Re/aktion: Suicide-bombers / Martyrs video and site specific

text by Khaled D. Ramadan

Bomber's mission
'dedicated to Iraqi people'...
Electronic Telegraph reg. Mon Mar 31 02:39:00 UTC+0200 2003

Most of the spectacular attacks that are called terroristic in one part of the world (the Western world, example CNN) and heroic in the other (the Arab world, example Al-Jazeera) have always been accompanied by pre-attack videotapes sent to the visual media. Usually tapes of this nature show those who carried out the attacks speaking, explaining, justifying, informing, but also embracing and inspiring.

The staged audio-visual statement consists of different layers. Firstly, it is meant to reveal the identity of the attacker. Secondly, it is meant to give him/her a final possibility to communicate publicly. In other words, the pre-mission video is the bomber's speaking corner. It is his/her secret arena as well as a public arena. It is his/her last address to the masses.

All the pre-suicide/martyr mission videos are shot in clean and clear, staged, aesthetical backgrounds: in most cases an unknown and unidentified Middle Eastern space. Usually, the classical shooting location consists of private homes with very rare outdoor shootings. The most crucial point here is the secrecy of the location and its whereabouts; the private space is the bomber's last place.
In contrast to the private space [the pre-mission stage], the place where missions normally are executed consists of public spaces and spheres.
The entire concept of such missions is a play between THE private place and THE public space.

In the Middle East, the visual backgrounds of the pre-suicide/martyr mission videos are either carpet or fabric. Western suicide missions, on the other hand, have almost always different purposes, and in the West the background is either a mirror or a simple interior design.
The manifestation is in the statement itself and in the ideological visual elements, which are usually exhibited behind the suicide bomber/martyr.

On the wall behind the suicide bomber/martyr's head one can see images of spiritual leaders, or a phrase embracing the action he/she is about to carry out. Next to him/her lies a machine gun, a symbol for fight and struggle. The instrument which bombers usually use in their actions, the explosive belt, is never in sight. The belt is the element of surprise, therefore its look and visual identity should always stay in the dark.

Knowing well the visual impact on the masses, pre-suicide/martyr mission videos function as a political statement, an audio-visual manifesto. An address of justification lies between his/ her hands, a paper written in advance for the attacker to read before he/she executes a mission, which is supposed to take place in a sphere where unknown secret individuals are taking part in public debates, using their own method of doing private business in public.

For Al Misskawi and Nidal Neb. Amaso (the first two suicide bombers in south Lebanon) self-destruction was to reach for the real thing, real production and improvement. For both, exchange of pain and suffering became a universal cultural and moral value of co-existence, "the value of violence". The complete and right-away destruction of civilization, as long as they were not part of it or related to it.

Bombers/martyrs are nomads, mobile people looking for departure in order to make the news. More points are made by their deaths than by their lives. They came from nowhere, had no address, and their social security number was what their sub-cultural organization had issued them: suicide bomber/martyr number ???

Putting theory in practice

What all pre-suicide mission videos have in common, whether they are group suicides or individual suicides and whether they are carried out for political reasons or private reasons, is the phenomenon of public manifesto.

This particular pattern of communication, the public statement, is the relative point of impact, which is always meant to play a more crucial role than the action itself.

Playing these visual statements by attackers on global media networks has become a media trend, a new wave of visual experience. Some networks dismiss them for political reasons, such as CNN, while a network like Al-Jazeera decided to play them all the way through despite criticism.

Unlike all other pre-suicide/martyr mission videos, Al-Jazeera showed the video of one of the attackers on the WTC addressing the masses with the image of the plane hitting one of the towers as background. This unique manipulated video footage was received by Al-Jazeera 6 months after the events in NY occurred.
The speaker/attacker did not mention that he carried out the mission, but the poster of the plane hitting the WTC was THE visual message and it was easily received in a special effect Hollywood style.

Entering the "Kingdom"
Pre-mission video staging as a global pattern

Indeed the question of suicide is quite controversial both morally and philosophically. All three monotheistic religions usually forbid suicide actions.
Nowadays, however, almost all liberal people around the world would easily agree that suicide in general is not a crime, although some legal systems still formally forbid it.
"I have never heard of someone punished for a suicide attempt." (RanHaCohen) [1].

