Looking back into Abu Ghraib: Standard Operating Procedure (Erroll Morris,2008)

Abstract

This article examines Errol Morris’s documentary Standard Operating Procedure (2008), which represents an attempt on the part of the filmmaker to demystify the media’s moralizing and dramatizing glance at the Abu Ghraib photographs that created a scandal when first broadcast on television in 2004. Through a forensic analysis of the digital prints used in counterpoint to the implicated soldiers’ testimonies, Morris strives to recontextualize the notorious snapshots. Although he reaches his goal and recovers the individual stories behind the iconic photos, he fails to humanize the soldiers – turned into monsters by the media. This study points to the limits of the participatory mode of documentary filmmaking, using the interrotron as the basis for an interviewing technique that undermines the power to self-representation.