Reykjavík Grapevine - 08.04.2011, Síða 34

34
The Reykjavík Grapevine
Issue 4 — 2011
FREE BRADLEY! FREE EARL! !
media | Hildur Lilliendahl
[If you read Icelandic] You
really should compare Ice-
landic and foreign reportage
of Libyan Iman al-Obeidi, the
woman who walked into a hotel in Tripoli
Saturday March 26 and told a number
of foreign reporters, gathered for break-
fast, how she had been molested, vio-
lated and raped repeatedly by Gadhafi's
troops. The comparison is an interesting
reflection on the use of language, and
the state of mind of those who publicly
use it.
Hadeel al-Shalchi, a reporter from
AP, witnessed the woman's outburst
and—according to his version of the sto-
ry, published on AP's website—the wom-
an was “distraught” as she “stormed
into” the hotel to “tell foreign report-
ers that government troops raped her”.
However, according to Vísir.is and Stöð
2 news (who seem to base their story
exclusively on AP's report—in any case
they quote it and link to it), the woman
“burst into the hotel” in “a strange con-
dition” [Icelandic: í annarlegu ástandi,
implying influence of drugs and/or alco-
hol] and “claimed” she had been raped.
She wasn't telling people about being
raped; she was accusing someone of
committing a crime.
Hadeel al-Shalchi writes:
“They defecated and urinated on me
and tied me up,” she said, her face
streaming with tears. “They violated my
honour, look at what the Gadhafi militia-
men did to me.”
“The woman, who appeared in her
30s, wore a black robe and orange scarf
around her neck and identified herself.
She had scratches on her face and she
pulled up her black robe to reveal a
bloodied thigh.”
This must have seemed too sympa-
thetic to Icelandic reporters, who say
that she “tore off her clothes” and de-
manded that pictures be taken of her
body. Is it just me or does this sound
more like a description of some atten-
tion-starved, panty-flashing Paris Hilton
type starlet, willing to do just about any-
thing for media exposure? There is ab-
solutely no mention of the woman’s ap-
parent sorrow or any talk of the violence
she described so vividly to the press and
was described in Vísir’s source story.
It goes on. AP explains in the very
beginning of the story how al-Obeidi
was immediately tackled by hotel staff
and government minders. How some
random Libyans at the scene, strangers
to Iman, obviously wanted to silence her.
Vísir fails to mention this but does re-
mark towards the end of their story that
the woman was soon “taken away” by
security and therefore the press didn't
get a chance to interview her further. In
AP's version the story goes: "Before she
was dragged out of the hotel, al-Obeidi
managed to tell journalists that she was
detained by a number of troops..." Can
anyone honestly say that these two ac-
counts of the same story are told with
the same passion or empathy?
Note the different interpretation
here. Vísir says:
A spokesman for Libyan authorities said
the woman was mentally ill and drunk.
Furthermore that the government in-
tended to look into her background.
Whereas AP says:
At a hastily arranged press conference
after the incident, government spokes-
man Moussa Ibrahim said investigators
had told him the woman was drunk and
possibly mentally challenged. "We have
to find her family and see if she was re-
ally abused or not," he said.
Language is a powerful tool. The re-
sponsibility of the press becomes very
clear in cases of sexual and gendered
violence. There does not seem to be a
shred of sympathy in Vísir's story and
furthermore, they seem to want to un-
dermine Iman al-Obeidi's credibility for
some absurd reason.
Ok, hell. I'll just come out and say it:
Doesn't it reflect their true views on the
importance of sex crimes in general?
Isn't a story like this written by a man
who relates to other unidentified men
who might be accused of rape, but can't
relate to an identified woman who might
have been raped?
If you open a news report by saying
that the subject of the report was in a
strange condition, implying she is under
some sort of influence, the rest is history.
You must know that those who read your
report will never find that subject sym-
pathetic or believable.
These differences may seem subtle,
but they are very important. It's the little
things that provide the very foundation
for our sexist culture. A culture that en-
dures violence against women. There is
a clear difference in telling someone you
have been raped and claiming you have
been raped. Assuming that reported
rapes didn't really happen seems to be
a policy among men in the Icelandic me-
dia. There is a consensus there: Until it's
been proven, we'll assume the woman is
lying.
I would sympathise and even agree
with the policy if the same were true for
robberies or assaults or any other crime
for that matter. This is not the case.
When a crime is committed, the story
is: A crime has been committed. But in
cases of rape the story goes: A woman
claims a crime has been committed.
And don't tell me it's about protect-
ing the possibly innocent man accused
of rape—he is hardly ever identified and
usually not even mentioned. The story
only goes: A woman reported a rape.
