The Jeffrey Epstein files that the US Department of Justice has made public are horrendously sordid. Every time they are discussed they are presented as a promise of light and transparency, but when we see new documents, the result is increasingly dark and confusing. The magnificent chronicle of Nicolás Valle al Weekend news on saturday at noon he explained it very well. It’s worth getting it back through the 3Cat platform. The agile montage of images with boxes, papers with photographs and censored texts was a way of evoking in the viewer this feeling of an unreachable avalanche of documents. “It is not the complete truth. It is the attempt for the Epstein case to become the Clinton Case”, points out the journalist to emphasize a symptomatic bias: a large part of the published documents contain many scenes linked to Bill Clinton. On the other hand, the sparse presence of Donald Trump becomes symbolic and not at all innocent: “Donald Trump appears in a marginal way. And when he does he insinuates that he has an enormous penis”, says Valle, accompanied by the image that justifies it. The story of the news is more of an analysis than a description and suggests that the selection of documents is not aseptic but interested.
Valle emphasizes: “It’s not so much what comes out but what’s missing”, referring to the large amount of papers manipulated with black boxes that hide much of the information. The journalist includes the testimony of the relatives of the victims who criticize the censorship and that the case is used as a “political toy”.
The chronicle, two and a half minutes long, works by accumulation. He underlines the pattern of the scenes that are represented: “friendships, meetings, journeys and silences”. But he reinforces the disturbing perception of it all: “It’s an uncomfortable litany that spans decades of power, money and fame.” These three axes that spin the story is what adds ambiguity to the photographs: some seem like scenes of simple social gatherings and others, with jacuzzis and naked girls, betray the perverse context of sexual abuse.
The chronicle knows how to connect very well with the feeling of perplexity caused by it all. He gives an argument that helps to understand it: the lack of context. The journalist clarifies that many of the photos do not have a date or detail the circumstances. He concludes: “Instead of explaining, they help to confuse. Where potential criminals are dissolved in the crowd.” The mix of celebrities (from Noam Chomsky to Michael Jackson via Woody Allen, Mick Jagger or Ehud Barak) and the combination of festive meals with sordid scenes with minors end up acting as a device for noise rather than revelation. The abundance of images, disordered and decontextualized, operates as a system of opacity. The excess dilutes the story and blurs the responsibilities. Curiously, the disinformation, the fragmentation of the story and the saturation without hierarchy that depersonalizes the blame in the spheres of power end up becoming a cynical tribute to the theses of Chomsky himself.
