The Show Part 8: Cameras Can Lie In So Many Ways

(This is a series of posts reflecting on the place of "the show" in contemporary society and culture.)

We can ask whether or not a tree falls in a forest when there is nobody there to hear it. But there is now a more relevant question: Does anything happen, in a meaningful way, if it is not filmed or photographed? Digitalized "film" is slowly being accorded more reality than that which is filmed: Something not filmed is becoming irrelevant and quaint. More and more, we live in the show, as spectators and participants.

To create something worthy of being filmed, either through intent or happenstance, is to create a portion of the real. To do less is to simply exist, but not to be "real." The real is established after the event, in the recording.

Think of video replays watched by the officials in professional sports. The establishment of reality takes place after the event.

A delay between an event and a decision on how to judge it (which is different than according it reality) has been around for centuries, especially in courtrooms. There, the source of truth was physical evidence and, especially, oral narrative—eyewitness accounts, lawyer's presentation of a version of events, and so on. What goes on today in courtrooms is complicated and involves much more than film. But in much of the rest of technologized life, reality is established by digitized film.

Today, many are calling on police officers to wear cameras as part of their uniforms. I am not going to debate the value of this possible requirement. I will point out that an assumption underlies this call: that the camera does not lie, that it situates reality.

But cameras can lie in so many ways.

Camera angles can create deception. Camera angles can be inconclusive. Cameras can fuzz, go blank, misfire. Digitized "film" can be altered using software. Film can be edited. Film is, of necessity, always decontextualized relative to the event it records: it does not show what happened right before and right after the film. The big lie is that cameras record some events that would not happen if not for the camera. In this case, the film is simply about the film, although it often appears to be about something else. 

It is not hard to imagine some people hamming it up for a police officer's camera.

We live amid the assumption that film is the portal to the real. A recording is more real than event, representation more real than the present. We are more ourselves in the recording and representation than in the habits and events of our everyday lives.

Some may argue that film is merely additive to everyday life, that it has not taken a primacy. They could point out that we have everyday life and, now, we also have almost ubiquitous filming. There is no reason why such filming should displace what was once accorded reality. It is simply a different one.

What this perspective fails to take into account is that the oral narratives of everyday life that once established "the real" have given way to a technology that is accorded more truth value. Today, the ideal for determining what really happened is to find a film that will "reveal" it. Film is the privileged way to the real.

There is much that is negative with this new world, but it isn't all bad. As I've pointed out in an earlier post, some types of political change are easier in the time of the show.