Chris Burden ushered in a new era of performance art with his “masochistic” works, such as his most famous/infamous piece Shoot. Shoot itself holds a special significance as one of his most widely publicized works, and it also characterized the bulk of his performances with its ambiguity. Simply put, art historians have been puzzling over just what Shoot is offering a commentary on, and there are certainly many avenues of approach. In my own personal opinion, rather than it being a specific commentary on the Vietnam War (either positive or the more likely negative, both are irrelevant in this case) as Ward argued, I felt as though Shoot focused more on the role of the mass media and their dispersion (and distortion) of the news to the general public.
For my reasoning, I would point to the way Chris Burden framed the performance, with the emphasis on the audience and the reproduction of the performance through photographs. This is evident in the fact that the performance did not go as planned, and ended with Burden being shot through the arm rather than being grazed like he hoped. Thus, as can be inferred from such sloppy execution (or showmanship), the emphasis is not solely (or at all) on the violence of the act, but how this violence is perceived (and manipulated) by others, in this case the audience and photographers. It was because of these multiple perceptions that Burden earned the moniker of “the artist who shot himself,” although, as can clearly be seen in the above image, he did not shoot himself, but rather chose to be shot.
So, with this framing in mind, consider the events at the time of Chris Burden’s Shoot: not only the Vietnam war itself, but also the media circus surrounding the conflict, the acceleration of the anti-war movement, and the shattering of the liberal consensus which allowed Richard Nixon to capture not just one, but an eventual second term. Keeping these events in mind, consider this famous photograph titled “General Nguyen Ngoc Loan executing a Viet Cong prisoner in Saigon” by ex-Marine turned photographer Eddie Adams, which coincidentally won the Pulitzer Prize in 1969.
Now, this picture became a rallying cry for the anti-war movement, physical proof of the “atrocities” being committed by the US, or in the case the US-backed South Vietnamese. However, this interpretation looks at this picture purely subjectively with no substantive context attached. I will admit, if one does look at this picture in this way, then you will clearly see a uniformed South Vietnamese officer killing a “civilian.” And, as stereotypical American journalists do, they pounced on this photograph and vilified the American war effort and Nguyen Ngoc Loan, the National Police Chief who shot the man. However, this is not what happened. What actually happened was that Loan shot Nguyen Van Lem, a commander of a Vietcong death squad who had targeted members of the National Police and their families (and who was captured at a mass grave containing the bodies of many of the aforementioned targets), during the heat of the of the moment and chaos caused by the 1968 Tet Offensive. Simply put, he killed a non-uniformed terrorist who enjoyed no protection for the POW stipulations of the laws of war, because he was non-identifiable (as a soldier) and was not captured in any major military operation. Regardless of that minutia detail, Loan became the villain (although he opposed the backdoor negotiations between NVA/VC and US officials– which was a major reason for the weakened state of South Vietnam after US troop removal which led to the Fall of Saigon in 1975– as well as the “Phoenix Program,” which was a sanctioned reign of terror against the NLF and suspected NLF-associated civilians. Basically, Loan just wanted freedom for his own country earned by legal means) and Lem the hero.
So, much like Burden, Loan earned himself an unwarranted moniker, “the National Police Chief who shot an unarmed POW.” Yet, how does this tie back to Burden and Shoot? Well, if Burden’s work was not a response to Adams’ photograph directly, it certainly addressed it in the scope of Burden problematizing the role of media in society (the force-feeding of distorted views without context). Take the emphasis away from the shock of Burden being shot and you are left with the shooter( who if named would have been vilified in the same way Loan was, even though he was also just doing his job) and the audience (both the witnesses to the performance and the public sphere who saw the photographic reproductions). The audience is the reason there is such a negative stigma against Burden’s Shoot; their distortions (interpretations) of the event are the reasoning for Burden becoming “the artist who shot himself,” in the same role the media created the negative image of Loan.