Ran HaCohen wrote in his letter Suicidal Truths "In fact, a burning issue in modern legislation is euthanasia for terminally ill people, where the question is not their right to commit suicide (which is usually acknowledged), but rather the right to be assisted in it by medical staff". [2]

So what is the difference between committing suicide and being assisted in doing so? In terms of health problems, suicide is morally justified, but in political terms it is not.
What about other forms and functions of other types of suicides, like that of the Heaven's Gate cult?

To enter the "Kingdom" or the "next level", Heaven's Gate elevated the so-called method to a level of madness. In March 1997 the cult members took their lives in a mass suicide, condemning the human body for being just a vehicle. The common point here is not the action, nor the method, nor the purpose or the ideology behind such an action. What counts is something essentially fundamental.

What counts are the virtual publicity and the attention gained from the action, which is usually aired right after the action and never before. Attracting the attention of the virtual public is the primary aim of the pre-mission video footage. It is made to visually distribute the news of the action to the largest audience possible via global TV networks and other media apparatuses. [3]

In many cases the staged statement is much more significant than the action itself because its aim is to reach the transnational masses and to clarify the force behind the action. The attack will only fulfil its spectacular climax when it reaches the transnational public media sphere.

Ricardo Lopez's aim was successfully implemented with remarkable impact. A dead man managed to get his wish while in the grave: a young American who shut himself in front of his remote controlled video camera and dedicated his act to the singer Björk. He sent a letter bomb in advance to Björk's London home before filming his own suicide. [4]
His aim was double media spectacularism. Lopez did not want to go alone to the NEXT LEVEL, but wanted to take his beloved singer with him. He wanted his legacy to be permanently cemented to a legendary figure.
His pre-mission suicidal video was shown on all global TV networks. Within the electronic media his name and Björk's will always be connected.

Knowing the power and danger of the media Lopez managed to enter Hollywood from the backstage by making the footage of his pre-mission suicide video.

It is a very nice day to die (Native American proverb)

Having said this, one can conclude that the importance of such actions lies in the staged statements as such, while the actions themselves are secondary despite their magnitude.
The actual power of all this is the audio-visual material itself and therefore the staging process for the pre-mission video must be carefully organized and well orchestrated.

The staging process and the interior design of the pre-mission video footage has become a norm, a cultural trend or a sub-cultural one to be more accurate.
The actual staging process should reflect and carry the identity, the purpose, the ideology, and the philosophy of the action-takers or attackers. It should look aesthetically unique and different; it should signal continuity and cultural or sub-cultural belonging. In short, the pre-mission interior staging should be done with STYLE.

In Lopez's pre-mission video he painted his face with camouflage colour; during filming Lopez was in the end ultimately acting. The selection of vocabulary in his footage was rationally selected and meant to express his intellectual side.
Though he planned to go alone and in PRIVATE, he made sure to take two elements with him as he departed: a public figure and a message turning his privacy into public news.
By doing this, deep inside him, Lopez was certain of the outcome of his planning. His ultimate aim was the spectacularism of the media. He knew well the media's weak points, and acted according to these. His pre-mission video performance was offered to global TV networks and not to Björk.

For viewers around the world, Lopez's video was transferred into the entrapment of TV in houses and salons. The story was told with a Hollywood flavour and for Lopez that was mission accomplished.

Priv-blic sphere

In the long pre-mission video made by the leader of Heaven's Gate, Marshall Herff Applewhite, Applewhite deliberately placed several mirrors which reflected his image while talking in an endless perspective, in order to dimensionalize his existence.
Reflecting his image this way, he wanted to take us into some sort of Manet's mirror. In his analogy of Richard Sennett, theorist Bulent Diken says the following in relation to Manet's mirror:

"Richard Sennett mentions Eduard Manet as an artist of "displacement", a concept that also summarizes the experience of the foreigner. Displacing the familiar frames of reference, Manet's paintings give unexpected twists to the established ways of seeing. In The Bar at the Folies Bergère, for instance, it is optically impossible to be facing the barmaid directly and seeing her reflection to the right of her at the same time. In the upper right corner of the painting, reflected in the mirror, we see a man the barmaid is looking at. This man cannot exist optically either; if he did, he would completely block out our direct view of the barmaid - the viewer is standing in front of the barmaid. The drama depicted in the painting is thus: "I look in the mirror and see someone who is not myself". [5]

Heaven's Gate's leader Marshall Herff Applewhite wanted us to see him in full three dimensions during his pre-mission video recording.
The message he wanted to send to the world is encapsulated inside the image of his pre-mission video staging. Technically like in Monet's painting, it would be difficult to film Applewhite without seeing the cameraman, but now Applewhite did not need a cameraman, he simply filmed himself placing the camera right in front of him so we wouldn't be able to see it. Ultimately, Applewhite wanted us to see ourselves alone with his image, a manipulative attempt to address each viewer single-handed.

Not a computer cult but a cult that happened to have a Web site. Applewhite's statement is still on the web.

Heaven's Gate's homepage is still there and will stay for a long long time to come because the group paid their web provider lots of money in advance to keep their Web site intact. Their email is also functioning; I know because I sent them a mail and received an answer.

Applewhite mentioned that we know that it is only while we are in these physical vehicles (bodies) that we can learn the lessons needed to complete our own individual transition, as well as complete our task of offering the Kingdom of Heaven to this civilization one last time. We take good care of our vehicles so they can function well for us in this task, and we try to protect them from any harm. We fully desire, expect, and look forward to boarding a spacecraft from the Next Level very soon (in our physical bodies). There is no doubt in our mind that our being "picked up" is inevitable in the very near future. But what happens between now and then is the big question.

The answer to Applewhite's big question is not to be found in his desire to be picked up, nor his excitement of soon to be boarding the spacecraft from the Next Level. His ultimate aim as we have seen in other pre-mission videos is that his message reaches the global electronic media networks. Applewhite's Next Level has been reduced to a media spectacularism mission rather than individual transitions to another state of being.

To make sure Heaven's Gate still exists, at least in cyberspace, the movement paid in advance for their Internet provider, a move that cast lots of doubt on the total belief of the movement and all its ideology. If Applewhite was 100% sure that the world would end with or after the departure of his movement then why did they want to exist in cyberspace?

Their aim was the actual space, right? No, wrong. The aim was the virtual space. So apparently for Heaven's Gate's leader the most significant of all existence here is not in the physical vehicles or in the Next Level or in the actual space. Rather, it is to exist in cyber space.

TV temptation

Global TV networks are a new visual information system through which millions of people around the globe can be exposed to a single piece of information simultaneously. The visual experience that people receive from TV and elsewhere enables them to make decisions but it also influences their ability to make decisions on their own.
Apparently, TV images can drag us into anything and out of anything.

The power and influence of the global TV network has managed to attract millions of advertisers and investors, but the number of consumers will always be larger. The role of TV consumers is different from one region to another. Some individuals and groups found in TV a new means of power, a new arena for political manifestos.

The access to global TV networks has been manipulated. The gatekeepers are no longer the editorial teams, in many cases the power of broadcasting lies in the hands of strong statement makers, suicide-mission carriers and attacks of destructive nature. This new visual trend is overpowering and challenges the global TV news editors.

In his famous book Breaking the News: How the Media Undermine American Democracy, James Fallows manifests how TV footages smother speech, giving an anecdote about a CBS journalist making a story on Ronald Reagan in the year 1984. Lesley Stahl had documented the contradiction between what Reagan said and what he did, by showing him speaking at the Special Olympics and at a nursing home while reporting that Reagan had cut funding to children with disabilities and opposed funding for public health. After Stahl's piece was broadcast, she got a call from a White House official, who for a good reason praised her. Overwhelmed by the compliments, she asked the caller form the White House why he wasn't upset, underlining that her coverage story had nailed Reagan. The official replied: "You television people still don't get it. No one heard what you said. Don't you people realize that the picture is all that counts? A powerful picture drowns out the words." [6]