Youth,trauma and memorialisation: The selfie as witnessing

Selfies in serious places

In August 2013, the UK tabloid The Daily Mail (2013; online) published an article titled ‘Selfies at Serious Places: blog shows self-portraits in inappropriate locations’. The article responds to an apparent crisis – of your people taking ‘selfies’ at sites of trauma; it reports, in horrified tones,

Curse of the grossly insensitive selfies: Teens picturing themselves at the most inappropriate places – including Ground Zero, a Holocaust memorial and even in front of DEAD relatives

Young web users photograph themselves in front of sombre landmarks

Inappropriate online selfies have been collected on a new blog.

Selfies, or self-portraits taken with mobile phones at arm’s length or in front of a mirror with reverse cameras, are currently a ubiquitous part of everyday culture, a performance of identity, often for interpersonal exchange (Cruz and Miguel, 2014: 72; Hart, 2016: 4; Koliska and Roberts, 2015: 1672; Senft and Baym, 2015: 1589). Selfies can be considered ‘a kind of genre’ (Meese et al., 2015: 1820). They are

a formalized category of media image and production … structured by a number of stylistic conventions. These include the conflation of photographer and subject, a framing in which the subject dominates the foreground of the image, a subject typically looking directly into the lens, a perspective that is generally front-view from above. In addition to such stylistic devices, the selfie genre is dependent upon a technological context involving mobile phones and cameras to capture the image, and social media platforms for distribution of the images.

Selfies are a much-maligned cultural practice most often associated with young people, and more particularly young women (Glum, 2015; Hart, 2016). Cultural and media discourses surrounding selfies commonly describe the act of taking a selfie as motivated by vanity, narcissism and fakery or from insecurity and conformity (Gabriel, 2014: 104). Laurie McNeill and John Zuern (2015) describe selfies as a ‘lightening rod for censure’ and the subject of much moral panic (p. xi). The aforementioned news story shows particular examples of selfies taken at sites of communal and historical trauma: these are mostly self-portraits posted on Twitter and include a selfie take at Chernobyl, one in the Holocaust memorial in Berlin, two selfies at the Pearl Harbor Memorial in Hawaii and one at grandmother’s funeral. The story refers to the Tumblr site ‘Selfies in Serious Places’ which solicits and archives such photographs. ¹ James Meese et al. (2015) summarise responses to this blog: where some commentators saw this as another example of ‘the superficial nature of young digital media users and epitomized their vanity, conceit, and lack of respect’, others directed their critique towards the ways in which contemporary cultural contexts (including social media) have changed the way we think about death, trauma and mourning (pp. 1818–1819). ²

Roughly 1 year after the ‘Selfies at Funerals’ controversy, another high-profile selfie scandal gained media traction. US teenager Breanna Mitchell took a smiling selfie outside Auschwitz and posted it on Twitter. The photograph went viral, and Mitchell was heavily criticised and shamed across international media. The selfie was considered inappropriate and insensitive, presumably because she was seen to have engaged in a shallow, self-centred act at a site of significant historical and communal trauma. In her defence, Mitchell explained that the photograph was a tribute to her father: they had always wanted to visit this site together, but he had passed away before they had the chance. Mitchell’s self-defence suggests that when staged at trauma sites, selfies can function as proof of pilgrimage, witness and affect. Such self-portraits are not just of the self; they locate and historicise the self. Some media commentators echoed this in their support of Mitchell (Dewey, 2014; Margalit, 2014; Molloy, 2014; Nat, 2014; Vuk, 2014). Caitlin Dewey (2014) summarises the prevalent criticisms of Mitchell’s selfie; even though Mitchell protested her good intentions,

That doesn’t make it okay … In truth it’s hard to think of anything less sensitive, less appropriate or less self-aware than a ‘selfie in the Auschwitz Concentration Camp’ … as if the suffering of millions of people was somehow subsumed by Breanna’s own personal narrative. She was there, sure, but so were tens of thousands of others, and her willful minimalization of that fact is, frankly, pretty gross.

The ‘Auschwitz selfie’ triggered fascinating media commentary on the futures of young people’s self-representation, as teens like Mitchell engage with new media and explore changing cultural norms for practising life narrative. Arguably, Mitchell’s self-representation was guided by the technologies of memory and experience and the community norms around youth self-representation that surround young people like her. Her selfie emerges at a time when ‘media witnessing’ has become a prevalent practice – everyday people are able to record and recount their day-to-day experiences to mass audiences using varied modes of distribution (Frosh and Pinchevski, 2009: 2). Despite this, there has been no shortage of news articles willing to engage in ‘shaming dumb kids with Twitter accounts … regardless of how dated and unexceptional the tweet, or how complicating their back stories’ (Dewey, 2014).

