The Battle of Orgreave Response

With things like Fox News reporting to the American public, it is nice to think that we can turn somewhere for more objective and slightly less self-involved information. Typically, the BBC is a better choice, but even they can have faults. The skew that the media placed on the Battle of Orgreave left many miners with a sense of unresolved tension that was practically palpable in parts of this video. It is easy to forget to take news stories like this with a grain of salt, to keep from believing every word being said by a nice looking newscaster. I really respect the efforts that both Mike Figgis and Jeremy Deller went through to represent this event as accurately as possible, giving interviews that allow the viewer to empathize with both sides and be aware of both sentiments.

This unresolved tension combined with over twenty years of pent up frustration could be seen in the interviews with the miners, anger so fully developed that some of the "police officers" feared that things could get out of hand in the heat of the moment during the re-enactment. By intermingling photographs of the actual event with clips from the re-enacment, it felt as if I was watching live footage at times, which was actually really disturbing on some levels. It felt like the difference between watching war footage and "Saving Private Ryan." Without the knowledge and reassuring mantra that everything I'm watching is staged, it gets hard to know how to feel and how to react.

I feel like one of Deller's major goals with this video is to give repressed minor's a voice, something that I felt they truly appreciated. This re-enactment gave them a chance to re-live a traumatizing event and express their feelings to an objective media.