The Propagation of Terror by The American Press

“The US media have played a central role in fostering this culture of fear among its audiences through a continuous stream of news reports on natural and man-made disasters and cinematic blockbusters depicting apocalyptic scenarios.” (Podalsky) When 9.11 happened, we saw News covered with images of falling building, ashes, and people injured. When storm swept across the whole state in United State, we saw images of crash houses and rescuing activity. Some image could be hard to watch, but we are attracted to them. People react to provocative things like the suffering and the pain of people. For example, from the images of bony and hungry kids to images of bloody scene in wars, we can not resist to pay attention on them and feel sympathy. However, by comparing two films “Babel” and “Life and Debts” and analyze text, it shows us that as a method expressing issue, overly showing people’s suffering is inefficient, misleading and unnecessary.

Under audiences' unconsciousness, media has used a huge amount of suffering images. One reason for using brutal images is because it is the most direct way to attract people’s attention. For example, imaging you are looking through your friends’ posts on Facebook, or flipping through the pages in a magazine. You will probably decide to pause a second and look at an image of a woman crying, or an image of a man bleeding rather than some advertisement or your friends smiling in a party. That is because those provocative images immediately trigger audiences’ thoughts. We start to think what is going on and desire to find out what is behind this image.

Anther media type that contains large use of suffering images is film, especially films that trying to express a point of view or issue. Like “Babel” and “Life and Debt”, both films have an issue to express, but they express in such a different way. “Life and Debt” are documentary that mostly uses interview and voiceover to express issue, the film successfully express the anger of local Jamaican towards World Bank (indirect way of invasion to business), and sarcastic attitude from filmmaker, Stephanie Black. On the other hand, “Babel” is an example of Melodrama, “Babel engages its subject matter with feeling. That is to say, the film’s preoccupation with questioning the cold logic of the law becomes the impetus for formal experimentation as it appropriates a sensational cultural form (namely, melodrama) to move its viewers in unexpected ways.” (Podalsky) Babel uses over the top scenario and extreme characteristic of character to exaggerate the tension between the law and immigrants, in order to force film’s point of view to audiences.

In Melodrama, filmmaker forces audience to think about the issue behind the context by transmit the pain of others to them. According to text, melodrama has two characteristics. “ (1) The prolonged length of scenes of suffering which position that ecstatic state of feeling as a transparent sign of moral good and (2) the frequency of their utilization to call on the viewer to serve as a witness to this suffering.” (Podalsky) In “Babel”, close-up and extreme close-up are used frequently in the film when character is in impulsive emotion or deeply in pain. While we watch the image of suffering, once again it triggers audiences' moral sense, we feel compassion about what we see. We also start to process the information we get in the film. Then we question the society and ourselves what are the reasons that cause the tragedy, and how can we fix it. However, melodrama also has its shortcomings. Susan Sontag, an American writer and filmmaker, questioned the effectiveness of showing suffering images through a third person position in her book “Regarding the pain of others”.

In a film, camera shows audiences the reality, but at the same time it puts us into a third person position – witness. Since audiences are not on the same position as victims, the pain of victims will not transmit as effective as expected. We may not understand what is the real message behind the scene, no matter how uncomfortable the images are. “Photographs of an atrocity may give rise to opposing responses. A call for peace. A cry for revenge. Or simply the bemused awareness, continually restocked by photographic information, that terrible things happen.” (Sontag) When audiences see the older brother died from getting shot in “Babel”, his father crying over his body. When the wife suffered from injury, tourists immediately thought the attack is from terrorist, and they only worried about themselves while the wife could not be rescued. Audiences will react as feeling compassion to the character, then thinking how foolish and selfish human being can be rather than thinking of the message of immigrant and law. It is fair to say that, once people feeling sympathy to the father in Babel who lost his son, we have already taken ourselves out of the possibility that could happen to us. The more exaggerated the pain is portrayed, the fewer audiences feel attached to the victim because we know those incidents may not happen to us.

That is another shortcoming of melodrama that it only activates audiences' compassion instead of the desire to help, and usually that compassion turns into the satisfaction of our own life. “In its worst guise, compassion involves the appropriation of the suffering of others to prove the moral superiority of the compassionate one. At its best, compassion’s individualizing dynamics move us away from the recognition of structural inequalities.” (Podalsky) In the past few years, there were few serious earthquake happened in China. Whenever my family watched the news, my mother would turn to me and said, “ How horrible that is? We should be satisfied what we have now.” The statement is right, but I just feel morally wrong to think that way. Besides donate some money, what else will we do to help them after the feeling of sympathy. Even the act of donation seems like a statement of appreciation for not being a victim.

“Compassion is an unstable emotion. It needs to be translated into action, or it withers.”(Sontag) Just like what Susan Sontag mentioned in the text, compassion is not a weak emotion that can fade away easily. When I was a kid, there were many homeless people sitting at the corner of the street and trembling from head to foot. By that time, I was extremely sympathetic to them and tried to give them some coins. However, as time went by, I grew up, saw them time after time, and knew the fact there were people acting as homeless for money. I gradually lost my sympathy to them. In the same way, we may lose the “interest” to the issues that were continuously expressed by the pain of others, someday we may not have any compassion at all.

“Life and Debt”, on the other hand, do not express people’s compassion by provocative images. The film also puts audiences in third person position – the judge. The film has no over the top suffering scenario. Nobody died, and there is no blood. However, audiences can feel the anger and tension from the interview from both Jamaican and representative from World Bank. The ironic scene comparison between Jamaican farmer and American tourist along with upbeat Bob Marley’s music truly shows the sarcastic attitude of Stephanie Black, and it also emphasize the problem that caused by “Free trade” – the debt that seems can not be paid off by Jamaican in the current situation. As a viewer, I was convinced by comparison and aware how serious of the problem. The film can be less interest than “Babel” without this striking scenario and complex relationship, but it truly expresses the problem in a particular and detailed way.

Another example can be Kony 2012, which is a huge event last year. The issue is about a criminal named Joseph Kony in Uganda, he organized a group of “soldiers”. They kidnapped kids in the normal family and trained them into “soldiers”. Moreover, they even request the kids to kill their own parent after training. Kids living in a poor condition with life threat any moment. Jason Russell, who co-founded invisible children, is a filmmaker who travel to Uganda and witness the incident. He decided to grab people’s attention. Then he worked on this project for years. However, in the documentary “Kony 2012” there is pain, and there are images, but they are not over exaggerated that audiences will feel uncomfortable to watch. The film is trying to gather more people to the event, so the government of United State will notice and let government help the kids. As the result, the event works out when the resolution received support from 37 senators. This shows us that we do not need to show the suffering of others to get attention or express a point of view all the time.

The method of using brutal image to express the point of view is inefficient because the pain of others hardly transmits to the audience through camera. The method is misleading because those images make the audience feel sympathy instead of wanting to help them. The method is unnecessary. The sympathy is weak feeling that may no longer effective if its over exposed to us. Why not just keep it simple, human is not a cold animal. We do not need brutal image to help other human in suffer. Sometimes the simplest way is the most effective way to express an idea, a drama will always just be a “drama” with a hidden message.