We Are All Neda...

...but are we all also sordid voyeurs?

The video of the young Iranian woman who died of a gunshot wound on the streets of Tehran last week has made the YouTube rounds for several days. I don't link to it here because for one thing, it's likely you've already seen it and for another, it's easy enough to find. I'm also not sure I want to become another link in a chain in a phenomenon that straddles an uncomfortable line between righteous, principled protest and outright exploitation.

That said, I have seen the video, in which the woman, allegedly named Neda, crumples to the ground and dies a few seconds later while several protesters try in vain to revive her (and others document her passing with their camera phones). In fact, I clicked on several versions and watched more than once. So I'm not claiming any kind of moral high ground. And there's no doubt that there's a moral argument for posting and sharing the video, as it brings visceral immediacy to the outrageous alleged crimes of a far-off regime and stirs support around the world.

I say "alleged" because one thing the video doesn't show is the murderer, and thus we can't be certain whether Neda was killed in cold blood by an Iranian officer, felled by a stray bullet aimed elsewhere or the victim of some other perpetrator. As Hanna Rosin of the DoubleX blog points out in a wide-ranging discussion about the Neda video, what is being reported as fact by the citizens of cyberspace and even mainstream media outlets may, in fact, be mythology. 

That conversation is worth reading in its entirety because it touches on so many issues raised by video. For example,  Meghan O'Rourke's interpretation of why we watch such gruesome images - she suggests it's because we're fascinated and curious by witnessing the exact moment when someone goes from being alive to being dead (a moment the Neda video captures in intimate detail) - seems spot-on to me, while Dana Stevens wonders if Neda's elevation to symbolic martyr status hasn't diminished her humanity.

The bottom line is that the video is out there, for activists and voyeurs alike. I'm guessing that most of us who've watched it have elements of both within us. On balance, I think it's existence and dissemination is a good thing, because it makes the dire situation in Iran harder to ignore. But, like Neda's death, figuring out the moral implications of the video is messy business.