An article well worth reading in the Washington Post on the dwindling psychological effect of distressing images
We are all forced, in private ways, to create a personal ecology of images. We choose to look, we bear as much as we can, yet we often turn away in anger or annoyance when an image seems to demand too much of us. Images of suffering children, in particular, are subject to a kind of emotional inflation, losing power if used too often or without regard to how we can channel the feelings they invoke. Shortly after Eisenstein’s mother holds up the body of her son, the filmmaker repeats the trope, upping the emotional stakes, with what is one of the most famous scenes in the history of cinema: A baby carriage teeters on the stairs, then careens down them. Extreme images of suffering are self-deflating; after you’ve used one, the only option is repetition, intensification, an increase in volume. They lead only to more passion, not understanding.
Looking to the future
Sontag despaired of the idea. “There isn’t going to be an ecology of images,” she wrote in “Regarding the Pain of Others.” There is no way “to ration horror, to keep fresh its ability to shock. And the horrors themselves are not going to abate.”
We have been drowned for decades with terrifying, horrifying and tragic images whilst in the meantime we have been largely insulated from such horrors. Domestic events still have the power to shock by proximity, however we soon shelve the revulsion once the politics gets in the way, and yes, I'm talking about gun control.
Images of starvation, disease, pollution and war due to distance and a surfeit of terrible images have lost the impact desired. There is also a unwritten hypocrisy on the use of such images depending on who caused the incident concerned, those we ourselves as a nation have caused are cauterized from the discussion. Images of abused, poisoned and battered children working to get materials for our consumer society are avoided. The terrible effects of toxins released into the environment ignored because of the economic expediency to do so. We have wiped images of torture from our collective psyche so as we can look forward, yet the damage remains to those so abused.
It has become almost impossible to shock, or to at least maintain the feeling of outrage. The carnage in a school, wiped out by incessant noise about the personal freedom of some to possess weapons, no matter what the body count becomes. To drive the point home it appears to be becoming almost necessary to plaster every wall with the images of the result of gun violence, otherwise the facts can be ignored until the next time, and the time after that.
The despair and unending sadness I feel under this deluge of images could be overwhelming, I do what I can [I refer you you to my blogroll on the right], the abuse, viciousness and willful blindness of "our" actions distresses me, so like many I have to protect myself from disheartenment. Carry on, do what I can, avoid the nightmares.
I'm a pacifist and the images of carnage no matter what the cause amount to the same, crimes against humanity. From acid being thrown into a young girls face to the carnage on a battlefield, they are all horrific crimes, violence begets violence and it is long past time this monstrous cycle came to and end.
This need to cry out ever louder through the noise of the 24h news cycle the need to grab more viewers to justify the existence of talking heads and their cousins the shock-jocks in the end softens the impact of the tragedy unfolding before our eyes, as in the end we do not have time or the inclination to deal with one tragedy before another is used to gain ratings. We fail to get to the bottom of an issue because of the never ending need to "entertain".
When images of horror lose their impact, where do we go to from here, my only solution is to do what I can, no matter how small that may seem in the grand scheme of things. My hope is that everyone will do a little like a butterfly flapping its wings in the jungle it will become a tempest of good will.
If any of the agencies in my blogroll are of interest to you, help them if you can.
Have a lovely Sunday
May all beings be peaceful.
May all beings be happy.
May all beings be safe.
May all beings awaken to
the light of their true nature.
May all beings be free.