The War Works: Videos under Siege, Online and in the Aftermath, Again

Abstract

Rania Stephan's nine-minute video Le Pont (The Bridge) follows the movements of a tall, angular man moving through the southern suburbs of Beirut. The camera first catches sight of him copping attitude in the midst of a traffic jam. He steps off his scooter and waves a yellow Hezbollah flag for a clutch of gawking journalists. Swaggering, prancing, putting on an impromptu one-man show—he poses for a photographer who approaches and seems eager, in the vacuum of a war ended, for a more colorful, humorous shot of postwar posturing and the politics of display.