And just as they seem to say with such
ease: A house was burgled/ a man was
beaten/ a car caught fire, they should be
able to say: A woman was raped. And if
that's too much to ask, how about asking
them to change other reports to match
those of rapes by saying: A car claims to
have caught fire (and we feel compelled
to add that the car was seen in the vicin-
ity of a bottle of vodka and a short skirt)?
cAR clAimS To hAve cAUGhT fiRe
opinion | Valur Gunnarsson
Walking through Reykjavík
late on a Saturday night and
observing the natives at-
tempt to go through the pre-
liminary stages of copulation, one could
be forgiven for assuming that Icelanders
might not be the most romantic of peo-
ple. But in another sense, precisely this
behaviour is in fact an indication of the
very romantic nature of the people living
here.
If you look through the foreign press
in the past few years, any mention of
Iceland is likely to have something to
do with economic collapse, volcanoes
or whale hunting. Give or take the eco-
nomic collapse, this is how people have
always viewed Iceland. The country was,
in a sense, first discovered by the outside
world sometime in the 19th Century. It
went from being a fishing station or even
the gates of hell to being a magical land
full of wild natural beauty and ancient
culture, a view helped by the Sagas, the
scenery and an exotic sounding name.
The romantics in Scandinavia, Germany
and, to a lesser extent Britain and France,
started idealising it. This is how the out-
side world has always preferred to see
Iceland.

“TheRe’S definiTely no loGic...”
Icelanders, especially of late, have largely
been more than happy to play the part.
This has brought dividends. Björk rose
to international prominence in 1993 with
the single and video to ‘Human Behav-
iour’, where she was portrayed as a pixie,
a true nature child. The chorus of “There’s
definitely no logic to human behaviour,”
might even sound like a renunciation of
the sciences, although it’s probably clos-
er to romantic Weltschmertz.
Icelandic novels, even when about
crime in the capital city, are often mar-
keted abroad with a picture of a roman-
tic looking farmstead on the cover. And
many Icelandic films made in the past two
decades have juxtaposed the wild and
strange countryside with the no less wild
Reykjavík nightlife. These often include a
major foreign character and seem to be
aimed mostly at foreign markets.
viKinGS And AccoUnTAnTS
The dream to make Iceland the banking
centre of the world, a sensible Switzer-
land or Luxemburg of the north, seemed
to be a step away from all of this, the tri-
umph, if you will, of hardnosed rational-
ism over romanticism. The results were
exactly the opposite. The bankers be-
haved a lot more like the Vikings of old
than as dull mainland accountants. Their
boats may have sunk with the loot, but
this all added to the image of Iceland-
ers as wild men governed by their emo-
tions and basic desires, rather than a
fully civilized European nation. We may
no longer be noble savages, but we re-
main savages nonetheless. Whale hunt-
ing is another case in point. It makes no
economic sense whatsoever; there is a
lot more money to be made from whale
watching. Nevertheless, it appeals to a
romantic vision of Icelanders as a strong,
independent people who do what they
like, no matter what polite society or fis-
cal common sense might say. When you
add the Eyjafjallajökull eruption and its
consequences, you again get the sense
of Icelanders as a strange people living in
an even stranger land.
bUT iS The imAGe TRUe?
Largely, yes. People here are excited by
mystery. As soon as you try to explain
things with a coherent system, be it sci-
ence or even organised religion, they lose
interest. Anyone offering rational expla-
nations tends to be written off as hope-
lessly dull. We pay lip service to reason,
but we don’t really like or even complete-
ly understand it.
This comes to light in Iceland’s politi-
cal discourse. We have little time for bor-
ing bureaucrats, but prefer larger than
life personalities such as Davíð Oddsson.
These may claim to be acting in the in-
terests of reason, but really they offer us
romantic schemes of transforming the
country completely in a couple of years,
wild dreams that appeal more to nation-
alism than common sense.
Iceland was largely invented by the
romantics, both local and foreign, in the
19th Century. Their vision is the one we
have stuck to ever since. Perhaps it is
time for a little Enlightenment? Iceland-
ers might not be the most romantic of
lovers, but they are true romantics when
it comes to the economy. Maybe we
should try it the other way round.
Are icelanders True Romantics? Really?
Medieval Manuscripts – eddas and sagas
the ancient vellums on display
iceland :: FilM – Berlin – copenhagen – reykjavík
icelandic Filmmaking 1904-2008
cHild OF HOpe – Youth and Jón sigurðsson
tribute to the leader of the independence Movement
exHiBitiOns - guided tOurs
caFeteria - culture sHOp
the culture House – Þjóðmenningarhúsið
National Centre for Cultural Heritage
Hverfisgata 15 · 101 Reykjavík (City Centre)
Tel: 545 1400 · www.thjodmenning.is
Open daily between 11 am and 5 pm
Free guided tour of THe Medieval Manu­
sCRipTs exhibition Mon and Fri at 3 pm.