Imaging Toxins

Abstract

This essay examines how toxins are visually represented in news and popular media. More specifically, it analyzes the function of visual narratives, identity, place, and uncertainty in the construction of the controversial toxicant Agent Orange, a defoliant used by the US military during the Vietnam War to reduce jungle cover and destroy cropland causing devastating health and environmental effects. Toxins present an interesting challenge for visual construction in that they are often invisible and banal in their esthetics. The essay concludes with five observations for understanding the relationship between images and toxins.

Keywords:

• Images
• Risk
• Toxins
• Visual narrative
• Agent Orange
• Rhetoric

Notes

1. For an excellent discussion of the limits of the visual for representing toxins, see Pezzullo (2007).

2. I define a visual narrative as a subject-specific sequence of images found within and across media during a defined time period.

3. Though the contamination of the homes at Love Canal is more frequently mentioned in terms of impact on the nation's environmental awareness, Agent Orange has received a greater amount of media attention and for a longer period of time. Searching ProQuest Newsstand, from 1980 to 2012, there were 3094 articles with “Agent Orange” in the title as compared to the 916 articles 1978–2012 with “Love Canal” in the title. Perhaps even more telling, since 2010 there have been 361 Agent Orange articles and only 10 focused on Love Canal (again searching article titles for the key terms). Unfortunately, for this analysis, articles from ProQuest are primarily saved as “full text” documents, which exclude the pictures from the original article. In terms of cultural impact (a difficult concept to quantify) in the 178 articles from the New York Times from 1979 to 2008 (again with Agent Orange in the title), 19 articles (10.7%) were the lead for their section (A1, B1, C1 or on the first page of a special edition).

4. Archival photographs are difficult to obtain. Articles posted through online databases may not include the images found in the original text, some are under separate copyright and are inaccessible, and many of those found on microfiche or microfilm are of poor quality, excluding them from a visual analysis.

5. That is not to say that there were no new policies that came in response to Agent Orange, but the impact was focused on changes in military protocol and soldier health. President Ford signed an executive order prohibiting the military use of defoliants, the Senate ratified the Geneva protocol banning chemical weapons, and President H. W. Bush signed Agent Orange Act of 1991, authorizing a long-term health study on soldiers who were exposed to the defoliant (Waugh, 2010a).

6. For a complete list of texts, please email the author.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Jennifer Peeples

Jennifer Peeples is an Associate Professor at Utah State University