I first saw this photo on wednesday in my "Postmodern Bodies" class, as one in a series of war-related images we were discussing that day. The reaction of my classmates (many of whom had already seen the picture) caught me more than a little off guard. But I think this has a lot to do with the context in which we first viewed the image. More specifically, I saw the image for the first time before I had any context for it. There was no caption, no explanation--at least until my professor explained her first context for viewing the image. But thinking back, the way in which the students had first viewed the image perhaps gives a good explanation for the uniformity of their thoughts regarding it.

My professor and the other students had seen the image as an attachment on a forwarded email. The very fact that an email subject must be read before the attached image can be downloaded or viewed means that the image will always carry the context intended by the author before any other associations. So the subject of this email, apparently something like "images you won't see in the news," carried a whole range of both latent and manifest meanings--most of which were very intentional.

So what would these intended meanings be? According to my classmates, the email explained that pictures such as this one show a different side of the war in Iraq than the one portrayed by the media--one in which there were positive, peaceful moments as well as moments of horrible violence and chaos. Discussion seemed to indicate that this was a popular sentiment (despite what seems to be an anti-war majority) in the class. And in a strange, un-critical way, I found myself agreeing with it somewhat. I certainly will not argue the fact that the media shows us violence in an almost pornographic way, and that the editorial framework "if it bleeds, it leads," is doing nothing to encourage a critical and perhaps constructive news media. So there was a lot of truth in the words of students who criticized the news for not showing us more images like these.

Since I didn't see the other pictures in the email, I can only base my judgment of this message on the picture of the kitten and the soldier. Now, I have to say that my initial reaction to this picture was simply to laugh out loud (though I stifled it at the time). I was thinking, what a ridiculous, sentimental piece of bullshit propaganda! And precisely the sort of thing that I am very used to seeing in the mainstream press (specifically the reactionary, ultra-corporate press like Fox News). And, for the most part, I still feel that way. But like I said, a lot of my classmates already had a framework for understanding this image, and that was the context of this forwarded email: a (in appearance, at least) semi-personal form of mass communication that most certainly carried a very distinct, intentional message along with it.

One student in my class pointed out that he had talked to a few soldiers in Iraq that were talking about all the good things that were happening, such as rebuilding a school or water system alongside Iraqi citizens. And he had a valid point--we don't hear (a lot) about these projects currently, because the news is usually dominated by reports of violence (and occasionally by stories of abuse by soldiers). But on the other hand, we have had it drummed into our heads repeatedly that despite continuing violence, the effort in Iraq is making things better--take the election, for example. Our boys are over there are making Iraq a safer place for democracy, or so the narrative goes.

And, despite the obligatory coverage of bloody attacks, we still don't hear the half of it. The report last year that estimated civilian casualties from the conflict at over 100,000 barely got a nod from the American press, but we do hear the CNN or Fox News reporters practically cheering when the troops they are embedded with shoot at insurgents in Falujah. The media does more than its share of cheerleading in this conflict, and I don't know how people get the impression that there is some sort of "untold story" of positive things happening in Iraq.

When I looked at that picture, I wanted to laugh because it was absurd. But war is absurd, and the picture actually does a good job of showing that. As much as I would like to make fun of people who look at the picture and see something heroic or cute, I too find the picture touching, albeit in a different way. To look at the picture as some sort of example of "success" in Iraq is quite simply idiotic. Such an wanders into the realm of satire:

Washington- The Pentagon today released a report detailing the success of a recent campaign by Marines in Fallujah to ensure the health and security of the city's large kitten population. "Under Saddam's Ba'athist regime, the kittens of Iraq were violently oppressed, not to mention rarely petted," said secretary of defense Donald Rumsfeld. "Now, despite continuing attacks by terrorists and former regime elements, we can safely say that these kittens are finally free to be petted, nuzzled, and are even receiving daily rations of catnip.

But despite the picture's capacity for sentimental jingoism, there is another side to this image, that I found myself identifying with. I associate it with a certain old-school pacifist image (strangely enough, I'm watching MASH right now on my parent's tv), that of the peaceful moment in the middle of absurdity, chaos, and death. A high school teacher I had once told a story about how in Vietnam, he used to feed monkeys beer out of a helmet to get them drunk. But he didn't talk about this as if it was some way of showing that they had triumphed and were now free to engage in lighthearted activities. It was just an escape from the incredible heaviness of the violence around them. The picture doesn't show me anything except that war is fucked up, dreadful, and--in odd, fleeting moments--kind of funny and strange.

In one way this all just goes to show that we don't really think anything upon seeing an image like this that we weren't already prepared to think--that the image just takes on the meaning that we already have ready for it. And that's pretty true of both my reaction and the reaction of my classmates. But at the same time, those who received the email were not given it free of context. They were told what to think of it, and I find this interesting. What it made me think about it is various articles I've read about the new phenomenon of viral marketing. If you haven't heard of viral marketing, I guarantee that you've already participated in it.

This site gives a pretty good explanation of the basic idea, which is just what it sounds like: plant an advertisement, idea or ideology, and watch it spread by itself. As the author puts it, "Viral marketing describes any strategy that encourages individuals to pass on a marketing message to others, creating the potential for exponential growth in the message's exposure and influence. Like viruses, such strategies take advantage of rapid multiplication to explode the message to thousands, to millions." We already know about the pentagon's admitted staging for the cameras of at least one famous scene from early in the war (the toppling of the Saddam Statue). What if emails like this were just another weapon in the great battle of narratives being waged by this administration? What better weapon than these heartwarming, seemingly personal emails?