In his essay ‘Liar, Liar, Pants on Fire’, Errol Morris poses the question of whether photographs are true or false representations of the reality. By arguing that any picture may have a thousand different interpretations unless a caption is provided, Morris claims that it is language that can convey true or false ideas, not photographs. Doctor Michihiko Hachiya, a survivor of Hiroshima atomic bombing, describes the physical sufferings and moral ordeals that the inhabitants of the city of Hiroshima and its suburbs had to endure in the period following the bombing on August 6, 1945. The pages of his diary are full of the sobs and groans of the dying patients’ of the hospital he worked at. At first glance, these two works seem to have no common themes or ideas, yet on second reading it became clear that they share a few important similarities. Both works convey a message of death and morality, both of them see or use language as a means of telling the truth, and both of them raise the problems of morality while reflecting on the tragic events in the history.
First of all, the messages of death and morality penetrate both works. In ‘Liar, Liar, Pants on Fire’, the author repeatedly evokes the images of death or dying to develop his idea of the photograph’s inability to preserve historical truth unless proper captions are given. The first image of death is that of a father who is ‘dead for now over fifty years.’ (Morris, 2007) Other images are the sinking of Lusitania in 1915 (and Titanic), dead woman and her three-month baby, and death ceremony. The latter is illustrated by a photographic image of a mass burial in Britain. In ‘Hiroshima Diary’, death permeates every page of reading. Deaths of the victims are described thoroughly and slowly, with a multitude of small details which could be spotted by a highly qualified physician.
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"Liar, Liar, Pants on Fire".
Secondly, the two works are similar in that they convey the truth of the events with the power of word. Specifically, for Errol Morris, language is a means of providing facts and supporting photographs. However, only truthful language should be considered, since the false representation through words leads to misrepresentation of the reality. In his turn, Dr. Michihiko Hachiya uses the descriptive power of language to create the images of wrecked Hiroshima and its dying citizens, adults, children, men, women, all’ Without photos, truth is conveyed via the written word, with the power that exceeds that of the power of image and immerses the reader into the atmosphere of horror, physical suffering, and doom. To illustrate, Hachiya documented the description of dead Japanese soldiers told by Mr.Katsutani: their bodies were burnt ‘from the hips up’, ‘where the skin had peeled, their flesh was wet and mushy’, ‘they had no faces’, since ‘their eyes, noses, and mouths had been burnt away, and it looked like their ears had melted off.’ (Hachiya, 1955, p.12).
Further, both works raise the issues of morality as they reflect on the tragic events. Errol Morris questions the integrity and the moral side of the intentions of those people who use photos (and captions) to describe historical truths, as well as the humanness of those German reporters who narrated about Lusitania death toll with ‘joy, pride, and gratification’ (Morris, 2007). In his turn, the physician from Hiroshima praises the moral strength of the dying Japanese as they were suffering in silence, without curses, as well as elevates the moral power of medical staff that took care of the patients in the post-bombing hospital hell. The author himself demonstrates the height of moral integrity as he avoids condemnation of the allies who threw the bomb, but refers to the Japanese leadership as the guilty party.
Overall, the works by Morris and Hachiya, although inherently different, have a few important similar features. These are their perception of language as a means of true knowledge, their focus on the questions of morality, and their preoccupation with the death theme.
- Hachiya, M. (1955). Hiroshima diary: The journal of a Japanese physician August 6-September
30, 1945. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press. - Morris, E. (July 10, 2007). ‘Liar, liar, pants on fire’. The New York Times. Retrieved from http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com
