Analysis of media issues, politics and current events.
For most Americans, seeing a picture of Osama Bin Laden dead is not about confirmation or getting more news.
Let’s be honest, it’s about exhilaration. Outside the muddled-bumbling account from the Obama Administration, we pretty much have the core and essential facts. We know he’s dead. And it’s our public acceptance of the fact that creates the jubilation.
We felt that excitement in learning and believing that he died. Joy in how he died. Pride in our accomplishment and sticking it to a bad guy with a kick-ass S.E.A.L team. Patriotism. A but like any emotional surge, it’s a feeling that will normalize and you will eventually come down from it. Problem is, we don’t want to. We need something to stimulate us emotionally. Pictures perhaps….
Yes, what I’m saying is the Osama Bin Laden pictures are essentially revenge porn.
Revenge porn. Something we want to look at and pleasure ourselves in seeing the demise and pain of another. To “get off” imagining the pain and suffering of another human being. And like the one of the court definitions of porn that calls it material with “no socially redeeming value,” seeing Osama Bin Laden shot up doesn’t add more to our knowledge of the incident (we know he was shot in the eye and chest). Just a feeling of payback.
Are we crazy for wanting to feel such a emotion? Revenge? To feel it again? Problem is with revenge, it acts just like anger. Let it stay around long enough, and it doesn’t care about or forgets what originally made it angry. Eventually anger and revenge solely exist to find reasons to feed itself and stay alive (cough, Palestine and Israel conflicts).
And if the media gets access to the images, salivating for the ratings potential, they’ll treat it like the old peep show booths in Times Square. “Gentlemen, step inside for a visual treat. Just don’t spill your revenge on the floor”
Tantalizing as the images might be. They won’t provide much additional knowledge or closure. It will sustain our hunger lust for revenge. And like any revenge, as tasty and delicious as it is, fades. Leaving you wanting more. And we might look to feed it somewhere else.
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Bryan
May 9th, 2011 at 11:23 am
Your reasoning is not going to appeal to most in the media business.
It is a strong tendency in the American media to think that almost everything is supposed to be published. Something about an overriding “right to know.”
True, there is also a convention against publishing pictures of identifiable dead people. Certainly the bin Laden photos would qualify there (unless faked!).
I guess what confuses me about your post is the fact that it isn’t really up to the media to publish the photos. I mean, sure they could do it if the photos were available, but it isn’t ultimately up to the media. The administration can do that, and the Internet would do the rest without needing mainstream media assistance.
Brooks
May 10th, 2011 at 1:53 pm
Heck yea. This pictures are like crack. For the media. And the public. Imagine if your wife/girlfriend cheated on you. And there were pictures of the act. Would you look? Even though you know it’d make you angrier? Same addiction.
phineas y ferb
May 1st, 2012 at 3:27 pm
phineas y ferb…
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