I've for a while had some sort of view (worldview?) about images, violence, and people (populations). It originated as an inexplicable hatred for the Saw horror movies (of which there are now four), Hostel, Turista, etc. etc. and others which fall into this genre called "torture porn" by some. I couldn't seem to shake this feeling that these movies are somehow profoundly bad for people, and for society in general, regardless of my usual tendencies to "to-each-his-own"-away any other propensities for censorship or restriction of media. So why did I find Saw and Hostel so different and so much more damaging than violent video games or graphically violent movies (i.e. Boondock Saints, The Departed, etc., not to mention the more graphic-novel violence of Sin City and the Kill Bill series, in all of which I saw artistic merit)? I don't know. But I do believe that images are inherently desensitizing, that their capacity for evoking wonder, terror, sadness, anger, inspiration, etc. is in no way limitless. I even believe that this process happens on a macro-level, in addition to personal, individual desensitization. I'm not sure what I want to happen--I can't ever see myself acting toward to banning of (really almost anything, including) these movies or websites (rotten dot com comes to mind). Anyway, while frantically researching my next written portion of my thesis, I came across this passage of an essay regarding photography that I had first read about a year ago.
"Images transfix. Images anesthetize. An event known through photographs certainly becomes more real than it would have been if one had never seen the photographs--think of the Vietnam War. (For a counter example, think of the Gulag Archipelago, of which we had no photographs.) But after repeated exposure to images it also becomes less real.
The same law holds for evil as for pornography. The shock of photographed atrocities wears off with repeated viewings, just as the surprise and bemusement felt the first time one sees a pornographic movie wears off after one sees a few more. The sense of taboo which makes us indignant and sorrowful is not much sturdier than the sense of taboo that regulates the definition of what is obscene. And both have been sorely tried in recent years. The vast photographic catalogue of misery and injustice throughout the world has given everyone a certain familiarity with atrocity, making the horrible seem more ordinary--making it appear familiar, remote ("it's only a photograph"), inevitable."
I think this appeals to me because the draw she makes between violent images (which I, in some sense, disapprove of), and porn, (which I, generally, approve of). I've used this analogy of porn, because I think it holds true in the same way, but affords the benefit of being infinitely less about value judgments (i.e., what does it mean that we've become desensitized to violent images vs. does porn wear off?), and more ...quantifiable? (i.e., the question, "does porn wear off?" is measurable by how much and what type people consume from their first exposure onward, and to what ends).
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