These controversies offer a neat summary of some of the core tensions affecting the auto/biographical representations of, and by, youth: the limits of self-representation and the role of new technologies and media in enabling young people’s second-person trauma witnessing and in enabling new modes of witnessing. As Dewey (2014) notes, ‘this isn’t an isolated incident, but a great sociological phenomenon-and one that deserves real consideration’.

When I use the term ‘witness’, I draw on interdisciplinary theoretical work from memory and trauma scholarship, from literary and cultural theorists and philosophers who are engaged in work on the after-effects of traumatic histories and from theorists of media witnessing (Bloom, 2009; Frosh and Pinchevski, 2009; Kaplan, 2005; Koliska and Roberts, 2015; Oliver, 2001; Radstone, 2007; Smith and Watson, 2010; Whitlock, 2007). People become witnesses by reading and studying, by following events in the media and, most pertinently for this article, by visiting memorial sites. Hundreds of thousands of people worldwide visit trauma memorial sites (such as the Auschwitz death camp in Poland or The National September 11 Memorial site in New York) each year. Many of these people are young people – visiting with their families, friends, community or school groups. Second-person witnessing – the willingness to (often publicly and collectively) observe the witness and testimony of others, to respond and comprehend one’s relationship to communal trauma and social suffering – is an expected response and behaviour in the public memorialisation of trauma (Douglas and Whitlock, 2009; Oliver, 2001; Smith and Watson, 2010). Certain modes of witness are privileged or idealised by cultures, where others are censured. For instance, many trauma memorials offer explicit instructions on how they would like this second-person witnessing to manifest; silence is often a core expectation. However, as some critics have observed, such uniform expectations at these moments of ‘Intensified remembering with others’, to borrow Ben Gook’s (2011: 16) phrase, result in witnessing that is not particularly transparent, active or affective, but simply replicates a particular set of values prescribed by the memorial site and surrounding culture.

Ana Douglass and Thomas Vogler (2003) remind us of the importance of ongoing witnessing over time: ‘active repetition is crucial to witness, a practice made urgent by the continuous danger of forgetting. Witnessing is like treading water, it must keep on keeping on; if one stops one sinks out of sight into oblivion’ (p. 44). It may necessarily follow, then, that new modes of witness must be acknowledged and accepted into culture, particularly those modes practised by younger generations, who are the future gatekeepers of history and memory. Furthermore, critics have reminded us of the importance of diverse modes of witnessing, particularly everyday modes of witness (Bloom, 2009; Cutter, 2009; Koliska and Roberts, 2015; Whitlock, 2007). ‘We all must bear witness’, Lynn Z. Bloom (2009: 14) persuasively argues. Witnessing can involve sharing perspectives and interpretations between generations.

This article reconsiders the traditions and practices of witnessing at memorial sites in light of shifting cultures of remembrance and memorialisation and the presence of young people at memorial sites and within memorial cultures. For instance, mobile phones and their cameras have facilitated new possibilities for visitors to trauma sites to express remembrance and witnessing, such as the sharing of photographs (of the trauma sites) on social media. This mode of witnessing may seem directly at odds with traditional modes of silent witnessing. It may be thought that selfies cannot be acts of witness because a selfie involves looking away rather that looking at the traumascape. The selfie involves looking into a mirror, at the self, rather than outwards. It is in the act of juxtaposition – of inserting the self into the traumascape and communicating affect – where the power of the selfie as witness can lie. Bearing witness often involves acknowledging what we cannot see, something beyond recognition (Oliver, 2001: 16). To what extent might selfies reflect an attempt to see, to consider something that is very difficult to look upon?

New practices of witnessing seem to involve a more visible and public juxtaposition, even a merging of the self/narrative to the trauma site and its history. The creation of a life narrative text (for instance, a photograph/selfie) by the witness within the traumascape (to make use of Maria Tumarkin’s (2005) concept) shifts the boundaries of witnessing for the twenty-first century, emphasising the significance of site and showing how the site might ask for a response. As Tumarkin explains, traumascapes are the spaces, cultures and after-effects of a traumatic event (war, conflict, natural disaster, etc.). Tumarkin’s work reminds us of the ways that trauma imprints upon cultures long after the event. Responses to traumascapes are shifting and unpredictable. It follows that people respond differently to the after-effects of trauma based on such variables as age, cultural background and physical or emotional proximity to an event. Selfies, as a cultural act, reveal one of the ways that traumascapes become contested and active sites of memory.

