It's Not A Hand Gun, It's Military: Fleet Week #3

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Girls and guns. Kids and guns. Teens, sex and guns.

Today, I offer the last in a series of posts featuring images by photojournalist Nina Berman of this year's Fleet Week naval extravaganza in NYC.

In the first post, I noted the public's unremarkable response to American militarism and the public display of weaponry.  In the second post, I focused on military recruitment and race.  Today, I'm interested in a more narrow aspect of these gun-saturated images, which is the prevalence of hand guns in these exhibitions.

I was interested in how these three images, all emphasizing the hand gun, have a slightly different pull.  In image #1, are we witnessing a loss of innocence, or, in our violence-saturated culture, simply the lack of it?  In #2, factoring those facial expressions; the girl's "girlish" and incredible "Go Nuts" top; the face paint (kids love face paint); and the fingers on the triggers, I'm wondering, is this the new cover of the American family album?  And, in #3, besides the appeal to gangster chic, there is no escaping the double entendre of "a boy's equipment."

Granted, the military came to NY for a (PR) show of hardware.  And who could deny that the small arms weapon is a necessary implement in any military arsenal.  What I'm curious about, however, is how -- just weeks after the Virginia Tech shootings (and the lost opportunity to have a public debate about hand guns) -- neither the military, the police, nor the anti-gun Mayor seemed to have much reservation about discouraging the public (no just looking?), and especially, children, from getting their hands on a piece.

>>If you have questions or comments for Nina, she is available to answer in the discussion thread<<

Other Fleet Week posts:
Asking Questions About America: Fleet Week #1
Black Boys With Guns: Fleet Week #2

Nina Berman website.
Nina's Purple Hearts: Back from Iraq website/purchase

(image: Nina Berman/Redux. NYC, New York, May 25, 2007.  Used by permission)

Comments

[Nate]

Sorry if I am too late to catch Nina, but I enjoyed the photo series very much. What interests me about this series is the way in which these people express their relationship with the gun through the poses they adopt. Every single individual in this series is posing (with the exception, I believe, of the young boy in the first pic).

In this latest batch of photos, the girl in the first shot seems to treat the gun as an indication of wealth. Her pose recalls in me a certain aristocratic flare, the gun an accessory such as an expensive fan. The gun becomes an accessory of beauty, but one that appeals to an aesthetic of power through material opulence. She is displaying the gun, but does not seem to indicate any function for it beyond appearances.

The juxtaposition between the poses of the second and third photo are interesting. The man in the second assumes a Rambo image, holding the gun low ("shooting from the hip" - a terribly inaccurate method of firing the weapon). In the third photo, however, the youth is cocking the gun and pointing it at the ground, demonstrating a certain "expertise" (when compared with the other man) in the handling of the weapon. Is this a generational gap in the perception of war? As the realism of war movies has increased, the phenomenon of Rambo-like heroes mowing down waves of enemies while running and shooting from the hip has made way for much more realistic portrayals such as Black Hawk Down. Does this legitimate it by inoculating us? What happens when we replace the fantastic image (Rambo) with the more realistic image (Black Hawk Down)? Do we become more critical of the event depicted or do we learn to reconfigure our fantasy within these new imaginative spaces? It seems to me that the answer to this question has important implications for the way we might respond to the images of a real war.

Also important, are the boys in the last photo even contemplating war? Or do these pistols complete the image they've already dressed up for: the drug-running gangster? Did they gravitate naturally towards the pistols? If Nina is still available, it would be interesting to hear her impressions of the reaction of inner-city youth to the pistols and assault rifles.

Of course, other images in this series might contradict my suspicion of a generational gap. In the second batch of photos shown, the boy in the last photo (#5) is clearly not expressing a relationship of competence with his weapon - merely a relationship of power. This recalls the more Rambo-esque imagination of weapons and war.

The boy on the left in photo #4 of the same batch immediately brought to my mind the photos of martyrs plastered around Palestinian cities. Why is he replicating this pose? Maybe it is also part of inner city "gangster" iconography as well (I wouldn't know), but I find it intriguing that he has picked up two weapons and struck this pose. In Palestine, it is always striking to me that these photos rarely depict the fighters in relationships of competence with their weapons. Often, they have pistols and ammunition belts strapped to their legs and chests, so loaded down that they could never fire any of the many weapons they are holding. Like the girl I first commented on, the weapons become objects without function beyond their appearance - in this case the aesthetic of power through, literally, firepower. For Palestinians, the futility of infantry weapons against Israeli technology and training might be a cause for explanation. Why has the youth in this photo, however, made the gun function-less? Why has he chosen an image that definitely does NOT replicate the image of a U.S. soldier?