Can I Look at This: Watching Media of Racial Violence

In this video

Themes

• Anti-Black racism
• Race, Media, Technology

Lynes examines the limits and the powers of images and how we might be held responsible for the vulnerability of members of our community persecuted on the basis of their race, gender, sexuality, or citizenship status.

Lynes asks the question: What do we do about footage and images of police violence in our contemporary moment?

Taking action

• Humanize and empathize with individuals in images
• Understand how images can dehumanize
• Be reflexive of your positionality as a spectator

Resources

• Elizabeth Alexander, “’Can you be BLACK and Look at This?’: Reading the Rodney King Video(s)”. Public Culture. Vol.7 (1994): pp.77-94. https://read.dukeupress.edu/public-culture/article/7/1/77/32180/Can-you-be-Black-and-Look-at-This-Reading-the
• Ariella Azoulay, “Introduction” to The Civil Contract of Photography. New York: Zone Books, 2008.
• Desmond Cole, “Remembering Black, Indigenous and Other People of Colour killed by Canadian police”. Pyriscence. May 29, 2020. https://www.pyriscence.ca/home/2020/5/29/cdnpolice
• El-Hadi, Nehal, “Death Undone”. The New Inquiry. May 2, 2017.
• Gene Demby, “How Black Reporters Report on Black Death,” Morning Edition, National Public Radio, https://www.npr.org/sections/codeswitch/2015/08/20/432590298/how-black-reporters-report-on-black-death
• Herman Gray, “Race, Media and the Cultivation of Concern.” Communication and Critical/Cultural Studies. Vol.10, No.2-3 (July 2013): pp.253-58.
• Christine Harold & Kevin Michael DeLuca, “Behold the Corpse: Violent Images and the Case of Emmett Till” Rhetoric and Public Affairs, Vol.8, No.2 (Summer 2005): pp.263-286. http://sites.psu.edu/fa2014vicarocas201/wp-content/uploads/sites/15238/2014/08/Behold-the-corpse.pdf
• David Marriott, On Black Men. Edinburgh: Edinburgh UP, 2000.
• Safiya Umoja Noble, “Interrogating Black Death and Dying Online.” Black Camera. Vol.9, No.2. Spring 2018.
• Ellen C. Scott, “Close Up: Black Images Matter: Contextualizing Images of Racialized Police Violence”. Black Camera. Vol.9, No.2. Spring 2018. muse.jhu.edu/article/694968