Selfies require us to ask different questions about second-person witnessing, media witnessing and collective memory. Rather than fuelling the shaming that has surrounded young people staging selfies at trauma sites, I want to explore the ways that the selfie has become a significant means for young people to engage with traumatic histories. While such practices are distasteful to many, particularly as they relate to the cultural norms around silence and respect for history, these practices work to reveal the significant and ever-shifting relationship between the self, public mourning and memorialisation: what is expected and indeed acceptable at particular moments and why. New modes of witnessing reveal the cultural contradictions and ambivalences that drive remembrance and its complexities. They offer seductive potential for cultural engagement and self-representation to their users and attend to or promote particular impulses and desires.

In thinking through these issues, I take up two of the examples mentioned at the beginning of this article in the news exposé of selfies at trauma sites: two self-portraits taken at the Pearl Harbor memorial site. Methodologically, we can learn much from a close reading – the textual and contextual analyses – of two examples of selfies – which reveal some of the particulars themes, aesthetics and aims of selfies at memorial sites. My discussion and analysis might well apply to many different traumascapes and the myriad selfies currently in circulation. The rationale for choosing these particular selfies and site relate to the overt directives for particular modes of (silent) witnessing at Pearl Harbor. To what extent might the new modes of witnessing challenge the established practices, and what are the implications of these challenges for memorial cultures? ³

Public cultures of memorialisation: youth, new witnessing and the ‘dark’ selfie

Memorial sites have become central technologies of public memory and sites for the acknowledgement of communal traumas. ⁴ From small-scale plaques and statues to large ‘historically accurate’ or ‘true-to-life’ recreations, hundreds of thousands of memorials can be found across the globe. ⁵ Some of the most famous include death camps such as Auschwitz in Poland and Dachau in Germany; the National September 11 Memorial Site and Museum in New York, New York; World War I battlefields in France and Belgium; the Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe (in Berlin); the Burma–Thailand Railway memorial site in Kanchanaburi, Thailand; and the USS Arizona Memorial at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii. The memorial tradition, and indeed industry, is such that, as Adrian Parr (2008) suggests, ‘the building of memorials has become an entirely independent genre in contemporary art and architecture’ (p. 1). Most of these sites of mourning have become attractions for tourists and travellers – allowing visitors to consume trauma via the constructed authenticity on offer; these practices are often referred to as ‘dark tourism’ (Lennon and Foley, 2001; Tumarkin, 2005), and as Malcolm Cooper (2006) notes,

Cemeteries or memorial parks celebrating war-dead feature prominently in the promotional literature and local tour itineraries of countries as disparate as New Caledonia, Papua New Guinea, Singapore, Vietnam, the Philippines, Cambodia, Burma, Guam, Saipan, China, Japan and the Russian Far East. (p. 214)

Memorial sites have, historically, imagined and constructed an ideal second-person witness by requesting certain behaviours and practices from visitors to the sites. These are most commonly requests that visitors respect the rules of the spaces, objects and materials (for instance) that are made available; that visitors respect the rights of other’s in attendance; and that all of those present respect the behavioural codes outlined at the site. These codes have been crucial to ensuring the physical protection of the sites, the maintenance of occupational health and safety standards and the positive experiences of visitors. But these cultural practices also indicate a set of strong and entrenched cultural traditions around silent witnessing and particular restrictions around photography, slow-paced movement through the memorial and so forth.

For example, the USS Arizona Memorial at Pearl Harbor communicates particular expectations around witnessing for visitors to the site. The memorial is a central symbol of war in the Pacific and a metonym for the United States’ involvement in World War II. According to its official website, the memorial, completed in 1962, is

‘ground zero’ where World War II began for the United States. The event where Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto stated: ‘I fear all we have done is to awaken a sleeping giant …’

The USS Arizona serves as the final resting place for many of the battleship’s 1,177 crew members who lost their lives on December 7, 1941.

