Capturing the Romanian Revolution: Violent Imagery, Affect and the Televisual Event

244 Pages·2011·3.24 MB·English

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Capturing the Romanian Revolution: Violent Imagery,
Affect and the Televisual Event

By Stefana Lamasanu
Department of Art History and Communication Studies
McGill University
August 2010

A thesis submitted to McGill University in partial fulfilment of the
requirements of the degree of Ph.D.

©Stefana Lamasanu, 2010
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Table of Contents
Table of Contents ................................................................................................................ 2
Acknowledgements ............................................................................................................. 4
Abstract ............................................................................................................................... 5
Résumé................................................................................................................................ 7
Introduction ........................................................................................................................ 9
Chapter One. The Iconicity of Capital Punishment ........................................................... 19
War and Death Imagery ................................................................................................ 19
Examples ....................................................................................................................... 28
Lynching Photographs ............................................................................................... 28
Holocaust Photography ............................................................................................. 32
The Saigon Execution ................................................................................................ 33
Saddam Hussein ........................................................................................................ 37
Execution Literature ...................................................................................................... 40
The Historical Context and Definition of Capital Punishment .................................. 41
The Public Execution ................................................................................................. 45
Executions of Women ............................................................................................... 55
The Case of Contemporary Romania ............................................................................ 61
Chapter Two. The Romanian Revolution, Its Context, and Media Coverage ................... 63
Historical and Political Context of the Execution .......................................................... 63
Censorship during the Socialist Communist Era of Nicolae Ceauşescu .................... 65
The Public Image of the Ceauşescus ......................................................................... 67
The Historical Context Leading to the Execution ...................................................... 76
The Televised Revolution .............................................................................................. 78
Trial and Execution .................................................................................................... 86
Media Coverage ............................................................................................................ 89
A Contested Revolution .............................................................................................. 102
Exaggerated Numbers ............................................................................................. 103
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Conspiracy Theories ................................................................................................ 112
Chapter Three. The Journalistic Context ......................................................................... 117
Romanian Journalistic Practices before the Revolution ............................................. 117
Romanian Journalistic Practices during the Revolution ............................................. 121
“New” Media, Old Language? ................................................................................. 122
Live Televisual Documentary: A Break in Aesthetics ............................................ 124
The Romanian Revolution: An International Narrative Collaboration ....................... 135
Chapter Four. Revisions of the Past ................................................................................ 148
Televisual Economics of Capturing the Past ............................................................... 148
Visual Reformulations ................................................................................................. 160
Public and Formal Commemoration Practices and Collective Memory ................. 160
Revisiting the Past through Art ............................................................................... 167
Chapter Five: Affect Formation and Circulation ............................................................. 182
Affect ........................................................................................................................... 182
Icons ............................................................................................................................ 184
Circulating Affects ....................................................................................................... 193
Conclusion ....................................................................................................................... 214
Iconophobia ................................................................................................................ 214
The Sublime................................................................................................................. 219
Works Cited ..................................................................................................................... 226
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Acknowledgements
I want to thank Prof. William Straw for patiently guiding me toward
choosing the right topic. Although my choice of subject is not surprising, his
guidance has enabled me to bridge my personal interest with academic theory. His
constant encouragement and belief in my project have helped me immensely.
Without him, and the generous help of Media@McGill, I would have not been
able to conduct archival research and interviews in Romania. I also want to thank
my friends and family for making my return to Romania wonderful, in particular
Viorica and Sorin Popovici. My gratitude to Prof. Hajime Nakatani and Prof.
Carrie Rentschler for helping in the development of this project.
I have been fortunate to share the intensity of the dissertation process with
great friends. My thanks to Ian Reilly for being continuously supportive and
motivating, for sharing his ideas, music, and contagious enthusiasm. Mandeep
Basi, Megha Sehdev, and Christine Mitchell have been strong partners in this
process. I am grateful for the help provided by Lisa Sumner, Dawa Samdup,
Daniel Nerenberg, David Assouline, Norbert Schmoll, and Tania Chiarotto.
