Kevin Carter & F*ck Buttons

[KevinCarter_Nomdeguerre]

spoiler?

I was reading a book about Kevin Carter called "The bang bang club". Others have already written about Carter and his links to HOL. So i'll not go into any detail, but he was a war (nom de plume, nom de guerre!?, base camp etc.!?) photographer who comitted suicide after photographing a dying child(delial!?).
Anyhow, i was shocked when i read that he was addicted to buttons - i.e. drugs etc. I ndof, found this funny, since buttons appears throughout the story even though it's only referenced twice in the index (109,144 follow the ground airforce codes!). For instance, the hidden morse code message so/sew!...buttons.

p.s. unrelated to the above - Interesting that Johnny Truants name is Johnny Errand in the French edition!

[valorian666]

Yeah.. that's true indeed. While there is practically nothing a photographer can do directly about a situation like the one in Soedan (where Carter photographed the dying child) his photo's do something indirectly. A photojournalist cannot help those people by giving them some money or food (1) since it will not change anything.. Maybe, with some luck, he could save one person from dying for a few weeks, or help out one famillie a little..
Yet the big changes come when the wealthy world (I guess that's us then) sends much money and people in poor countries to help them out.. One way to acomplish this , or help acomplish this, is by bringing the matter to attention in the media. The best way is by photo's, since photo's say so much more than words..

1: Giving food to people who are near-death of hunger is useless anyway, since they cannot be saved anymore with food only after enough weeks of hunger).

Edit : Damn.. something went wrong

[ November 18, 2002: Message edited by: valorian666 ]

[girl2]

i think i already said this in another post a while ago, but in my sociology class a few years back we learned that this was the single greatest "role" dilemma in our society.

*shrug*

just thought it would be interesting to point out how prominent this issue is today. we devoted a few days of classtime to studying it--it kinda horrified me, actually. as if navy wasn't already dealing with serious issues, he just has to stumble upon a people-eating, hallway-growing House...

[verismo]

quote:

---

Photojournalists often have the crisis of wanting to help the suffering they photograph - often forgetting that it is the photograph that indirectly helps those in need.

---

Could you elaborate on this fatwoul? By raising the awareness of general society?

[ November 17, 2002: Message edited by: verismo ]

[ianthebruce]

I think he's being sarcastic.

[girl2]

umm, would it be more effective if i doubled the seriousness?

[girl2]

well exccccuuuuuse me for trying to share my thoughts, not all of us have been lucky enough to patter around the world snapping pictures of blight and death!

=P

seriously, stop being an asshole!

[KevinCarter_Nomdeguerre]

Very true FTWL, it's too easy to mislead, when you type too quickly. His
death wasn't a direct result of the dying child. However, as said, he
suffered badly from media questions, and equally from his inconsistent
responses to why-didn't-you-help-the-girl? I like the depth of thought that
people have gone into with this book. It seems to evoke a lot of emotions
on the message board! Along with vitriol and diatribes! There's a certain
sense of irony about arguments on Sociology.

Well, thought I'd further the Carter thing. Oh by the way, "kind of" were
the words that I was looking for earlier.

**bourbon **
A subject, if any? It's one of JT's tipples (43,69,130.) along with Jack
Daniel(ewski)s & Coke <>.

"Glass of bourbon. Toke on a blunt. There we go bring on the haze" - JT in
HOL

"Joao and Kevin were at Joao's flat smoking dagga and sharing a bottle of
bourbon". - The Bang Bang Club;Greg Marinovich and Joao Silva

Joao (a fellow photographer) here is a bit like flaze/truant in Hol.

Another quote I liked, it reminded me of Truant's mad phases of gibbering
(although often encoded) phrases. Note on Mandrax :- Button-smokers crush a
Mandrax tablet, a banned tranquillizer, and then mix it with dagga before
stuffing into a broken-off bottle neck.


"Kevin was, however, paradoxically affected by Mandrax. Instead of the
usual mellow downer most people experience, he got a jolt of energy. He
would get all fired up with ideas and emotions"

**Buttons

“And all the buttons on my corduroy coat are gone” – It’s possible that here he has lost his drugs or that Hailey has taken them. Since his coat is buttonless – guess you could read this as without drugs, take your pick. Whatever is going on, it’s reasonable to assume that an addict would be a little obssesed on the subject of buttons. I figured that the lack of reference to buttons in the appendix was an attempt to hide JT’s addiction. The only referenced button statements are trivial.


