We rip up big-bellied women, and tear children limb from limb by Katherine Hudson
So says Crambe, the anatomist colleague of our hero in the Memoirs of the Extraordinary Life, Works and Discoveries of Martinus Scriblerus. While shocking, it’s actually a pretty accurate description of the anatomist’s work, which is, of course, the point. Language isn’t always used to clarify real world situations, or to point directly to them – sometimes it’s used to obfuscate, which makes a blunt literal description astonishingly shocking. And so we come to Saddam.
In the widespread commentary following Hussein’s death, the most repeated gripe, voiced most notably by George Bush, has been that it was not sufficiently dignified. In any good crisis, it’s best to turn to the satirists, and Marin Rowson’s cartoon on the matter is probably the best commentary we’ve had. What Rowson shows is the sheer lunacy of calling for dignity in what is, when put literally, state-sanctioned murder. Whatever measures are put in place, there is a moment at which the person condemned to death has to be killed, and killing is never a tidy business. Even if Hussein had not been taunted, or filmed, there’s no getting round the fact he would at some point have been hung by the neck until dead.
When we ask for dignity in executions we’re asking the impossible: to make something, which in its very nature can never be dignified, dignified. Likewise, when we call something an execution rather than a killing or murder (or call violence and bloodshed in Iraq ‘unrest’ or ‘disturbances’ rather than Civil War, or unlawful interrogation and imprisonment ‘extraordinary rendition’ – I could go on, but that’s enough for now) there is an implicit hope that the act itself will be altered, will become justifiable in the naming. It won’t, and it doesn’t.
As Jessica has pointed out, the mainstream media have been reluctant to show the video of the killing, instead providing us with the shorthand of a still of Hussein with a noose around his neck. While there are obviously real dangers in showing the film, not doing so is the pictorial equivalent of saying someone has ‘fallen asleep’ or is ‘at peace’, or that Cheeky the hamster has been ‘put down’: we all know what it means, but to put it too bluntly or show the full act makes things a little too real, rather too close for comfort.
These verbal and visual side-steppings act like the hood on the executioner preserving his anonymity: it’s a way of keeping our distance from the true act, keeping it hidden. It’s up to the satirist to rip off that hood and expose our hypocrisy. And so I return to Swift, who can always be relied on to provide chillingly litotic statements:
Last week I saw a woman flay'd, and you will hardly believe, how much it alter'd her person for the worse.
If we’re going to allow deaths to be sanctioned by states, or in the name of Justice, we’re going to have to learn to live with what it really means.
