This is off topic, but back in 2006 I went to the premiere of director Eric Steel‘s “The Bridge” (trailer) — a documentary about suicides from the Golden Gate Bridge. We have one every two weeks here. At the time I covered it for SF Metblogs, who seem to have “lost” the link. I found it — it’s an intense post, and the comments include people from the film — a survivor, and more.
It was brought to my attention that the link was AWOL tonight because apparently the film and topic was featured on Dr. Phil last night and some people wanted to re-read my post and the conversation around it.
Read: My review and multimedia post, Film Fest: Eric Steel’s The Bridge (sf.metblogs.com).
I volunteered to work that screening for the Film Society as I was certain there would be protesters. And I LOVE doing crowd control in hostile protest situations.
Only one guy showed to protest.
Now at that Metallica documentary premiers at the height of the Napster controversy, on the other hand…
Apologies for typo above. :/
I cried when I watched that film. The deatha nd story of Gene Sprague especially got to me. I felt like he might still be alive if he’d only been born somewhere else.
A couple of years ago I had a long and largely unsatisfying go around with an IFC exec about the wisdom and ethics of broadcasting The Bridge. He seemed utterly impervious to the idea that putting actual footage of people jumping to their deaths out in a medium (television) where it could be encountered by viewers unaware of what they might be about to see was an act worthy of (at least a little) reflection.
That conversation, and my own further reflection on the capacity of photographic imagery to trigger strong, uncontrollable, and even pathological responses has evolved my own thinking about how I present my work. I might think that it’s unwarranted, or even silly for someone to get upset at what they might see on my website. I might even think that there is some value in challenging social norms about the where and when and how of presenting photographic depictions of nudity and sexuality.
But since that back and forth on the IFC forum, I have tried to be more cognizant of the fact that why I may not understand why someone would have a strong negative reaction to the imagery in my work, my not understanding their reaction does not mean their reaction is not painful for them.
That doesn’t mean I’ve excised or buried every explicit image on our website, but I think (hope) I have become more judicious. Provocation for its own sake can easily become nothing more than adolescent acting out; more likely to harden people in their positions than to open dialog.