Uechi-Ryu.com

Have you ever wondered, when you watch news articles about war, or disasters or other mayhem,
where are the dead bodies?
I say this not in a ghoulish fashion with an explicit desire to see them, but rather to point out that on American news outlets in particular, there seems to be a lot of nightly talk about death, death tolls, lives lost, etc. but seldom they are shown or seen.

On international news outlets (Primarily non-western ones) More often than not, bodies are shown as they are, blood, dismemberments, shredded, bullet riddled, organs scattered about, bloated with maggots, and all.

For my part, it always makes the news story that much more real, that much more indescribably impacting, more profoundly sad, or shockingly poignant. To be able to see the real damage, to see the real suffering, not just to hear about it as a forgettable sound bite on CNN, where they then switch seamlessly to commercial or a story on Xbox games.

I wonder the real reason why Westerners find it so offensive (If they really do at all) and I wonder what the effect on the public would be if they saw, say, an American Soldier's body lying in pieces by the roadway, or a child decapitated by some countries' soldier's death squad, or a woman frozen and twisted after a night spent in the open Himalayas, or a man disemboweled by children forced to fight for some dictator's mad designs.

I sometimes wonder if perhaps the most powerful nations on earth's citizens may be desensitized to hearing while eating dinner, small stories of roadside bombings, or gang violence, or other suffering around the globe because these things they never see, and they are unaware of the reality beyond the 60 second news spot; because they never have to have the images burned into their psyche, never have to deal with images like looking into the eyes of the child standing over her mother who's skull is horribly crushed because she had been stoned to death.

Many is the time I have heard my fellow Americans say things like: "F'em all! Just nuke the F---kers!"
"I could give a rats A$$ what happens in BFE, I live in America! Thank goodness for that!"

I always wonder how they would react if they saw the visceral reality of their news stories, no matter which side of the political fence they reside on.

What do you think?

_________________
There's a bit of Metablade in all of us.

Isn't that the truth though It gets to the point that 6 dead American soldiers is just a daily occurance, and we barely bat an eyelash at it.

Show footage of the soldiers funeral where the Mother is wailing from grief at the loss of her baby boy who had so much more life to live. Show the 5 yearold orphaned son staring blankly not knowing ho much of a void this loss of his father will cause in his life.

"Yeah... but that's distastefull", many will say. "Let's keep it sanitary and detached from us so we can go blindly through our lives not feeling for anyone other than those who imediately effect us."

Or...

Show footage of Iraqi women and children blown up by a homicide bomber. See homicide bomber body parts flung on the walls and hanging from the lamp posts. Let's see the bloody head of an Iraqi baby amongst the mellons on a roadside fruit stand.

Or...

Let's take a closer look at the decaying bodies in the Shia areas of Iraq. Not just one... Let's get the real effect of thousands of intertwined, machine-gun-riddled bodies in piles.

Now the real question is - to what end? And who gets to decide whose bodies make the 6:00 news?

And do we really want to see so much of this that we become desensitized to it? Because - trust me - desensitization will happen after enough assault on our emotions. Either that, or you'll be getting mass PTSD. It's one or the other.

Is that what we want? We see the gore, and switch to a commercial on fruit loops or Viagra. It gets lost in the daily information overload. After all, TV needs revenue to sell all those nifty gore stories.



<Click!!>

Food for thought...

- Bill

-Munch, munch, munch.

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There's a bit of Metablade in all of us.

There are two things you shouldn't see being made. One is sausage and the other is war.

At issue here is also the fact that in today's dollar driven media - there are no dollars for the good news. Shock, scare, promoting fear...these are all things the media does quite well without showing shattered or squishy remains.

I think our aversion to seeing the people jump out of the windows of the twin towers and splat into oblivion on the rooftops of the adjacent buildings on 9/11 is quite healthy. I don't think adding this to out daily over-dose of news would do anything productive at all.

I feel that for 99% of what is covered in the news you can be informed about issues without seeing the screen splashed with gore on a nightly basis.

Dana

_________________
Did you show compassion today?

Meta: I've seen sausage made, and yup. That's pretty much the size of it.


