being callous.

Is that a good reading of the dispute?

If so, maybe there is a link here to questions about how to treat “The Terrorist as Auteur” (link below) or how to speak about the impact of the Abu Ghraib photos. Can we take a critical aesthetic vantage on terrible events, or is that type of maneuver (perhaps due to the way modern criticism happens) somehow wrong?

http://www.ksg.harvard.edu/news/opeds/2004/ignatieff_terrorist_as_auteur_nyt_111504.htm

Andrew seems to be saying that a person can be fully genuine, yet have behavior modified by an awareness of audience. That’s true (see, e.g., authentic stagefright). Are we talking about anything more than that?

It shares something with reality TV, and fiction, because the content is edited — we’re only seeing/reading a selected portion of Justin’s life — and because the footage is not candid, as I just described. btw, I happen to “believe in” reality TV (at least some of the shows) more than the average media critic, I’d bet.

All that said, it’s interesting to me how the footage *seems* sort of fake, even though it’s real. It’s not because of cynicism; I think it’s a mixture of the fact that I’m picking up on Justin’s hyperawareness that others will be watching him, which subtly alters his behavior, and also because I’m hyperaware of how actors would create such a performance, and it occasionally, strangely aligns with what I’d characterize as “bad acting”. It’s an interesting phenomenon.

Sometimes Justin says he’s having a breakdown, and he is. Sometimes Carl says he’s homeless, and he is. I hope Justin’s life gets better. I hope Carl’s doing well and has a place to live, or will soon. Not everything you read on the Web is true, but some of what you read records bad personal situations that can’t be analyzed into anything clever or nice.

He recorded himself that weekend… almost as an afterthought. Later, when he was less upset, he debated the value/use/meaning of posting the footage.

I think he was clear that posting had ups and downs. I think he made a decision that reflects his interest in the communicative properties (and burdens) of the web. Given his past as a self-sharing web confessionalist and writer, I think it makes a lot of sense.

At this point, it remains to be seen what he’ll do to move forward from this crisis. But really, the crisis itself was (and remains) genuine.

So maybe he already IS fictionalising? In any case, his blog’s a good read.