I thank my brother, my mother, and my father, for providing me with more
support than words can describe. My parents have shown me the power of critical
thought and questioning dogma, even in difficult times. This dissertation exists
first and foremost because of them, and our experiences in communist Romania.
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Abstract
On December 21, 1989, the communist regime of Nicolae Ceauşescu
crumbled to its demise under the gaze of the video cameras filming the start of
what was to become the ‗Romanian televised revolution‘. This dissertation
analyses the visual representation of the fall of Communism in Romania, and
more specifically, the mediatised footage of Nicolae Ceauşescu‘s execution, as it
was broadcast in Romania and globally. The uprisings and the execution are
examined here as a constructed ―televisual event‖ (Morse 93) with important
socio-political implications. One of the main assertions of this dissertation is that
these images were produced and disseminated within an economy of emotions
that circulated affect for political and ideological purposes. Furthermore, beyond
their role as documentary representations and historical archives, these visuals
offer a forum for discussing the way viewers experience a certain kind of pleasure
in the consumption of violent images.
In order to better situate the object of study, the project begins with a
broad overview of current ways of thinking about death imagery and its
circulation, before presenting the specific historical and political context of the
visuals of the revolution. Then, through archival research on the news
disseminated during the revolution and after, the study provides an examination of
the domestic and international media coverage of the events. Subsequently, in
order to examine the interplay between media technology, politics, and the public,
the images are examined as particular audiovisual texts with their own aesthetic
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codes and style. Finally, the thesis considers the images as sites for the
mobilization of affect, exploring their ethical and political implications, in their
role as media performances.
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Résumé
Le 21 décembre 1989, le régime communiste de Nicolae Ceauşescu s‘est
effondré devant les caméras. C‘était le début de ce qu‘on a appelé la « révolution
roumaine télévisée ». La présente dissertation analyse la représentation visuelle de
la chute du communisme en Roumanie, et notamment les images de l‘exécution
de Nicolae Ceauşescu qui ont été diffusées dans ce pays et dans le monde. Les
soulèvements et l‘exécution sont examinés ici comme un « évènement télévisuel »
fabriqué (Morse) aux importantes ramifications sociopolitiques. La présente
dissertation établit notamment que ces images ont été produites et diffusées dans
une économie des émotions qui transmettait des affects à des fins idéologiques et
politiques. Outre leur rôle de représentations documentaires et d‘archives
historiques, ces images sont aussi pour nous l‘occasion d‘aborder la question du
plaisir que les spectateurs peuvent tirer de la consommation d‘images violentes.
Afin de cerner notre sujet, nous commençons par un survol des théories
actuelles de l‘imagerie de la mort et de sa circulation, puis nous exposons le
contexte historique et politique des images de la révolution. Nous compulsons
ensuite les archives des actualités pour analyser la couverture médiatique des
évènements en Roumanie et dans les autres pays, après quoi nous examinons les
images en tant que textes audiovisuels pourvus de codes esthétiques et d‘un style
particulier pour étudier l‘interaction de la technologie médiatique, de la politique
et du public. Enfin, nous analysons les images en tant que sites de mobilisation
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des affects en étudiant leurs répercussions éthiques et politiques de spectacle
médiatisé.
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Introduction
The following project analyses the highly mediatised footage of the
execution of Nicolae and Elena Ceauşescu, as it was disseminated during the 1989
Romanian revolution that resulted in the communist regime‘s demise. The
uprisings, globally known as the ‗Romanian Televised Revolution‘, were a
construction of the domestic and international news sphere, a ―televisual event‖
(Morse) with great socio-political implications. This study seeks to reveal these
social ramifications, by analysing the visual reproductions of the execution and
the revolution, and their production and circulation within a political and
ideological economy of affect.
By analyzing the historical context of these visuals, their circulation by
domestic and international media, and the viewers‘ reaction to them, it is possible
to explore the ethical and the political issues these audiovisual texts raised. This is
an important exploration to conduct, since the execution of the Ceauşescus has
remained an unclear part of Romanian politics and public memory, and since
significant debate has unfolded as to whether the sentence was unfair and hurried.
The background of the execution was murky, and the revolution was and still is a
controversial topic, having been called a neo-communist putsch, and the biggest
lie of the century (Castex). The unexplained loss of revolutionaries‘ lives, the
absence of the topic of the execution from public debate, and the ethical questions
raised by the images of Ceauşescus‘ bodies remain unsettling, unresolved
elements of Romanian politics that deserve further attention.
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I have chosen the topic of study partly to make sense of my own memories
of those wondrous, strange days that I experienced over twenty years ago in a
provincial city of Romania. To a certain extent, this is a study of my encounter
with these visuals on a small black and white television set, during tension-filled
moments shared with those around me. It is an examination of the reaction to the
sight of the dictator lying shot on a street, appearing through a cloud of smoke; it
is an afterthought to the unsettling mix of fear, repulsion, and euphoria felt by my
parents, my friends, myself.
These visuals have been momentous for those who experienced them, and
their effects still linger in the fabric of the Romanian society, in its politics and
everyday discussions, as I realized on my return to Romania after twenty years of
absence. I was able to observe these latent effects as part of a research project
undertaken in March 2010 in Bucharest, graciously supported by Professor
William Straw and the Beaverbrook Foundation. During that time, I consulted
sources available only locally, such as documents pertaining to Ceausescu‘s trial,
and newspaper reports, in the National Library, the Institute of the Romanian
Revolution of December 1989, the Romanian Institute for Investigation of
Communist Crimes, The Association 21 December, Grupul pentru Dialog Social
[The Social Dialog Group], Revista 22 [Magazine 22]. I interviewed politicians,
among them the former president Ion Iliescu, the key figure of the revolution,
former dissidents, survivors, artists, and activists. Through the Association 21
December, I interviewed a group of widows of fallen revolutionaries from