I think you and Bill are right.
Perhaps the reason why showing reality of tragedy is able to exist on other countries' networks is because the news stories are not followed by an ads for frozen waffles.
On the networks that do show the gore, it is indeed done for shock value, but the "good" kind (if that is even an appropriate description) rather for "entertainment" value, which is what essentially Western news is.

In many ways the other countries are more innocent in this area, which is to say that by and large, unless you live in a country where wide spread bloodshed is a normal part of life, then indeed it is haunting.

I guess my main point is, after seeing stories reported on other outlets, I find that American news often glosses over details which if shown, may shock normally apathetic people
into some kind of action.

[devil's advocate mode]

Perhaps an example of this would be:
Would American public support for the New Orleans floods have been so massive if we only heard about it on radio?
Or did the images shown over and over again (Including dead bodies, and I'm walking a fine line here.) were not shown?

-Or if the Tsunami footage showed only buildings being washed away and left out the dead and suffering people?

Ultimately, could it not be said that War, and famine, and disease, and other natural disasters are not just 'something that happens' over there, somewhere, but affect real human beings and real lives, and saying "I don't want to see it" is the same as saying "I'm not involved?"

In the case of war, and our country is at war, and like it or not, as an American, mustn't we as a whole take responsibility for that action, and isn't part of that processes of responsibility viewing and dealing with, at least on a human level, the actual consequences of the act?


What sort of example are we setting for the rest of the developing world if we, as citizens say, We can start a war, and support and fund death, (even if it justified) but I don't want to see the result of my countries' actions.
Just call me when it's all over.

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There's a bit of Metablade in all of us.

I tried to make a subtle point, and it appears to have been lost to Meta and Ben.

The point is that the gore has shock value - until we desensitize the audience. It's a weapon, and all "sides" to a war story are going to be showing a slice of the horror that promotes their agenda. Truth be told, the gore of the insurgents and the Baathists far outnumbers anything done by and received by "our guys." So if you want to get into a pissing contest - and that's what it will be reduced to - then what Meta and Ben want is going to be lost in the shock for those calling for action to exterminate those bloody bastards.

Oops!

The pissing contest then is just an amplified version of what we had to go through in 2004. Many of us are still recovering from that nonsense.

To wit... You might find it interesting that in a thread on my forum, I supplied a link to al Zarqawi's beheading of Nick Berg. My purpose? To show an example of Grossman's theme of atrocity in play during war. And you know what? More than a few people went totally postal over it, and got pretty pissed at me. To some extent, I think some got upset because it actually was the kind of thing that would cause some to want us to kick butt and take names.

That wasn't what you and Ben wanted, was it, Meta?

The Marines do just that though. They prepare their own warriors for the kind of scum they will be dealing with by showing them these films. It makes it easy to dehumanize the enemy, thus making it much easier to kill. (Source: Grossman)

- Bill

Hmmmmm, I was pretty upset over that beheading Bill, and stuck up for you on that thread.. you should have seen the insuling stuff that was written against you. I deleted my post after he deleted his.

Just the picture of that American kneeling before those Islamof**** makes my blood boil. I'd love to see the same happen to them.

I'm just saying that we don't see all the footage Bill. Good nor bad, which would allow us to get a "fair and balanced" view of things. Everything is sanitized, that's all. I have no agenda Bill.. and to turn things around wouldn't showing a mother freaking out over her son's death work in favor of wanting to kill Arabs? Not that I truly want some mother to go through having her son die, and then have to see her own face on the nightly news.

Bill-"The point is that the gore has shock value - until we desensitize the audience. It's a weapon, and all "sides" to a war story are going to be showing a slice of the horror that promotes their agenda."

Yep, And that's what we have today Bill. Every fricken day it's 3 American's dead.. 100 dead in suicide bombing. Then as Meta says, they seamlessly flow into the next story on how the the cost of pork bellies has droped 3 cents. Those 3 dead are nothing but a few words on the nightly news, until it's your own friend or family and you see first hand the sorrow from losing a loved one.



Regards.

You're assuming the footage is fair and balanced?