The site was constructed as a site for reconciliation and forgiveness. This war memorial has over 1 million visitors annually and has been a site of pilgrimage for US presidents and Japanese emperors. Upon arrival, visitors are allocated a time to board a boat which will take them to the memorial. Anchored to the sea bed, but seemingly suspended in time and space, the remains of the sunken ship have become a memorial island – physically adrift from the rest of the museum to signify the ocean-burial site of those who died. The memorial itself has a number of important elements, or technologies of memory inherent within, which function to enforce the particular values of the institution. The pontoon-like structure is built across the sunken ship; an aerial view of the memorial contrasts the pristine, ornate whiteness of the memorial site (signifying the innocence and purity of those who died) with the shadowy wreck that lies underneath. Viewed together, they form a highly symbolic cross shape in the water, a bridge to unite the shrine and the wreck and to connect visitors with those who have died. The architectures of the past and the present literally overlap here to remind the visitor that this event is not so far removed from the present. ⁶ Many people who visit Pearl Harbor also visit the USS Missouri – a retired battleship which is best known as the site of the Japanese surrender in World War II. When people relate a visit to ‘Pearl Harbor’, this usually connotes either or both of these sites.

The visitor can decide how to respond to the memorial, but responses are guided by the Pearl Harbor memorial itself and also by the wider mores of memorial culture generally. The site asks for absolute silence for the duration of the visit to the Arizona, for example. Such a particular request asks for a very specific commitment – to suspend oral communication and/or commentary for a time and to lose oneself in reflection. As the visitor listens to the audio guide or reads the plaques, the relationship between listening or reading and silence is assumed. The visitor is coaxed into contemplation; they are restricted in movement – compelled to move forward with the crowds. Such conventions function as a kind of disciplining – a means for reinforcing desirable modes of witness. Silence is a master signifier for respect and witnessing. In this instance, ‘silence’ means not talking but ensuring that your mobile phones and other technologies (other than the optional but increasingly ubiquitous audio guides) do not make a sound. ⁷

But times, cultures and those people who visit memorial sites are changing, and one of the primary drivers of this change is the rise of mobile technologies and mobile witnessing. For instance, so-called average people or bystanders with their mobile phones at the ready are often first on the scene as traumatic events happen. At such moments, these people become first-person, media witnesses and their perspectives and amateur footage is sought after by news media (Frosh and Pinchevski, 2009; Reading, 2011: 301; Van Dijck, 2010: 410). Witnessing becomes a commodity: new media and social media benefit significantly from the contributions made by audiences as the ‘ultimate witness’ (Frosh and Pinchevski, 2009: 9, 12). In her research around media witnessing and the 2005 London Bombings, Anna Reading uses the term ‘mobile witnessing’ to describe the practice of digital recording and memorialising by first-hand witnesses using mobile devices. People are rarely without their phones; phones are part of our extended memory system. We store personal knowledge and reminders within and use apps to support and prompt aspects of our personal and working lives each day. As a result, the phone has become ‘a wearable memory prosthetic. Because of this, it enables a new form of witnessing …’ (Reading, 2011: 303).

Where it might be unacceptable to take a phone call during a visit to a memorial site, it is commonly acceptable to take photographs. ⁸ The after-effect of taking photographs of the site has been the growing phenomenon of documenting travels on social media and taking photographs of yourself (selfies) at memorial sites and (usually) sharing these on social media and mircoblogging sites such as Facebook, Instagram, Tumblr, Twitter and Snapchat. Amateur photography and photosharing can function as a promotional tool for memorial sites, a means of word-of-mouth promotion as visitors write about their experiences and share their photos on sites such as TripAdvisor. The medium facilitates the message, but users also test the limits of these technologies through their own creative desires and affective responses to memorial sites. The prevalence of these social media responses to memorial sites reveals significant insights into those cultures that coax, receive and celebrate (or censor) such representation (Cardell and Douglas, 2015). The ‘dark’ selfie – a selfie taken at a trauma memorial, a selfie that is frowned upon in media discourse such as the one mentioned at the beginning of this article – seems to echo practices of and arguments about dark tourism more generally. Why do people engage in particular ways (and at particular times) with traumatic sites and histories? But dark selfies go beyond the desire to engage in dark histories and traumascapes and to document and share this experience with others, for instance, in foregrounding the self-image at a site of memorial to the pain of others. How do such acts shift the boundaries of what is permissible when we witness at trauma memorials?

