For the last year I have written this column with pictures and words about life in Dumaguete. Maybe this year I can go further afield in subject matter- for example, to other places in the Philippines that I’ve seen, even other parts of the world. But, after all, this is a Dumaguete newspaper; so I will always have a Dumaguete audience in mind, even if I’m not writing about local affairs every week.
This picture, for example. It was taken on the docks In Cebu. I was there waiting to board a fast craft back to Dumaguete. To people here, it would seem like a very ordinary scene; piles of containers, a truck loading at the docks, a hot day, a worker with his head wrapped in white cloth against the dust and the sun.
Of course I knew this when I took the picture. But I also saw how it would look to people from Europe and America- through Western eyes. From that point of view it’s a very sinister picture, even a frightening one.
The man on the truck is the very image of an faceless terrorist, his head wrapped to hide his identity. He looks out through black eye-slits, with murderous intent, at his potential victims. The containers behind him aren’t innocent either. They contain all the horrors of war: high explosives, nerve gas, anti-personnel mines, machine guns, missiles.
Even the truck seems hostile: ‘Not For Hire’, it says. Soon, loaded with weapons of mass destruction, it will drive off to its appointed target: a bank, a church, an innocent village. Images of screaming faces, smoke, fire, death, will follow- flashed around the world. Another terrorist outrage.
In New York or Berlin, that’s what they’d see in this picture, with a cold feeling in the pit of the stomach. Of course it’s nonsense; but this kind of image, a hooded figure on a truck, has become an icon of evil in the media- and the emotional response is automatic.
Laughing children, serious soldiers, sweet brides- People see in these universal images what they’re taught to see: “innocence”, “protection”, “happiness”.
But this picture- a hooded man on a truck: It’s not a universal image. What it means depends on where you come from. For people here, it’s just a picture of ordinary life. For people in the West, it’s an image of the worst thing they can imagine.