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Image Critique & the Fall of the Berlin Wall
By Sunil Manghani
(Intellect Books, 2008, ISBN 9781841501901)
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‘Required reading for all those in visual culture’ – Nicholas Mirzoeff, New York University
Taking the fall of the Berlin Wall as a key marker in recent history – a period in which increasingly we find ourselves watching ‘instant history’ unfold live on air – the book presents a new critical concept of image critique: a double procedure of both a critique of images and the use of images as a means to engage with our contemporary mediated culture for new critical purposes. The book, then, is not so much about the fall of the Berlin Wall in itself, but rather about the recent and lively theoretical debates about visual culture. How do you attend critically to visual culture and how do we appropriate visual culture for critical purposes?
Thus, whilst much has been written about Berlin and the Berlin Wall (mostly in the context of WWII or German reunification), I have focused specifically on the media angle of the event, to use it as a case study to think more broadly about the development of politics and political rhetoric vis-a-vis media and visual culture. I’d like to think the book can be equally useful in thinking about how we might approach an analysis of other moments of what I would term Instant History – which can range from the assassination of John F. Kennedy to the Nelson Mandela’s ‘Long Walk to Freedom’, from the Landing on the Moon to the Beijing Olympics, or from the Gulf War to September 11 and so forth. Whilst all of these events differ greatly from one another, and need their own differing treatments of analysis, we can understand them all as part of an ever more mediated culture, frequently based upon the dissemination and consumption of images.
Overview of Book
Ch.1: On the Sight of the Berlin Wall
Ch.2: The Problem of Visual Culture
Ch.3: The End of History?
Ch.4: Living without an alternative
Ch.5: Public Screening: Critical Pictures of the Wall
In the final chapter of the book I look at two films which deal specifically with the fall of the Berlin Wall. Goodbye Lenin! (extract shown here) is I feel relatively sucessful in re-scaling the images of the fall of the Wall, particularly as it manages to offer an emotional, as well as humorous re-visioning of the event. It also cleverly re-writes history through a serious of fake films that the main protagonist makes in order not to unsettle his ailing mother. In doing so the film nestles a series of viewpoints within the single narrative.
