Nick Ut’s ‘Napalm Girl’
A captured moment of desperation and terror; amidst the suffrage of the Vietnam war quickly became one of the most influential photographs in the world.
Phan Thi Kim Phuc was nine years old when she was photographed, naked and screaming, running towards the camera after an aerial napalm attack by the South-Vietnamese air force on her village near Trang Bang in South Vietnam.
Vietnamese American photographer Nick Ut, was 21 when he took the photograph of the ‘Napalm Girl’ on June 8th, 1972. It was featured on the front page of several newspapers including the New York Times, the very next day.
Just a short year later Nick Ut’s memorable ‘Napalm Girl’ won the 1973 Pulitzer Prize.
The iconic photograph’s immediate
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The rising popularity and commonness of television in middle class homes meant that the atrocities of the conflict on evening news was reaching wider audiences.
Hal Buell, director of photography at Associated Press argued that television footage “never matched the compelling still photos that, over and over, revealed the bitter nature of the Vietnam conflict” (Pyle 2013).
The claims made of the significant impact that ‘Napalm Girl’ had on public opinion no doubt derive from the undeniable emotion that the photograph triggers- leading to theories that the image played a role in ending the Vietnam war.
This iconic photograph is able to activate public conscience, the image becomes personal because it provides and expresses important aspects of moral life, including pain, dissolution, panic and trauma. (Hariman and Lucaites, 2003).
These aspects are strengthened by photographic representation, their connections to each other in a single image, greatly affects the audience, and demonstrates how photojournalism is capable of achieving more than verbal texts are able
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So much so, that it almost didn’t run.
9 year old Kim Phuc’s nakedness was thought to be offensive, and confrontational, prompting editors to airbrush. (Miller, 2004, p.271)
‘frontal nudity’ policies where dismissed by magazines and newspapers- the trauma of the image transcended editorial rules on nudity through a general consensus about it signifying the atrocities of a needless war. (Ibrahim, 2017)
In September of 2016 Mark Zuckerberg removed Ut’s ‘Napalm Girl’ image from Facebook- saying that the image violated the companies nudity guidelines.
Facebook has been continually criticised for allowing violent and graphic content to remain on its site, and defended its decision of the removal of the photo by expressing “its difficult to create a distinction between allowing a photograph of a nude child in one instance and not others” (Levin, Wong and Harding, 2016).
The editor and chief of Norway’s Aftenposten; Espen Egil Hansen, slammed the CEO of Facebook, accusing him of abusing power and threatening freedom of speech.
He wrote in a personal letter to
The Vietnam War has become a focal point of the Sixties. Known as the first televised war, American citizens quickly became consumed with every aspect of the war. In a sense, they could not simply “turn off” the war. A Rumor of War by Philip Caputo is a firsthand account of this horrific war that tore our nation apart. Throughout this autobiography, there were several sections that grabbed my attention. I found Caputo’s use of stark comparisons and vivid imagery, particularly captivating in that, those scenes forced me to reflect on my own feelings about the war. These scenes also caused me to look at the Vietnam War from the perspective of a soldier, which is not a perspective I had previously considered. In particular, Caputo’s account of
Having such an image before our eyes, often we fail to recognize the message it is trying to display from a certain point of view. Through Clark’s statement, it is evident that a photograph holds a graphic message, which mirrors the representation of our way of thinking with the world sights, which therefore engages other
This photograph, taken in 1967 in the heart of the Vietnam War Protests, depicts different ideologies about how problems can be solved. In the picture, which narrowly missed winning the Pulitzer Prize, a teen is seen poking carnations into the barrels of guns held by members of the US National Guard. This moment, captured by photographer Bernie Boston symbolizes the flower power movement. Flower power is a phrase that referred to the hippie notion of “make love not war”, and the idea that love and nonviolence, such as the growing of flowers, was a better way to heal the world than continued focus on capitalism and wars. The photograph can be analyzed through the elements of image as defined by ‘The Little Brown Handbook’ on page 86. There are a total of nine elements that contribute to the communicative quality of an image. The message that this particular image tries to convey is the strong sense of way that conflict should be handled; by way of guns or by way of flowers. The ‘way of guns’ is violence and excessive force which heavily contradicts the ‘way of flowers’ which is a more peaceful and diplomatic way of handling conflict or disagreement. This photograph depicts these ideologies through its use of emphasis, narration,point of view, arrangement, color, characterization, context and tension.
