Elsewhere, their images have become tools of political resistance, but here the detainees are in a sense twice violated, first as objects of the photographers' derision, then as objects of the audience's detached contemplation.
And when, days after our meeting, I hear Smith perform in London's LRB bookshop, I am struck by the tone of buoyant confrontation, Smith telling the white Brits in the audience not to feel detached as they listen to dear white america, adding: "You invented racism". The performance has extraordinary projection, adrenalin and vocal range.
He repeats words (pay attention to "island" and "detached"), making them signposts to guide audiences toward his conclusion.
"This whole notion of objective, detached journalism is not trusted by our audience," Mr. Brown said.
Somewhat more enigmatic and sharper-elbowed than the man in the movie, Mr. Marable's Malcolm is a passionate, conflicted and guarded man, filled with contradictions — charming and charismatic with audiences and the press but detached, even chilly with his wife, Betty, whom he frequently treated with misogynistic disdain.
But in this version, Lucia — that supremely expressive Romantic character, the one who weeps, swoons, trembles and is often, as the libretto describes, simply "beside herself with misery and fear" in a work dominated by passions and blood — is so internal that the audience perceives her only as indifferent and detached.
But an enraptured audience belted along all the same even a few detached chaperones accompanying young ones were roused to attention by her set's ending.
This double narrative and double purpose is effected by a doubleness brought about in the audience: we are at once intensely interested and detached, like the Mind itself in the Body.
The audience is invited to experience this disaster with the same detached attitude as we view troubling world events.
The audience may come to share their feelings, since Mr. Hong's detached style makes empathy difficult.