Mobile technologies offer particular opportunities for situating or locating the self: the juxtaposition of the self-image with particularly desirable places, spaces and objects. Where once the central object of a holiday photograph would have been a landmark, landscape, object or person (taken by a photographer other than the self), now it is just as likely, or perhaps more likely, that such a photograph would insert the self into the photograph. The forward-facing camera is in operation; arms are lengthened to frame the self and the landscape in the same photographic shot. According to Brooke Wendt (2014: 7), selfies are now a central method for not only self-representation but also cultural engagement, particularly for young people. Wendt (2014) summarises, ‘Scholars have theorized that the selfie could serve as a mode for people to express themselves, seek attention, or become part of a community’ (p. 8). The selfie has become a much-practiced mode for community building and gaining the acceptance of peers. Selfies ‘aren’t simply texts published from a distance. They are images and words that are part of a conversation’ (Rettberg, 2014: 19). The selfie is teaching us so much about the ways in which young people interact with each other and with culture. As Meese et al. (2015) remind us, the selfie is a ‘communicative act’, and so selfies may not be intended as ‘commemorative acts’ or ‘attempts at memorialization’ but as modes of communication, ‘communicating important affective information … or signaling contextual cues about their current situation’ (p. 1825).

But as previously suggested, there is much animosity towards selfies: they are presumed to signify disrespect in the form of shallow engagement with a significant cultural site. For example, on popular travel website TripAdvisor, there are many post bemoaning people taking selfies at Pearl Harbor. ⁹ Jill Walker Rettberg (2014) notes that ‘society disciplines digital self-representation such as selfies and blogs through ridicule and pathologising’ (p. 1). Hatred against selfies has become widespread and normalised in mainstream media (Rettberg, 2014: 17). Considering that selfies are so often a practice associated with youth, it is difficult, then, not to interpret the vilification of selfies as a mode of youth-shaming. As Jen Vuk (2014) argues,

these kids making themselves an easy target doesn’t justify us taking aim. Selfies are – and will continue to be – the source of endless misunderstanding between generations. Their impact is in their immediacy and ability to be shared with a wide audience on social media. A hastily taken self-portrait lays itself bare to snap judgment.

Fleur Gabriel (2014) contends that participation in social media presents a series of complex conundrums and mixed messages for young people. Youth is commonly thought to be a period of identity exploration, where multiple identities are trialled and performed. Social media has brought new contexts for youth development and socialisation (Buckingham, 2008; Gabriel, 2014; Livingstone, 2002). As Gabriel (2014) argues,

Social media demand that young people actively and deliberately think about and negotiate their own visibility – the image they project, the identity they want to have … social media have established an entirely new ground for making sense of youth (p. 105).

A range of accessible (and highly visible) opportunities for young people to offer representations of the self and identity are offered by social media, but this conflicts with broader perceptions of young people’s media use as ‘dangerous for healthy development’ (Gabriel, 2014: 104).

Can we offer a more nuanced, complex reading of these practices and the texts they produce? For instance, can selfies signify a shift in public memory and the commemoration of trauma? As previously mentioned, selfies do not necessarily involve noise or even other forms of sensory interruption, so do not necessarily transgress silent witnessing (although obviously they may). Selfies can be a subtle practice, but this is not how they are commonly imagined. Mobile phones may be placed on silent and the act of taking a self-portrait may well be a silent one, but it is likely to be a visual one: people commonly notice other people taking selfies. Dark selfies transgress silence as a signifier (of respect) rather than silence itself. But, perhaps, the selfie could also be seen as a marker of respect, commemoration and remembering via the construction of a visual self-image: the self at the site of trauma. Selfie-takers want to record their presence and want to situate themselves at the site. Does this involve an acceptance of their relationship or complicity to communal trauma? Wulf Kansteiner (2014) argues that

As teachers, scholars, and heritage professionals, … We are attracted to ‘the dark side’ of history and are assuming, for good reasons, that our audiences share our curiosities and values. After all, we hope that our choice of metaphors, narratives, iconographies, and multi-media assemblages trigger self-critical reflections about humanity’s predilection for self-destruction. We want to help build collective fantasies of belonging that will not be implicated in the kind of mass crimes that our ancestors and contemporaries have committed on a regular basis. To that end, we render violence bearable, intriguing, and repellent – by aestheticizing it.

Why is it surprising that young people would want to be a part of this?

