Ultimate Indifference

Camera Lucida’s reader is clearly aware of Barthes’ fascination with the “madness” of the photo. He is intrigued by the “photographic ecstasy” (Barthes 119) derived from the absolute and original realism that the photograph embodies – its powerful existence as pure, undeniable evidence. In viewing the photograph, the spectator is actually confronting the “terrified conscious” (Barthes 119) of Time’s domineering power of his/her own mortality. Therefore, it is understandable that society attempts to tame the photograph – we are inherently in denial (or at least terrified by the concept) of our own mortality. Barthes claims that cinema acts as a medium for this taming process. As a society, we find comfort in the fictionality of the “hermetically sealed world” (Mulvey 201) that mainstream cinema provides – it gives us the illusion of a safe reality unbounded by Time. By taming the power of the photograph, we enable “pleasure [to pass] through the image” (Barthes 118). Just as Mulvey’s two forms of pleasure (voyeurism and narcissism) are ultimately means of distracting men from their castration anxiety, the overall purpose of entertainment is a means of distracting society from Time anxiety – cinema is a distraction from the terror of reality that photographs induce.

However, Barthes also states that it is this ideological “universalized image” that lacks originally, and consequently, the intriguing, essential punctum. Therefore he requests that we “abolish the images” (Barthes 119) that are distracting us from reality, thereby promoting the notion of confrontation. But what good would come out of this confrontation? I project Barthes’ notion to inevitably be a never-ending circle constantly returning to societal indifference: so we confront the reality of Death through photographs and then accept our fate and our powerlessness under Time’s authority. Soon, this acceptance would become a casual, detracting from the wounding bite of the punctum (which Barthes deems is the source of power from the photo). Without this punctum and through our casual acceptance of fate through confrontation with reality, we would then become, once again, indifferent. Barthes claims that the choice between settling with comforting “perfect illusions” and confronting “the wakening of intractable reality” (Barthes 119) is his ultimate decision. My response is this: it doesn’t matter – either route will eventually lead to societal indifference.