The Last One.

Geez , Walter Benjamin and I have some things to discuss. His reading was most definitely the hardest reading for me - literally had to read this maybe ten times to get my head around it all. I tried to write about Benjamin but it never ended up working for me, so maybe I just took the easy way out.
Anyway, the whole idea about images of death within the media really stuck with me. First of all, the forms and ideas used in regulating the representation of events that have really happened seems to be questionable. It seems more and more people these days are unsure about the basis of news reports and the truth - can we trust the sources that are meant to provide us with information to be informed, aware citizens of our world? When does censorship blend into hiding aspects of the truth that provide us with vital information? A new study shows that 63% of Americans believe that news stories are inaccurate. Of course, the USA has media outlets like Fox news that show a definite favour for one 'side' , or view. Are we really getting the impartial information we need to make informed decisions?

I found the term Campbell used, ' War pornography', particularly interesting for many reasons. Using the term pornography implies that there is some kind of pleasure people get from seeing such images. When the phrase is used in conjunction with war images such as the confronting images from the Vietnam war,or Iraq war, it ( for me) implies that there is a sick fetishism attached to viewing such images. Does the public deserve to see such images, with the questionable reasons for viewing them, if we indeed view them as 'war pornography'? Are we drawn to these images the same way we can't look away from a car crash we drive past?

I find a lot of these same sentiments about some art - I recently came across Damien Hirst's 'The Wounds of Christ', and at first, felt so repulsed I turned the page and moved on. But I couldn't help, eventually going back to the images and studying them. Upon reading the interview that accompanied the image, I realized the image was fake, and felt I could turn back and look at it again without feeling some kind of voyeuristic shame for studying something so initially repulsive.
Is this the same for images of 'Horrific Blindness'? Perhaps we revisit things that were once shocking, and see them as a document, historical evidence and see them in a way that makes it ok.