Richard Drew/AP (2001)
I.
Richard Drew's photograph of a man falling from the World Trade Center in New York City on September 11, 2001, is an image that retains a deep fascination. But the nature of that fascination, however, is ambiguous ...
For if most people view it empathetically, with hands pressed over their mouth and nose in a gesture combining shock, horror and shame, there are undoubtedly others who take a macabre and even perverse pleasure in it. Ultimately, we are all ethically obliged to examine our own reasons for finding it almost impossible to look away from the image ...*
II.
Hands up if you know of the baron des Adrets ... It's okay if you don't; I didn't either until I read an account of his life given in the sinister writings of Abel Tiffauges ...**
"'His name was François de Beaumont, and he had a château at La Frette in the Dauphiné. He lived in the sixteenth century, when the wars of religion bespattered the country with blood and strong men could work their will with impunity.
One day, out hunting, Adrets and his officers brought a bear to bay, and its retreat was cut off by a precipice. The bear charged one of the men, who fired, hit it, and was soon rolling with it in the snow. The baron, who had seen what had happened, sprang forward to help the man but suddenly stopped, transfixed by an unutterable pleasure. He had noticed that the man and the bear, intertwined as they were, were gradually slipping towards the abyss, and the baron stood frozen and hypnotized by this fall in slow motion. Then the black bulk toppled over into the void, the only stain left on the whiteness was a grey streak, and Adrets groaned with joy.
A few hours later the officer reappeared, wounded and bleeding, but safe - the bear had broken his fall. He expressed respectful astonishment at the baron's slowness in coming to his assistance. The baron, smiling dreamily as at some delightful recollection, replied in a mysterious sentence heavy with threat: "I never knew a man falling was such a wonderful thing."
After that, he gave free reign to his new passion. Taking advantage of the religious wars, he imprisoned Catholics in Protestant regions and Protestants in Catholic ones, and arranged for them all to 'fall'. He worked out a subtle ritual. His prisoners were blindfolded and forced to dance to the music of a viol on top of a tower without a parapet. And the baron, breathless with pleasure, would watch them draw near, move away from, and draw near again to the void, until suddenly one of them lost his footing and fell shrieking through the air, to be impaled on a bank of lances stuck in the ground at the foot of the tower.'" [41-2]
I don't know how historically accurate this account is, but François de Beaumont was certainly a genuine figure who switched sides during the religious wars of the French Reformation and became known not only for his military genius and bravery, but also for his appalling cruelty. And he is recorded as having forced eighteen prisoners to throw themselves from the top of a castle keep - so the account is probably pretty accurate.
Anyway, what does it matter? There are truths which infinitely supass the truth of that which is factually correct. The crucial thing is that Adrets had chanced upon a form of cadent euphoria and that there's "probably nothing more moving in a man's life than the accidental discovery of his own perversion" [42].
Thus, the question that one hardly dares to ask is this: How many people watching the terrible events of 9/11 unfold before their eyes, also made a similar discovery to Adrets: that there is nothing more wonderful than to watch a man falling to his death ...
Notes
* The photo used here is one of a series of twelve taken by Drew. It appeared in papers around the world, often
arousing angry criticism over its use. The
unidentified subject of the picture was trapped on the upper floors of
the North Tower and either fell whilst searching for safety or jumped to escape
the fire and smoke. Of the 2,606 people who died in the attack on the
WTC, it is estimated that as many as 200 fell or jumped to their
deaths. For an excellent meditation on the photo, see Tom Junod's 'The Falling Man:
An unforgettable story', Esquire (Sep 9, 2016): click here to read online.
** Michel Tournier, The Erl-King, trans. Barbara Bray, (Atlantic Books, 2014), page references given in the text refer to this edition.
For sinister writings on angelic oppression, click here.
For sinister writings on the sexual politics of Adam and Eve, click here.
