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When should we look away? Or should we take a long and close look to ensure we see the horror? I'm asking those questions quite often these days.
When footage of P. Diddy Combs assaulting his then girlfriend Cassie Ventura played on TV screens around the world, many networks chose not to broadcast the more graphic images of the rapper kicking her as she lay on the floor of the hotel.
Likewise, footage of a greyhound writhing in agony after a fall on the Wentworth Park dog track a couple of weeks ago was blurred out to spare viewers the discomfort of seeing what had actually happened.
And from Gaza most recently, we were spared from seeing the most graphic images of the immediate aftermath of the Israeli airstrike that burned and dismembered dozens of Palestinians who'd sought refuge in tents.
I can't help wondering if santising the injustices captured by cameras deadens us to wrongdoing. I remember a moment from my school days watching a film about World War II when for the first time I saw grainy black and white images of concentration camp victims being bulldozed into a pit.
There was no trigger warning from the teacher. The class of 25 boys fell totally silent, the room filled only with the whirr of the Bell & Howell projector and the plummy narration. It was a profound moment for all of us.
Part of my childhood innocence died in that classroom. At the same time I was awoken to the industrial scale of evil that operated just 15 years before I was born. Seared into memory, it was a stark and necessary lesson about the cruelty humans inflict on each other. And a reminder of my own good fortune.
Contemporary news reporting would likely blur those images of corpses, softening the horror for the comfort of viewers. Before the footage even aired, it would be preceded by a warning that the report might distress some viewers.
Hard truths are these days easy to avoid if you don't want to be troubled by them.
I wonder what Lee Miller would have made of this tendency to soften and blur horror.
Miller was a wartime photographer who captured the London blitz, the liberation of Paris and the Buchenwald and Dachau concentration camps. She became a photojournalist, she said, to document war as historical evidence. What she saw and photographed led to post-traumatic stress disorder, clinical depression and alcoholism after the war. Her story is portrayed by Kate Winslet in the movie Lee, to be released in September this year.
Had Eddie Adams' photo of the execution of Nguyen Van Lem in Saigon during the Tet offensive in 1968 been blurred or pixelated, would the opposition to Vietnam War have been less intense? And what if the terror and pain on the naked Phan Thi Kim Phuc's face when she was photographed running from a napalm strike in South Vietnam by Nick Ut had been masked? Sometime revulsion is needed to galvanise opinion.
As distressing as it may have been to watch, the death of that greyhound in agony on the dog track might not have been forgotten so quickly if we'd all seen the horror of it rather than a blurred blob on the screen. The condemnation of P. Diddy Combs would have been louder - and his lame apology for his actions seemed even more inadequate - had we seen the full violence of his actions.
We need to look evil in the eye if we want to defeat it.
HAVE YOUR SAY: Have we become too squeamish when it comes to confronting horror? Why do we lap up gore in movies but look away in real life? Are trigger warnings necessary before news reports? Email us: echidna@theechidna.com.au
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IN CASE YOU MISSED IT:
- The federal opposition has announced a plan to cancel the student visas of protesters who chant anti-Semitic slogans or express support for Hamas, if elected to government. Opposition home affairs spokesman James Paterson said if elected next year the Coalition would use section 116 of the Migration Act to cancel the visas of student protesters "found to be involved in spreading anti-Semitism or supporting terrorism".
- The head of Doctors Without Borders has slammed the Australian government for supplying arms to Israel and failing to apply sanctions over its seven-month military offensive on Gaza. "Australia must apply appropriate sanctions on Israel, as it would to any other global state that refuses to comply with UN Security Council resolutions," Medecins Sans Frontieres president Dr Christos Christou said on Tuesday.
- The Federal Court has been asked to halt the destruction of habitat trees across Victoria after an endangered greater glider was found crushed near a firebreak inside a national park. The Warburton Environment Group has taken action against the Victorian government's Forest Fire Management unit after the dead glider was found at the base of a fallen tree a fortnight ago.
THEY SAID IT: "Journalism can never be silent: that is its greatest virtue and its greatest fault. It must speak, and speak immediately, while the echoes of wonder, the claims of triumph and the signs of horror are still in the air." - Henry Grunwald
YOU SAID IT: Dangerous synthetic opioids 300 times potent than heroin are turning up in illicit drugs yet only two jurisdictions in Australia have agreed to pill testing.
"I agree that drug/pill testing is a good idea and will save some lives," writes Michael. "However, it is difficult to understand how rational, intelligent people are prepared to ingest something into their body, and trust that it is safe, when it has come from a ruthless drug dealer. There seems to be a lack of personal responsibility and consideration of any adverse consequences of taking a substance that has come from such a dubious source."
Matt writes: "Offering widespread pill testing is the way to go, if we care about reducing deaths. There are so many myths around drug policy, most of which have comprehensively failed the test of time. Beyond pill testing, the current criminalisation of drug possession and use clearly does not work in terms of suppressing trade and demand - that should be obvious. The only groups that really benefit from the status quo are organised crime groups that make a huge amount of money from keeping things just they way they are now."
"I agree totally to the widespread use of pill testing," writes Patti. "I think it will inform users to what is in the drugs they are buying and will put them off or at least make them more cautious as to their supply. It is one thing to take something you think is OK, but to find out it is cut with all manner of nasties is alarming."
Reading The Echidna in Bangkok, Carl writes: "I know this sounds high and mighty of me, but what is it that turns people to drugs in the first place? Is life really that dull and unexciting that you need to pop a pill to liven it up? The entire journey is soon over and you're back to another day, often regretful. I gave up everything, booze too, some years ago now and when people are surprised at my total abstinence, my simple reply is that I'm now living in reality."
"Teaching kids to research and test drugs before taking them is smart," writes Jennifer. "Forcing them to take the risk when encouraged by naive and silly peers (as happens), is stupid. Putting politics and principles before lives shows a complete lack of compassion and consideration for the kids, their families and friends. Cold, hard, nasty politics that is plain stupid."
Christopher writes: "The Echidna generally makes common sense look so easy. What is it about politicians that they find it almost impossible to apply common sense on any issue?"
"It's all very well being idealistic and saying that people shouldn't take drugs," writes Deidre. "But the reality is that people will still take them. You have to deal with what is, not how you would like things to be, so you might as well make it as safe as possible to use drugs by pill testing."