Newspapeer reporting - Man as hero

[EmmelineGoulden]

There's been a bit of coverage about a photo that came out of the Australian wildfires. This piece by Luke Harding in the Guardian isn't too bad.

Basically, grandparents babysitting 5 grandchildren - fire comes in fast and there's no escape. Grandmother takes the children (3 of them non-swimmers) down to the jetty and so they can try and stay safe in the water. Not certain what the grandfather is doing, but it sounds like he's trying to see what he can do to save the property. He joins them later (dramatic run through the woods described) and takes photos of them on the jetty about to get in and then of grandmother and the five children (3 non-swimmers remember) in the water clinging on to the jetty.

But a couple of other pieces in the guardian have really annoyed me. This video - in the blurb it says "An Australian grandfather saved his wife and five grandchildren by ordering them to shelter under a jetty during a bushfire." Where as the reality is that Tammy ("Tim's wife" as she's reffered to several times) saved the 5 kids by taking them to the water (Just like to emphasize again - 3 of them non-swimmers) on her own. It seems to me she's the hero here.

Then in a comment is free piece by Jonathon Jones "grandfather Tim Holmes took his family to shelter in the sea" and again I think - no he damn well didn't. Tammy took them to the water. And from what we see, Tammy did the hard work of keeping the kids safe.

In my opinion the photos are powerful and do huge amounts to communicate the devastating human toll of the wild fires. The main photo of them all in the water they look terrified. And I can only think what the hell was that man doing fucking around with a camera while his grandkids were crying and his wife was struggling to keep their heads out of the water?

I do think we benefit as a society from photos like this, so I don't want to lay into that sdie of it too much. I'm mainly really annoyed that the story that is told is of the hero man, when to me the hero that shines out is the woman.

I agree with you! However, I think the idea of "man with camera" is also connected to the "man as hero" element. In the comment is free piece, the final paragraph makes a point of emphasising that if the grandfather was organised enough to have a camera about him, then it shows he was even more of a hero as he had had his survival plan prepared for a long time! What?? Can you imagine the same being said of a middle-aged woman taking photos while her heroic husband held onto the three non-swimmers?? She would have been castigated for being frivolous at a moment of extreme danger!

And I also agree that she looks like she is struggling in the water with the children. I can't quite imagine exactly what I would have to say to my husband were he taking photos of me while I struggled to hold onto 3 non-swimmers, while I was wondering would we all get out alive and while I was conscious that all my worldly belongings were going up in smoke - but I don't think it would be pleasant.

Good point about the conflated roles.

I wonder about Tammy in that shot. Part of me wants to whack Tim around the head, and part of me wants to think that, since they were in the water for 3 hours, at one point Tammy said something like "You need to take a photo pf this and send it to [their daughter] so she knows we're doing everything we can for the kids". I think this is because I have created this idea of Tammy as a no-nonsense matriarch who gets on with things, and I don't want to think of her as someone who must have spent most of her life living with an asshole.