My knowledge of the Vietnam War traces back the image of the “Napalm Girl”, running down the road naked, screaming, her clothes melted. In the left foreground is another screaming boy. When I think of this photograph, I always imagine the photographer, Nick Ut, standing across from her, camera in hands.
The little girl came to represent all victims of the Vietnam War. She embodied its horror, carried the pain of her village, her country. The photograph made her a symbol, evidence of the war’s atrocities. The image exploits her pain and is not easily forgotten.
That little girl is Phan Thi Kim Phuc, who survived the ordeal, and was nine years old when the photograph was taken. On the 40th anniversary of the Pulitzer Prize-winning photograph, the media revealed her life story, her struggle to become something more than the “Napalm Girl”.
In a way, the story of her life takes away from the power of the photograph. In my imagination, the girl in the photo was never meant to have a normal life. The photo is a representation of, a testament to, suffering. For the image to shock, to invoke such strong emotions, the subject must remain anonymous, must be reduced to a symbolic object.
“Some people’s sufferings have a lot more intrinsic interest to an audience (given that suffering must be acknowledged as having an audience) than the sufferings of others,” Susan Sontag writes in Regarding The Pain Of Others, which explores the potency of war photographs, and images of horror and suffering in faraway places.
Thais recoiled at the death of two children in Ratchaprasong on Feb 24. Another woman, aged 40, died in the same incident, but the children were the focus, especially in the media. The main photographs accompanying this news showed the children’s parents wailing, clinging to one another, and the father held back from a pair of small legs — the only part of his child’s body in the frame.
The media played up children’s deaths more than the many others that have occurred since protests began over four months ago, as if this great loss was supposed to be a turning point, was supposed to instigate real action. It sure tugs at your heartstrings, doesn’t it?
So what are we, as spectators, as fellow citizens, as people, supposed to do?
“So far as we feel sympathy, we feel we are not accomplices to what caused the suffering. Our sympathy proclaims our innocence as well as our impotence,” Sontag points out.
Sympathy alone, without action, is a useless emotion. As fellow citizens, is it enough that we feel for these people? Is compassion enough? Is knowledge of and reflection on the incident enough?
The initial shock of these deaths has regrettably begun to wear off. Our lives have become so hyper-saturated and over-stimulated with images and narratives of horror that we have become desensitised. In this day and age, is the death of children no longer enough to demand change?
The image of the “Napalm Girl” was used to stir up emotions, to incite action.
In Thailand, there is talk of peace talks, but without a course of action, the photographs of the father who lost his children at Ratchaprasong will recede and find their place among countless other photographs of human suffering.
His children’s deaths will be filed among the lists and memories of other dead children.
Pimrapee Thungkasemvathana is a writer for Bangkok Post's Life section.