Of course, taking a selfie means different things to different portraitists. How might our two examples from Pearl Harbor prompt a shift of our thinking about second-person witnessing? ¹⁰ Figure 1 is Eazy E’s Pearl Harbor selfie. It is a selfie of a young man with the USS Missouri battleship as the backdrop. The young man is wearing sunglasses and a tank top; the sky is blue, suggesting it is warm weather. He is wearing a sticker on his shirt that suggests he is a member of a tour group. He foregrounds himself in the photograph; the battleship caught in the background of frame. The young man’s facial expression is neutral. This selfie appears innocuous, and again, it is difficult to understand how or why this photograph could be deemed inappropriate in any way. It does not seem overly unusual that a young man would want to pose in front of a battleship and want to share this photograph with friends on social media, especially considering the importance of Pearl Harbor to US history of World War II and in light of the centrality of military cultures to US culture more generally. Unlike the second image, there are no hand gestures or emotional displays. It might be his casual attire and emotionally neutral appearance that makes this self-portrait problematic. But again, it is much more likely that it is the act of the selfie, rather than the end product/self-portraits that are the issue here. The act of inserting the self-image at the site of trauma is perceived as a sign of disrespect. The implication of the news article, and perhaps the more general perception of youthful selfies, is that this is not the time or place for them. As previously mentioned, certain behaviours and practices are sanctioned by the Pearl Harbor site: silent witnessing, orderly movement and so forth. Selfies may seem out of step with such order; the rules here are grey and new. Furthermore, the selfie-taker’s gaze is misdirected: in having his back to the trauma site, he is failing to give it his full attention and offer respectful observances. There are easy assumptions here about passivity and self-centredness, of disinterest and shallow engagement. But there is more that might be read into these bodily cues and behaviours.

OPEN IN VIEWER

Figure 1.

Eazy E.

Figure 2 shows Katelyn Butler taking what she describes in her caption as a ‘basic Asian selfie in the Pearl Harbor submarine’. ¹¹ Butler is a US-based youth. So, her self-conscious drawing attention to her Asian heritage is a significant feature of this selfie. The tagline speaks to collective memory in suggesting that Pearl Harbor is, or should be a pilgrimage site for Asian people, irrespective of specific Asian heritage. The selfie is ‘basic’ because it is expected and perhaps conforms to particular expectations of what a selfie is and does. It is a self-portrait, pulling a scowling face – the ‘silly’ selfie or ‘badass’ selfie (Metro, 2013). The image invites an interpretation as youthful rebellion: the portraitist recognises the potential subversiveness of the image and plays up to this. Matt Hart (2016) (in his discussion of naked selfies) examines such self-portraits in light of theories of ‘edgework’. Edgework is usually defined as risky physical behaviours, but Hart (2016) broadens the definition to suggest that edgework might also occur when ‘people put their emotional stability, status, career prospects, or spiritual well-being on the line’ (p. 2). Dark selfies such as Butler’s test boundaries and challenge expectations around appropriate behaviours at memorial sites, but perhaps also offer alternative modes of response to trauma for youth witnesses. For instance, Butler offers a two-fingered salute or ‘sideway deuce’, which can be interpreted in various ways from a victory sign, sign of respect or peace sign, to an insult or a common sign that certain Asian youth make when being photographed, but in this instance, it seems to signify some sort of defiant triumph: I came, I saw something incredible, but I will give an ambiguous indication of affect! Dewey’s (2014) insight is useful here:

While self-portraits are understood by many to be little more than a flagrant show or narcissism or a plea for attention, they may mean something different to the taker herself. It’s less a matter of self-glorification than self-documentation – ‘I was here’. ‘This is who I was that day’. ‘This happened’.

OPEN IN VIEWER

Figure 2.

Katelyn Butler.

This juxtaposition – of self in place – is a significant part of the selfie. As Walker Rettberg (2014) asserts, ‘Self-representation with digital technologies is also self-documentation. We think not only about how to present ourselves to others, but also log or record moments of our lives for ourselves to remember them in the future’ (p. 11). So, again, selfies are a mode of representation in which places, spaces, objects and so forth are contextualised alongside a self-image to suggest a relationship to it. Vuk (2014) offers a provocative analysis:

Young people don’t lack respect for sacred sites. They’re just quick to confuse validation for insight. And as anyone who’s visited such trauma sites well knows, these visits can incite emotions both highly charged and unexpected … Faced with the bricks and mortar reality of oppression, torture and annihilation, the pull to somehow document the here and now is understandable.

But, perhaps, what’s also going on is not the need to say ‘Here I am’, but ‘Thank god, I wasn’t there’. A natural response to a deeply unsettling period of our history, wouldn’t you agree? And, I wager, recognisable to anyone with a heartbeat.

