Jim Tumbls.

adamisacson:

indefensible:

I worry about what it is that we do to ourselves when we view videos of atrocity. It is terrible that that woman died, but I do not want to see it, and neither I think should you.

Why? Because nothing is gained from it. Yes, you are shocked, but you are also engaging in a rather macabre theatre, a pornography of death, if you will. And the sad thing is that your capacity to be shocked by the next such thing you see will diminish. Until the things we should never have seen cloud our perception of where the boundaries of right and wrong are.

I do not want to become the kind of person who can watch such things, because I think it is a step towards becoming a person who is capable of doing such things.

I agree - the last thing we want is our media showing the equivalent of snuff films. On the other hand:

• Those searing images from Vietnam (naked girl running from napalm attack, police chief shooting a guy in the head) did a lot to force Americans to question what the hell we were doing there and cut short our involvement.
• The 1991 Rodney King beating video had a huge impact on public opinion, forced deep reforms on the LAPD, and triggered rioting a year later.
• Imagine how much longer Abu Ghraib abuses would have gone on without those graphic photos coming out.

Sometimes a shockingly explicit image is what it takes to bring reality to people who would otherwise deny it, and force complacent people to act.

If only gruesome films of Hitler’s concentration camps could have been circulating in the West in 1941-42. Maybe the allies would at least have felt it necessary to bomb the railroad tracks leading to the camps. In the more recent past, perhaps a graphic video of a Janjaweed raid on a Darfuri village could have lit a fire under the international community’s ass.

Adding this to the queue. I’m glad Adam posts so much… otherwise my reblog-a-day would repeat everything he says!