All in all, every year since 1975, Vietnamese have been killed or injured and they are so disappointed. The war causes chaos and is a sign of bad omen to Vietnam. This never-ending horror could be remedied if enough Americans cared about saving Vietnamese lives, as the stars of this documentary claim they did. After all, what kind of people seed a foreign land with hundreds of thousands of tons of explosives and then allow succeeding generations to lose eyes and limbs and lives? Only a “violent and unforgiving”
The Vietnam War and how it has been viewed in history has changed drastically over time. At first, during the early parts of the war the American Public was deceived by the government to think that the Viet Cong were monsters and American troops were there for the greater good and to stop the spread of communism. American Soldiers were portrayed as Heroes fighting for the common good and each was good inside. American technology and weapons were seen as superior to the enemy and the film showed battles where American’s earned victories. However, as the American public began to become aware of what really happened in Vietnam a very different narrative began to take shape. Hamburger Hill represents what America thought of the Vietnam War after
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By 1968 the Vietnam War was a time by which Americans saw deep divide, disappointment, and tragedy. Their government had let them down, the figures they could trust had been killed, and their loved ones were scared by the effects of war. Rightfully so, the American people were upset and angry. The dynamic I have explored that made Vietnam such a critical piece in America’s history that influenced and entire party and a nation will only magnify in time not just in 1968 and not just for one primary election, but for all who shared a stake in this window.
In this particular era, the nudity of a human was highly recognized and favored in different art pieces. In paintings, women were naked and covered certain parts of her body. Sculptures would lack the appearance of a woman, but would also show attributes of a female's body. Even though this topic was praised in earlier times, in today's society the topic of sex is looked upon in a negative manner. As time changes, I believe that the viewpoint and mindset of people are completely different from the 19th century point of view. Sex has become a dreadful topic because people are more attached to religious beliefs that doesn't put sex on the high level that it once “ sat” upon in the 19th century. If an artist decided to put some type of nudity or sexual visual ...
In addition, she contradicts her own stance on the position when she mentions that previous literature containing sexually explicit content should not be censored (Brownmiller 59). Brownmiller paints a very strong, emotional, and offensive picture when she claims that women are, “being stripped, bound, raped, tortured, mutilated, and murdered in the name of commercial entertainment” (59). However, this statement is fallacious and does not provide any factual evidence. Furthermore, she makes the hasty generalization that pornography can make people think that certain things, such as rape, are acceptable (Brownmiller 59). Once again, her claim lacks support and relies solely on a faulty pathos appeal.
...own Facebook account and be “friends” with their students to keep them safe like Boyd recommends. Instead, I believe by talking to students and children about how their posts directly impact their reality is a more effective approach in teaching how to prevent and remedy any inflictions that will be caused by adolescent lapses in judgment. Just as my brother has never posted another indecent photo and learned to limit his online profile content, people do learn from their mistakes. Educators should have an open door policy fortified by trust between themselves and their children in order to guide them in making appropriate decisions.
Nudity: a controversial topic from the beginning of time. It has raised questions such as: Should girls have to cover their shoulders when in the classroom? What is the appropriate length for a pair of shorts? And one of the more famous campaigns should women be allowed to “free the nipple.” Recently nudity has been used by celebrities to show support for presidential candidate Hillary Clinton. This is a controversy because some people believe that a woman using her body as a sexual image promotes the idea that others also have the right to view and support the idea that women are sexualized objects. In this article “Katy Perry’s naked vote reveals more than she wanted” written by Barbra Ellen explores this controversial topic by using many rhetorical devices.
“Photographs like the one that made the front page of the most newspapers in the world in 1972- a naked South Vietnamese child just sprayed by american napalm, running down a highway toward the cameras, her arms open, screaming with pain-- probably did more to increase the public revulsion against the war than a hundred hours of televised barbarities”(476)
Pappas, Stephanie. (2010). The History of Pornography No More Prudish Than the Present. Web 13 Nov 2013.
Photos are a powerful tool journalist’s use to summarize a story, highlight an event, motive people, and many other forms of visually communicating a story with viewer. When it comes to picking a photo to go with a story proper ethics should carefully considered. Intrusions of privacy or graphic images are a couple of ethical problems journalists face. As a Christian, we don’t have to exploit it, but using our faith is important to guiding our decisions and choices we make as writers or photojournalist.
As we got further and further into the Vietnam War, few lives were untouched by grief, anger and fear. The Vietnamese suffered the worst hardship; children lay dead in the street, villages remained nothing but charred ashes, and bombs destroyed thousands of innocent civilians. Soldiers were scarred emotionally as well as physically, as