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Questions and Assignments for Errol Morris’s “Will The Real Hooded Man Please Stand Up?”

Questions and Assignments for Errol Morris’S “Will The Real Hooded Man Please Stand Up?”

Read Errol Morris’s essay “Will the Real Hooded Man Please Stand Up?” Below, you’ll find some questions that invite you to work further with the selection.

QUESTIONS FOR A SECOND READING

This essay is made up of parts: photographic images, interview transcripts, newspaper articles, magazine articles, and the text written by Errol Morris. You could think of this as a kind of documentary (rather than essayistic) prose. The writer assembles the materials and places them in context.

Question

As you reread, think about how this works. Think about how it works for you as a reader. And think about how it works for Morris as a writer. What might be the benefits of this kind of prose? the liabilities? What sort of context does Morris provide to these materials? How does this text define your role (or your position) as a reader? Be prepared to point to particular moments in the text that you could use in a discussion motivated by these questions.

“Believing,” Morris says, “is seeing, not the other way around.” (para. 62) How does this statement emerge in the essay? And to what (or where) does it lead? As you reread the selection, pay particular attention to Morris’s prose. How does he produce and/or stage the presentation? How does he produce and/or stage an argument?

Question

Morris, you might say, works toward sound bites — statements like the one above that are sharp, focused, catchy, and memorable. What other moments like this might you find? Do they make the prose better or worse? smarter or dumber?

Question

Morris refers to the iconic image of the American flag being raised at Iwo Jima. In other parts of the book, he writes about documentary photos that were, in fact, staged. Using the library, as well as the Internet, and perhaps referencing a copy of Believing Is Seeing, make a brief presentation on the flag-raising at Iwo Jima. How might this photo be understood as a reference point for the photo of the “hooded man”? Morris puts the word “reality” in scare quotes. How do you understand the use of any reference to the “real” when it comes to these images?

What difference does it make whether The Claw is or isn’t The Hooded Man? What difference does it make to Morris? What difference might it make to you? What difference might it make to Sergeant Joyner or to Abdou Hukssain Saad Faleh?

Question

As you reread, pay attention to the ways Morris raises and responds to this question. And as he works out his argument, or as he stages the presentation, where are you with this question? Does it matter?

ASSIGNMENTS FOR WRITING

Here is Morris:

Photographs attract false beliefs the way flypaper attracts flies. Why my skepticism? Because vision is privileged in our society and in our sensorium. We trust it; we place our confidence in it. Photography allows us to uncritically think. We imagine that photographs provide a magic path to truth.

What’s more, photographs allow us to think we know more than we really do. We can imagine a context that isn’t really there. (paras. 58–59)

These are strong and categorical statements. And there are more in the essay; there is more to Morris’s argument about the power of photographs.

Take time to locate a photograph that circulates in your world, one that seems powerful, one that has garnered substantial attention. Use that photograph to consider Morris’s argument, to extend it, and to put it to the test. If you work from within Morris’s argument, if you work with some of his key phrases and key terms, what might you see in this photograph and what might you say about its status in relation to “reality”? What might you say about its effects on viewers?

Question

Note: Ideally, you will need to be able to locate photos (yours and Morris’s) within your written text. If you can find written commentary on your photograph, that text would also be useful, since it would allow you to construct an essay that looks like “Will the Real Hooded Man Please Stand Up?”

What difference does it make whether The Claw is or isn’t The Hooded Man? (See the final “Question for a Second Reading.”) Write an essay that addresses this question. You’ll need to begin by providing the necessary background information to a reader. Imagine a smart and interested reader, but one who has not read this essay by Morris.

Question

In your essay, you should move back and forth between the argument as Morris presents it and the argument as you receive it, understand it, and begin to recognize the ways it might engage you. Perhaps it engages you in ways that matter. Or perhaps not. Whatever the case, be sure that you and your thoughts and concerns are front and center at the conclusion of the essay.

MAKING CONNECTIONS

Here is Morris:

What’s more, photographs allow us to think we know more than we really do. We can imagine a context that isn’t really there. (paras. 58–59)

Question

When Morris refers to the ways “vision is privileged in our society and in our sensorium,” he is making a point about evidence and belief that touches upon issues in Kathryn Schulz’s essay, “Evidence.” (p. 360 of the print book) Write an essay in which you consider Morris’s argument about photographs in the larger context of Schulz’s history of error. If Morris were to provide Schulz with one more example, one more instance of the difficulty of knowledge and belief, what would she say? Where would photography come into play in her chapter? What kinds of conclusions might she draw?

“Believing,” Morris says, “is seeing, not the other way around.” (para. 62) Edward Said’s essay, “States,” works closely with a set of photographs. It began, in fact, with photographs and the need to find words to put alongside them.

Question

As you reread the Said essay, note the statements he makes that might stand next to Morris’s statement on photography and belief. Write an essay that considers the role of the photographic images in Said’s essay, one that considers their meaning or their importance to him, but also their meaning and importance to a broader audience. At some point in this essay, bring in Morris and his concerns about the relation between seeing and believing.

“Believing,” Morris says, “is seeing, not the other way around.” (para. 62) Earlier, he also notes that “Photographs attract false beliefs the way flypaper attracts flies. With the advent of photography, images were torn free from the world, snatched from the fabric of reality, and enshrined as separate entities. They become more like dreams. It is no wonder that we really don’t know how to deal with them.” (para. 59)

The iconic photo is central to contemporary advertising. These images are powerful (and expensive). They travel widely. They not only sell merchandise; they shape how we think, how we live, and what we value.

Advertising is the subject of Susan Bordo’s essay, "Beauty (Re)discovers the Male Body.” Write an essay of your own that presents and considers Bordo’s arguments about the images found in contemporary advertising. Would she agree that “we really don’t know how to deal” with photographs? How might she respond to Morris’s argument?