Death Porn - is this making you hard?
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It's been a little over a week since the horrible events at Beslan. The number of 'post horror human interest stories' on the news channels has now slowed to a trickle. Seven days ago BBC News 24 covered Beslan as if it was the most important place on Earth now it really doesn't give a fuck any more.
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And why was Beslan the most important news story on Earth a few days ago? Was it because the seige was part of a news story that was of burning interest to us in the West? Nope. The reason why it was such a hit with the media was because there were bleeding children. Lots and lots of bleeding children.
I'm a great fan and consumer of classic war and mayhem photo reportage. The pictures have a raw power that we don't encounter in our daily lives. People are drawn to that stuff. It's natural. Great photographers of the genre, Don McCullin, Robert Capa made people aware of horrors that were taking place around the world - Biafra, the Spanish Civil War, wherever. Maybe these guys weren't working for a higher purpose. Maybe they were war junkies. But their work carried a message. A call to action from humanity. There was a point.
Then we come to Beslan and all the other horrors that the news media beams into our lives these days. Huge, global reporting networls have been founded to harness the power of new technology to beam death into our living rooms 'as and when it happens'. Nightly, we are exposed to the spectacle of pink, scrubbed middle-class news reporters, safely eschonched in body armour, reporting with relish and fake emotion about the horrors they are witnessing and the personal dangers they are exposing themselves to. The story behind the story doesn't really matter. Safe in our living rooms we can watch people much less fortunate than ourselves suffering torment as we tuck into our evening meals. Like sex without love, the images we see are presented to titilate our basest instincts. Real-life death and misery presented as entertainment. In comparison, watching a video featuring Ron Jeremy banging a couple of old skanks dressed as schoolgirls, fake pigtails and all, strikes me as the kind of material I'd much rather see broadcast at 7.00pm on a weekday evening.
I'm a great fan and consumer of classic war and mayhem photo reportage. The pictures have a raw power that we don't encounter in our daily lives. People are drawn to that stuff. It's natural. Great photographers of the genre, Don McCullin, Robert Capa made people aware of horrors that were taking place around the world - Biafra, the Spanish Civil War, wherever. Maybe these guys weren't working for a higher purpose. Maybe they were war junkies. But their work carried a message. A call to action from humanity. There was a point.
Then we come to Beslan and all the other horrors that the news media beams into our lives these days. Huge, global reporting networls have been founded to harness the power of new technology to beam death into our living rooms 'as and when it happens'. Nightly, we are exposed to the spectacle of pink, scrubbed middle-class news reporters, safely eschonched in body armour, reporting with relish and fake emotion about the horrors they are witnessing and the personal dangers they are exposing themselves to. The story behind the story doesn't really matter. Safe in our living rooms we can watch people much less fortunate than ourselves suffering torment as we tuck into our evening meals. Like sex without love, the images we see are presented to titilate our basest instincts. Real-life death and misery presented as entertainment. In comparison, watching a video featuring Ron Jeremy banging a couple of old skanks dressed as schoolgirls, fake pigtails and all, strikes me as the kind of material I'd much rather see broadcast at 7.00pm on a weekday evening.
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