A Tension with Attention in Techno-Reality
An Essay by Jacob Goldbas
In art, Rene Magritte posed a famous problem in his painting The Treachery of Images. The treachery of images is the way appearances tricks the viewer into believing appearance is reality. The painting shows a tobacco pipe, and underneath the pipe, the painting says, “this is not a pipe” in French. The reason the pipe is ‘not a pipe’ is because the painting is a ‘painting of a pipe’ and not the pipe itself. Viewers experience the painting: one of the important problems is the tension between the three dimensions of the pipe and the two dimension alwords below it. The beauty of the painting betrays the philosophical undertones, which only seems to conglomerate the effects (or is the effect itself? I mean, you do not think about the betrayal like with philosophical paradox, you experience it; which is ultimately more betraying, more revealing).
Maybe inspired by this problem, I posted two paintings of myself to my Facebook profile instead of photographs. My point is to stagger the viewer like the writing by Magritte: I am not the painting. My friends tell me that these paintings are intense, which to me sounds like I’m off-putting. I think to myself, “That’s the point.” I do not want to betray my friends with photographs. Yet, they still feel betrayed.
The reason I took the pictures down is a strange moral story. Two years ago, when I met my girlfriend’s mother, she had seen my Facebook profile pictures moments before she met me. Those pictures showed times when I attended the historically Black university, North Carolina Central University, NCCU. I was one of five white students in a school of eight thousand black students. Danielle’s mother told me the pictures she saw were awkward. They are!
I need to make clear for Danielle’s mother’s sake and mine that she was not saying anything racist or ignorant. These were simply pictures of a white kid in a crowd of black people. The reason I took my Facebook pictures down was Mrs. Kinahan told me that they were awkward pictures. I don’t disagree that they are. But the experience of being there was both more complex and more simple than the picture betrays. I had feelings of being awkward, but I had feelings of being accepted, too. I had feelings of thinking very hard about what I said and also feelings of letting loose with my friends…like I do with all of my friends, and yet in a special way. My friends from NCCU deserve better than any sort of reduction; I deserve better; Mrs. Kinahan deserves better; and such is the betrayal of images. The situation was not the picture of the situation, nor could it ever be.
Maybe it took going to an all black school to be reminded how much facades like skin color or photographs betray.
This is similar to when my friends voice a sort of betrayal (a different betrayal? The same betrayal?) when they find out my Facebook does have pictures. Danielle still doesn’t know why I took my photographs down (like I’m going to tell her it’s her mom’s fault? But I already told you that it wasn’t her mom’s fault.) They volunteered their information, they figure. Why don’t I volunteer mine? Before I took down that I went to NCCU on facebook, friends who had looked at my profile complained that I hadn’t said this in person. They did not notice when I posted intimate information. I told them it was on my profile the whole time. The pictures and information didn’t mean anything to them without the emotion of my (physical, vocal-corded) voice.
That is, so what if I did post those pictures, which have personal meaning to me and not that same personal meaning to them? At least by not saying anything I’m saying something meaningful. Therefore, I enter two caveats to this tension-filled Modern Era: First, the betrayal of images we put across. Why didn’t you think I was the person I showed you I was? Second, the betrayal of images we do not put up. By not saying anything and withdrawing, I betray my friends who believe I already forfeit my right to privacy; when it is they who forfeit their privacy, not me. People complain about how the Internet fostered a new wave of false friendships. The betrayal of images is that friendship is always more than a play of images, as if to mock our belief that it was so simple before now.