Must return to the rest of the "opposition of L's" within HOL. That
accounts for a good 40% of the book!

[girl2]

no offense or anything, but i read that like twice and i'm still not sure if its in my own language...

[Malaclyptic_455]

what i love is the Derick Thomson quote at the end:

"When I came back from deaht
it was morning
the back door was open
and one of the buttons on my shirt
had disappeared."

To me, when it comes to poetry, that's about as good as it gets.

but that's just me. didn't mean to get off the subject. sorry.

[DanSRose]

quote:

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Originally posted by KevinCarter_Nomdeguerre:
p.s. unrelated to the above - Interesting that Johnny Truants name is Johnny Errand in the French edition!

---

huh. That's very interesting

[lazysmurf]

shitty song, by a shitty guitar player/singer/songwriter, played with a shitty drummer on a shitty album.

end of discussion

[JuggaloStatix]

fuck buttons....is that like fuck butter? anyway...umm...what has this carter fellow done..im not sure was he an author or a photographer...and its an interesting theroy about a connection..because of a suicide and an earlier theory of the House being your own thoughts and contmeplations...like the children werent scared of it so it didnt hurt them but navidsons brain was so engulfed in thought and hatred and curiosity the House engulfed him...

[burntshadows0]

Mr. Carter:
I like how you think.
most interesting.
...
Mr. Statix:
I would say it isn't like fuck butter.
...
Ms. Girl:
read it again.

[Agrimorfee]

"The hardest button to button..."--Jack White.

Discuss if you wish.

[caroj]

Ah! All this talk of buttons reminds me of a talk I had the other day. In the 19th cent. Napoleon went to try to concur Russia but all his soldiers had tin buttons on and they turned to dust in the extreme cold, so they gave up and went back to the more temperate climate of France. It's a lot like the dissapearing buttons in the hallway.

[crazyiak]

Originally Posted by caroj

Ah! All this talk of buttons reminds me of a talk I had the other day. In the 19th cent. Napoleon went to try to concur Russia but all his soldiers had tin buttons on and they turned to dust in the extreme cold, so they gave up and went back to the more temperate climate of France. It's a lot like the dissapearing buttons in the hallway.

Nice, if that's true, that would give a logical explanation for the disappearance of the buttons. Possibly the zippers too, if they were also tin. I'll have to take a look at the book again when I have time to see if something that wasn't a kind of metal disappeared.

[fatwoul]

Where did my post in this thread go? I'm pretty sure it's not something I deleted.

Oh, and I know somewhere I or someone else talked about buttons relating to the trigger of a camera:

"So?" - what are you going to do about a situation?

"Buttons!" - photograph and expose it.

[benedict]

Hi time magazine hi pulitzer prize
Tribal scars in technicolor
Bang bang club ak 47 hour

Kevin carter

Hi time magazine hi pulitzer prize
Vulture stalked white piped lie forever
Wasted your life in black and white

Kevin carter x3

The elephant is so ugly he sleeps his head
Machetes his bed kevin carter kaffir lover forever
Click click click click click
Click himself under

Kevin carter x3

[Ruzinus]

Gj -_-

[heartbreak]

quote:

---

Photojournalists often have the crisis of wanting to help the suffering they photograph - often forgetting that it is the photograph that indirectly helps those in need.

---

Brian Williams of NBC was on Daily Show last night and commented on this subject in regards to his recent trip to Haiti. You can watch it at The Daily Show website. He basically said that he has to constantly remind himself that by getting the story out he is doing far more to help then he would be if he was directly helping.

[noevilstar]

Just adding to the list, but there is a possibility that encoding of buttons is a sort of hommage to Alfred A. Knopf. Knopf's publishing company was bought out by Random House in the early 60's. Knopf was an innovator in the realm of typography, therefore contributing to the ability for an author to, you know, include morse code into a book.

Another connection, loosely, is through its placement on the body. The belly-button, or Navel.

from PIE *(o)nobh- "navel" (cf. Skt. nabhila "navel, nave, relationship;" Avestan nafa "navel," naba-nazdishta "next of kin;" Pers. naf; O.Prus. nabis "navel;"

Words for it in most languages have a secondary sense of "center."

[consider us dead]

The Holy Bible is an amazing album

[mafleeted]

Originally Posted by fatwoul

Where did my post in this thread go? I'm pretty sure it's not something I deleted.

maybe your post was a button.

[heartbreak]

haha good one maf