As other visitors (like the one in the background of the picture) take direct, isolated photographs of exhibitions, objects and so forth, selfie-takers such as Butler and Eazy E include themselves in the photographs. Butler is the central image in the photograph. What is in the background might initially seem irrelevant: Butler is in the light and the submarine’s machinery is in the dark and difficult to see. Why situate herself here, and why upload this picture to Twitter? It is difficult to see what is offensive enough about this act and image to warrant its inclusion in the tabloid exposé; the most obvious reason is the more general consecration of the Pearl Harbor site and the young girl’s apparent disrespect of it, which most likely comes from the finger symbol and the possibility that she is disrespecting the site and perhaps also her cultural heritage. But there are other ways we might read this act. As Wendt (2014) argues,

In its digital state, the self-portrait is complex and full of visual and computational nuances as it is layered with information we have yet to decode or understand. The use of the smartphone and the presence of the network influences how we engage with and create our selfies. Filters and hashtags add new data to our selfies, which make them more than average self portraits. (p. 10)

Meese et al. (2015) also discuss the ‘platform-specific vernacular’ of social media spaces: these platforms have their own norms, language and internal logic. Taking selfies is a means of ‘presencing’ – of confirming attendance and engagement, and these practices are also a part of ‘wider rituals of mourning and memoriaization’ (Meese et al., 2015: 1828) and a ‘wider visual turn’ (Meese et al., 2015: 1819). Read in this way, these Pearl Harbor selfies offer a means for their creators to join wider communities of people engaging (diversely) with the site.

On the surface of the photograph itself, it seems as though there is much we cannot decode. We know nothing of Butler’s personal context: her age, background or what brought her to Pearl Harbor or to take the photograph. But in some ways, the media and image provide context enough for a more nuanced reading, for instance, we know that in publishing her selfie, Butler anticipates some form of recognition from publics (whether her own networks or wider publics not known to her). Her selfie, when self-published on Twitter, has a context because it becomes part of a constructed narrative: within the affordances of Twitter, Butler presents a self-image and youthful life narrative based around the tweets she chooses to share. Giving Butler’s tweet, some context allows for multiple readings. In comparison, The Daily Mail story decontextualises and significantly recontextualises the image – circulating it widely and offering a singular reference point from which to interpret the image. As Dewey (2014) notes, ‘the funny thing about viral images is how endlessly easy it is to misunderstand them’. Literally taking selfies ‘at face value’ becomes a significant problem because such readings ignore the various contexts from which these images might be read.

To read these selfies involves looking for complexities and contradictions, to read textually and contextually and through our expectations of what selfies are and do, particularly for these young self-portraitists. But perhaps most significantly, as Wendt proposes, such interpretations involve an acceptance of what we cannot decode or understand because we do not fully understand the context from which the text emerges. Any interpretations we make should reflect this uncertainty. The fact that Eazy E and Katelyn Butler have chosen to take and share a selfie may well reflect their regard for this place – their understanding of it as significant to their heritage and a desire to have a relationship with it. These are American teenagers emerging from particular social, cultural and economic contexts that value the experiences on display in these selfies: for instance, an engagement with US military history and the cultural and economic capital associated with travel. Such public, media witnessing brings a degree of cultural kudos or moral ambition that people might otherwise not attain (Frosh, 2009: 69–70).

Katie Warfield (2014) proposes that selfies are a means for taking greater control over a self-image. Selfies have become a ubiquitous part of cultural expression because of the affordances of this mode of self-expression and for exploring our relationship with places, spaces and different cultural identities, and this is particularly potent for young people.

This considered we might interpret the act of taking a selfie as a way to own a particular response to trauma. Or we might interpret such an act as a self-centred desire for transference – the selfie-taker aims to have some of the gravitas of the site ‘rub off’ on the self-portraitist. There is cultural kudos attached to trauma witnessing (Douglas and Barnett, 2014; Gook, 2011; Kaplan, 2005; Parr, 2008; Radstone, 2007), so visiting these sites offers a status worth sharing. Gook (2011) proposes, commemoration can so often involve ‘interpassive rituals’ (p. 13); people engage in commemoration because ‘enjoyment is gained through the performance of public rituals … subjects misrecognize their own active agency’ (p. 16). He continues, ‘The importance of being there alerts us to the way ceremonies of commemoration do the memory work for us …’ (p. 17). Gook (2011) contends that there is an unconscious enjoyment in subjection, in yielding and obeying – and being seen yielding and obeying – to the rules of the ideology (p. 18). We assume something meaningful (meditation and reflection). But how do we know whether this is happening or that it is meaningful? It is possible that the dark selfie is simply another coaxed, interpassive ritual?