This is what I consider to be a terrible myth in media. All footage is biased. It is biased by access, by money, by the personal decisions made by the camera person who shoots it, the editor who cuts some of it out and the producer who decides what will or will not go to air.

There is simply no such this as unbiased footage. Because no matter what - somebody decided what the camera would see. Even those silly traffic cameras on the highway are a some level beholden to someone's subjective choices on what kinds of camera would be purchased, how long of a lens, the quailty of the image, and where it points.

It just gets amplified when you're talking about news. A balanced view - actually tells you in pretty plain language that no one view is going to be unbiased so you need to see several views that are biased from different points and then try and draw your conclusions.

Is media less biased in a state run media? Not that I've seen. Everyone loves the temptation of controlling what people do and do not see, do and do not hear - and nobody resists.

So all media, then, falls on a continuum of bias. If you think the US media is sanitized - try picking up a newspaper in China or North Korea. It is not and never will be a perfect system because it is a human system.

And there are checks and balances in a comsumer driven media as well. As the spanish speaking population of the US grows the number of Spanish speaking and hispanic-themed oriented networks is growing by leaps and bounds. Issues and concerns that never saw the light of day are now getting regular air time.

The internet has been a great equalizer in media and will continue in this role. For less money and with less...polish (i.e. market pressure) anyone can have a world-wide audience. For better or worse it is out there and you are left to make your own decisions.

Actually - someone already has a fascinating thought in this regard and put together this little movie. It is a little slow paced - but it makes a wonderful point. Short version - media will never be free from influence.



get some popcorn and click this link:

http://www.robinsloan.com/epic/

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Did you show compassion today?

Not by a long shot. I should have put [sarcasm]"fair and balanced"[/sarcasm].

Meta: Not at all, I belive that I agreed with you on many points.
However, just for clarity, my position was an attempt at being a-political.
Death is death, and politics are only as important in the minds of those push it.
Perhaps I did not communicate my thoughts well.

_________________
There's a bit of Metablade in all of us.

I beleive the dead should be shown repect and not publicised simply as lumps of dead flesh , If we want to make there loss more human show thee lives and what will be no more ... not there deaths .

Similar rational to not showing Prisoners of war etc for propoganda .. human rights even when there dead perhaps ....

I think a wish to see this stuff is the example of becoming detached , seeing more I dont think will help .

Less civilised countrys IMHO show more , where are our standards these days , what do we want being human to mean .



My veiw always has been that it`s wrong to veiw because of the victims rights , If I watch the clip he`d only ever be that victim , and not the brave valuable human he probably was .

Ive seen some terrible things in my life in the flesh , I have no need to understand such acts better , I get it ... I am happy if many dont .

I cant really comment on this since im on the fence about this.

But when i saw Margret Hassan(britain) from britain pleading and crying i really felt bad, especially learning the manner of her death and body.

http://banffuechiryu.tripod.com/head_hunt1.wmv



Someone needs a cigarrette

I don't think anyone was offended Bill,they were just hacking on you.

Laird

Meta:It could be argued that in an event of cold blooded murder, genocide, and mass destruction of life, there exists inherently no concept of dignity, respect, or honor.
Showing the result of crimes committed against humanity gives gravity to the event and thereby respects the event.
Western Media outlets (and others) are not capable at this point in time of showing either an unbiased or unsensationalized frame of context.

However, ideally, for one to ignore the aspects of the crime, no matter how small, to turn away with a self-serving and apathetic avariciousness, is to display a disdain of facing reality.
I submit that this is to show true disrespect of the event, and persons involved.

Perhaps the issue is more about how the media, and by extension Western political and social views, deals with the subject of death and violence itself.

An interesting paradox is this:
That the vast, and ever-present glut of violence by which most Westerners view in the form of movies and shows and games is considered of at least worthy of entertainment value by the same.
~But yet when confronted with real life violence and death, somehow it is distasteful.

Indeed it is all about context.

Therein lays one's concept of disrespect:
Acceptance of wide-spread violence and death for entertainment
Vs
Death and tragedy on real life.

The result of accepting the former and not the latter.
Disrespect for life itself.

_________________
There's a bit of Metablade in all of us.