Method of exploration

Iconic Extrajudicial Execution of Jesus through Osama by US? (Part #2)

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The theme, if its potential significance is to be clarified, calls for insights from a range of disciplines -- as well as from the wise and people of faith. These disciplines might fruitfully include:

• public relations, in the light of profound insights into the role of image in framing worldviews and eliciting responses
• news management, especially in the light of its role in relation to propaganda
• psychoanalysis, in the light of the role of symbols and how they engage the conscious and subconscious
• politics, in the light of the role of symbols in framing and focusing political agendas
• religion, in the light of the role of icons in eliciting and sustaining belief
• aesthetics, in the light of the manner in which depiction can enable identification and elicit sympathy
• media, in the light of the role played by recognizable imagery in sustaining attention
• drama, given the role played by images in providing coherence to the story centred on iconic figures, especially with respect to martyrdom
• mythology, in the light of the profound role played by myth in relation to cultural memory
• face negotiation theory, with respect to the facialization of identity -- a concern readily confused with fascism

In anticipation of more qualified insights into these dimensions, the following can only constitute a brief and tentative exploration of possibilities. These must necessarily take the form of questions to elicit further reflection.

A key to fruitful insights is determining the nature of any parallelism in the iconic settings of Osama and of Jesus. It is to be expected that superficially any parallelism would be immediately rejected as repugnant and tasteless, even blasphemous. The question is whether there is a more fundamental framework in which such parallelism has fruitful meaning of relevance to the future through the "depth perception" enabled by the contrasting visions.

The question might be considered as having been raised through the highly controversial picture Bearded Orientals, Making the Empire Cross by the Australian artist Priscilla Joyce Bracks -- widely critiqued and held to be gratuitously offensive by the highest authorities in her land. It depicts Osama morphing into Jesus (Elizabeth Fortescue, Artist defends Osama-as-Jesus, The Advertiser, 29 August 2007; Is Osama bin Christ art or is it sacrilege? news.com.au, 30 August, 2007; Brendan Trembath, Jesus-Osama piece not meant to offend: artist, ABC News, 30 August 2007). As a lenticular image, the viewer can flip back and forth between portraits of Jesus and Osama by shifting slightly "from side to side". The socio-political metaphor is clear.

Especially relevant to any viable method is its dissociation from knee-jerk responses cultivated in various media. These might be caricatured as: Osama bad, Obama good -- if you don't agree, you must be a terrorist sympathizer. Such a framing follows from the binary logic promoted as a central feature of US foreign policy: "you're either with us, or against us" -- perhaps more appropriately written as "you're either with US, or against US". Such logic would be inappropriate to due process in any court of law.

Media attention is currently focused on Ground Zero commemoration ceremonies following the acclaimed death of "Osama" and the death of 2752 people on 9/11 -- for which he is held responsibile. It is however appropriate to recall the virtual absence of media or public attention to the deaths of some 5,000,000 people since that time, and immediately prior to it (Jason Stearns, Dancing in the Glory of Monsters: the collapse of the Congo and the Great War in Africa, 2011). This account was reviewed by The Economist under the title Chronicle of Death Ignored: five million people have died in Congo in a war that no one really understands (28 April 2011). The question is who claims to represent the neglected dead and dying as Osama claims to have done to some degree -- however his methods may be deplored?

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