We can read the selfie in ways that we cannot read other forms of behaviours at memorial sites, for instance, ritualised silence, because selfies produce texts. When a young person takes and publishes a selfie at a trauma site, in each of these instances, there is a statement of ‘look at me in an interesting place – engaging with it’. There is an element of cultural transference at work here – of engagement on a level that is perhaps not what might be expected or desired because it is embodied engagement which produces a life narrative text (selfie). Thus, the selfie becomes an unpredictable manifestation of other coaxed desires and relationships. The selfies by Eazy E and Butler could also be interpreted as a light-hearted response to a traumascape or even an unconscious response. Wendt (2014) talks about the unselfconscious aspects of selfie taking: ‘As though unaware that we are looking at ourselves, we become numb to our self portraits and produce many different versions of ourselves’ (p. 7). Thus, selfies can involve unconscious desires that might include means to cope with trauma sites. Wendt (2014) continues, ‘By gazing upon our reflections, we receive momentary relief from stressful situations or personal anxieties – a break from reality. We are amplified by this process and therefore receive satisfaction from capturing and viewing selfies’ (p. 8).

Conclusion: towards new witnessing

In his defence of Breanna, the Auschwitz selfie-taker, Tim Molloy (2014) offers these thoughts:

If you go to Anne Frank’s secret annex in Amsterdam, you may note with surprise she had clippings of movie stars on her walls. She was in some ways a normal teenager who liked silly, trivial things, a break from the pain of real life. She might have loved Twitter and selfies. And she is the most famous person to have documented the nightmare of Nazism.

Breanna Mitchell is no Anne Frank. Her handle, @PrincessBMM, helps us imagine a privileged child without a real care in the world. But she is exactly the kind of person we need thinking about the Holocaust, because she’s the last person we would expect to.

Imperfect as her picture was, she is an emissary to other American princesses who might not otherwise think of a place across the ocean, whose fathers might not have told them about the horrors that happened there a lifetime ago. She went to a real place, where girls her age died, and took a photo to prove she was there.

For Molloy, youthful witnessing centres on the possibility and power of education to enact personal change and response and, in turn, promote shared knowledge. The self(ie) offers a context for reflecting on the past in light of one’s position in the present (as young, as privileged, etc.). It is not uniform in its intentions and outcomes: selfies are a diverse cultural practice with wide meanings and potentials. When staged and taken at trauma memorial sites, selfies have the ability to be acts of witness: as engaged responses, as demonstrations of affect and as admissions of complicity and/or communion. The act of juxtaposing the self with a traumascape reveals desires beyond vanity or insecurity; it shows the potential limitations of youthful responses – the pressures and expectations that affect the representation of the self in social media. For instance, in the Pearl Harbor selfies, Katelyn Butler’s selfie emerges at the intersection of her cultural inheritances and the technologies of the present that surround her and enable her to represent herself online. Her selfie can be interpreted in various ways and is dependent on an understanding of the signs in the image (which are multiple). Eazy E’s selfie is again a product of its time and context: potentially revealing a predictable desire to show oneself paying homage to a significant event in history, to demonstrate one’s engaged citizenship (Kuntsman, 2017) and to align the self with a culturally sanctioned image of strength.

Young people received mixed messages around expected or appropriate behaviours, personal development, citizenship and so forth, and social media complicates these messages significantly. Thus, the dark selfie presents urgent ethical and interpretive questions for those in a position to respond. Simplistic interpretations and judgments deny the potential diversity and complexity of the trauma selfie as a cultural practice and what this act might reveal about new modes of witnessing stemming from new technologies: the mobile phone camera and new subject positions: contemporary youth. There are forces and aspirations stemming from the dark selfie that we may decode; there are others that we cannot.

The examples I have considered in this article reveal something beyond narcissism and indicate new and complex information about how people, particularly young people, may desire to share their image through social media and their experience of affect and witnessing. Witnessing via social media deserves a more nuanced treatment. Visitors, particularly young people, are visiting memorial sites and traumascapes at a time when so-called compassion fatigue is perceived to be a growing crisis. And in terms of cultural memory, the loss of first-person experience is a deep concern. The second-person witness has a crucial role to play in remembering in the contemporary era – in shaping our understanding of how cultural memory and witnessing are evolving. One of the central tenets of witnessing is the critique of witnessing itself. The second person’s critical engagement with traumatic representation should be empowered rather than limited.