Oldal 47 [47]
Cultural Production of the Real Through Picturing Difference in the Polish Media: 1940s—1960s
confirm the crimes and atrocities committed by the enemy of socialism. In every
photograph the boundary was clearly marked, the roles were very obviously divid¬
ed; no one could have any doubts. The war was presented from the point of view of
its participants—victims and murderers. Emphasis on the scenes of brutality and
cruelty served to generate a sense of authenticity of the images often experienced
and perceived by the victims of the Vietnam War. Some photographs caused a stir.
Shown in the form of television scenes they had an even stronger emotional influ¬
ence and reinforced the effect of terror and the real. The remote war was present in
everyday life in this form; the same fragments were pictured by a variety of media
(photographs, television, cinema). Sontag had already written that contemporary
wars are the pictures and sounds in our living rooms (2010: 26).
‘The differences visible in these photographs could not go unnoticed. Sharp
boundaries were drawn; no one had any doubts as to who was a friend and who
was an enemy. However, all of this was happening far away, so there was no sense
of an immediate threat. The threat in these multimedial representations and photos
is visible but it does not concern us immediately. It was an everyday picture in the
living room. The messages from the Polish press and television were the documen¬
tation of the strategy of presenting the enemies and the war they were fighting far
away. As it did not concern us, it could be treated as the first message of mediated
reality that appeared in our homes.
Such types of visual materials, with appropriate reports and interpretations,
ought to be treated as a signpost—that is, an approach of a guide who points at the
picture but also interprets it, imposes the meaning of the events which without him
would be fragmentary and incomprehensible. Sontag wrote that the photographs
that cause our greatest dismay when it turns out that they had been posed are those
that are supposed to present the most intimate moments—culminating points re¬
lated mostly to love and death (2010: 68). A distant war does not move us, access
to events is limited only by governmental control. The war is served in pictures.
This is not how we show our own dead.
In the examples mentioned above, the Other is either visible in the photograph
(an exotic Indian from Brazil, a Chinese peasant, an America soldier) or remains
outside the frame. In this second case, they are the enemies of socialism, opponents
of the “people’s government”, the so-called Ukrainian bands. On the one hand, the
sense of authenticity of the pictures could have been achieved due to the profes¬
sionalism of the photographs from Swiat, from Przekröj, and from other reliable
illustrated weeklies, while on the other hand they provided a sensory perception of
the victims of the Vietnam War.
Are these representations credible? First of all, they were presented as the world
having no impact on us and our locality. The interdependence was concealed.
What they have in common is processing (converting) complex content into an
uncomplicated communiqué. All of the images contained a certain given message.
The manner of its creation points to the goal and strategies for its achievement.
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