The eyes of Saddam: images of the enemy

• Main Author: Isabella Pezzini
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: Pontíficia Universidade Católica de São Paulo 2010-07-01
• Series: Galáxia
• Online Access: https://revistas.pucsp.br/galaxia/article/view/3303

In journalistic representation of Saddam Hussein’s capture, the photographs are used as “acts of war” in the enemy’s representation and are also emphasized by the media circuits. Saddam was captured in an underground shelter dug in the countryside: his physical conditions were worthy of mercy and were merciless immortalized by embedded photographers in the capture. The neglected aspect of his body, his swollen face, his misaligned hair and beard were the opposite of his “majestic” image enthroned until recently in thousand variations across Iraq. The scene set for the aesthetic of the body on which Saddam founded the representation of his own power – as many politicians, not necessarily tyrants – was destroyed and the interpretation of degradation extream easily surpassed his glorious image. In the enemy’s intention, disgust and shame joined perfectly like to deliver signs of victory, while among the opposite spectators it only aroused more anger, indignation, hatred and revenge. These pictures of Saddam, and also those of gross treatment of his hanging after his conviction, represent only one of the most significant episodes in a long “war of images” that still opposes people and cultures, religious and political sensitivity and makes the ground of the media an area for further disagreements, instead of possible constructions of community. The text closes itself among others on the ambiguous status that newspapers attach to photographic images, on one hand used as incontrovertible evidence of verbal discourse and, on the other, continually discussing the latter, which inquires, interprets and doubts them, building a syncretic speech to be read in different isotopic possibilities.