COMMENTARY: The moving image

print this

By Riku Siivonen
     
      It felt good to see the security guard kicking the man who was appreheneded at the Kontula shopping mall. A few moments before, the man on the ground had attacked some innocent passers-by. Among the victims was a woman who was completely blameless. She could just as easily have been my wife.
      It was a shame that the video posted on the YouTube site did not show clearly whether the handcuffed man grimaced in pain at the blows. Hopefully he did.
      Previously I have been against the use of force by such security guards. I have admittedly felt a shocking sense of powerlessness when a junkie out on the streets has disturbed the peace of other people. And yet I have carried the thought that humanity is precisely as violent as its individual representatives or the institutions that they created. Common sense told me that Hammurabi, promulgator of Babylonian law and the Codex Hammurabi, was not terribly bright.
     
But on seeing the video, my first reaction was to wonder why there was so much wailing and gnashing of teeth at this little bit of street discipline. It was not even a proper kicking - just a few small stabs with a boot in passing.
      The feelings that were thrown up by this one grainy video began to appal me. How could I have really thought that way?
      Is it ultimately only a good thing that nearly everyone can now be a potential content-provider and that all manner of pictures are on offer these days in increasing numbers?
      The publishing of video footage like this and the raising of a fuss about them could of course make people aware of faults and injustices, but then again it can have quite the opposite effect.
      I am sure I was not the only person who was annoyed that the Kontula kicks were so ineffectual. For once you could see for yourself how someone got what they deserved. It felt as if this were simultaneously also some kind of collective retribution for the sins of rapists and paedophiles. For many, watching the boot going in must have been a cathartic experience of sorts.
     
Through their online editions, the newspapers, too, have become like Police-TV shows. It seems only to sharpen the great opinion divide and has not necessarily prompted people to ask the right questions.
      There were a couple of stories written about the violence of security guards, but nobody came out and asked why there are more and more guards around all the time.
      It is not something we like to talk about, because the fact of the matter is we all know the answer: such enormous prosperity among the middle class would not be possible without some people falling through the cracks.
      And we want to know that when they come to demand their share of the cake, there will be someone else with a baton standing between them and us.
      And it appears as though a sizeable share of the Finnish population want that someone else even to kick them a bit on our behalf. In their opinion, violent punishment is justifiable under certain circumstances. Saddam Hussein got what he deserved.
     
In the wake of this incident, I said to my wife that I would have to limit my viewing of these moving images, or else I would find myself having to adjust my opinions in the mirror on any number of other subjects.
      Sure enough, it happened the very next week. MTV3 ran a news item reporting that the animal rights activists have changed their strategy.
      In the past they attacked the fur-farms, but now they are turning their attention to disturbing those in the fur retailing business.
      The news had some more grainy footage taken right in front of the home of a fur-dealer, in which a bunch of hooded hippie-types sprayed paint around and hung out in a threatening line. It was scary to watch.
     
I have tolerated the illegal strikes against fur-farms perfectly well. More than anything I have been pleased that some young people should care so much about an issue that they would be willing to risk their comfortable future for it.
      But this riotous assembly in front of somebody's home was different. It felt as if the demonstrators would have turned up outside my own door. I looked at my little boy, drew him closer to me, and announced that sympathy for the foxgirls and foxboys stopped right here and now.
     
In all probability, the activists will soon get with the program, and will upload to the Net some grisly video images of the horrors of animal testing or something similar. And then it will be time for me to reverse my opinion once again.
      Maybe instead these new technical tools could be put to some other purpose.
      Everybody could give a video mobile to their elderly relatives housed in institutional care so that they could film their dreary everyday routines for YouTube.
      Or might someone come up with a way in which the 3G mobile phones could help the third-generation unemployed?
     
Helsingin Sanomat / First published in print in the Nyt weekly supplement of 1.12.2006


Previously in HS International Edition:
  Online video shows security guard kicking handcuffed man in Helsinki (15.11.2006)

Helsingin Sanomat