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"I was channel surfing between reality TV programming and actual war coverage when [the]story came to me. One night I'm sitting there flipping around, and on one channel, there's a group of young people competing for, I don't know, money maybe? And on the next, there's a group of young people fighting an actual war. And I was tired, and the lines began to blur in this very unsettling way, and I thought of this story.” Suzanne Collins as quoted in the article by Rick Juswiak

Photojournalism and American War Intro

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Page 1: Photojournalism and American War Intro

"I was channel surfing between reality TV programming and actual war coverage when [the]story came to me. One night I'm sitting there flipping around, and on one channel, there's a group of young people competing for, I don't know, money maybe? And on the next, there's a group of young people fighting an actual war. And I was tired, and the lines began to blur in this very unsettling way, and I thought of this story.”

Suzanne Collins as quoted in the article by Rick Juswiak

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Suzanne Collins Author of The Hunger Games TrilogyIn March 2012 she became the best selling Kindle author of all time. She has written 17 of the top 20 most highlighted passages in Kindle e-books

“I don’t write about adolescence, she said. Iwrite about war for adolescents.” Suzanne Collins in a New York Times interview

“The series makes warfare deeply personal, forcing readers to contemplate their own roles as desensitized observers.” Susan Dominus, New York Times staff writer

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What Does it Mean to Write about War ?

For Adolescents.

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Author’s Perspective• An overt critique of violence, the series makes

warfare deeply personal, forcing readers to contemplate their own roles as desensitized voyeurs.

• “This is not a fairy tale; it’s a war, and in war, there are tragic losses that must be mourned.”

Suzanne Collins http://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/10/magazine/mag-10collins-t.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0

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Author had years of informal schooling on the subject of war

• Military “brat” whose family moved frequently• She understood at a young age that war determined

her family’s fate• Grandfather was gassed in WW I, uncle sustained

shrapnel wounds in WW II• Her father experienced lifelong ““nightmares” from

his service in Vietnam

• http://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/10/magazine/mag-10collins-t.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0

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• Collins embraces her father’s impulse to educate young people about the realities of war.

• “If we wait too long, what kind of expectation can we have?” she said. “We think we’re sheltering them, but what we’re doing is putting them at a disadvantage.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/10/magazine/mag-10collins-t.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0

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Who are we when it comes to war?

• “I’m an American, I like violence” heard from a New Tech Student as we start to read The Hunger Games

• The Hunger Games, “A cross between gladiators and Project Runway”

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When America is at war, how do we as citizens “see real war”?

• Is war journalism “voyeuristic travel writing” as suggested by Bill Buford a published war journalist.

• Does war journalism answer the question“What is war like?” Does it matter who is who is asking and who provides the answer?• What can be learned by looking at how various

American wars were “seen” by citizens through the work of war journalists?

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Picture from Mr. Brady’s studio display

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Some defended (Mathew Brady), and the realism of his photos. An account in Humphrey’s Journal (1861) read, “The public is indebted to Brady for his numerous excellent views of grim-visaged war.”

Dead Soldier in trenchPetersburg, VA 1864Mathew Brady, Photographer

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Their graphic power overwhelmed cynical New Yorkers. The New York Times wrote that if Brady “has not brought bodies and lain them in our dooryards and along the streets, he has done something very like it.” At last, someone had captured “the terrible reality and earnestness of war.”

Dead at Antietam, VA 1862Matthew Brady, photographer

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“Mass-produced and relatively cheap, the integrated system of mechanical viewer and photographs became fashionable for classroom pedagogy, tourist mementos, and parlor travel to exotic places of the world” (90) Long, Burke O. Imagining the Holy Land: Maps, Models, and Fantasy Travels. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2003.

• Stereograph is an early form of 3-diminsional photography• Civil War documented in stereographs with textual

comments• Commercial Success from the beginning• Affordable even to the lower and middle class americanantiquarian.org

STEREOGRAPH

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Stereographs of the Civil War

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A dead Rebel soldier as he layIn the trenches

Burial of the Union dead atFredericksburgDec. 15, 1862

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So, why does this matter?• “But few things in American history changed this country like the

Civil War.” shmoop.com

• “Photography changed the way civilians perceived war by turning people removed from war into eyewitnesses of the carnage.” civilwar.org

• Civil War photos were presented in galleries to satiate the public’s desire for authentic images of war civilwar.org

• As media blends war and reality shows, the question for Suzanne Collins is : Is there a voyeuristic thrill with the potential for desensitizing the audience? scholastic.com

The volume and focus of photojournalism is determined by the conditions of the war and the media technologies available and it

does impact public opinion

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World War II Life Magazine

South Pacific

1939-19451941 America entry

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“Shock and Awe”Bombing Baghdad 1990

“Highway of Death”

Persian Gulf War Aug 1990- Feb 1991 “Operation Desert Storm”

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As writers for Wired point out, . . . the next step in military technological development is said to include "virtual warfare". During such warfare military personnel will be safely ensconced at distant locations as televised imagery and other telemetry allows them to direct weaponry against remote targets. Such a prospect may well signify that, as media guru Marshall McLuhan wrote in 1968, "television war (will have) meant the end of the dichotomy between civilian and military."