Hallowed by our own action. I just sat back to watch a video. A video of a video, in fact. Or to be precise, a video of the recording of a video. It's getting confused now, I know. Let me clarify, perhaps.
Today, a kurd girl was stripped naked (Well rather, had her pants ripped off her and then repeatedly used to cover her indecent nakedness while she was lying, writhing in pain in the dust on the ground, panties on to contrast her dirt-stained red training-jacket and black hair.) and then kicked, stomped and stoned to death by a group of what seemed to be men. So far, nothing out of the ordinary. This happens nearly every week, in one sense or the other. A mob reaching out to destroy what they cannot control.
What appalled me wasn't the act in itself. It was the actions of the crowd, pushing, shoving, hitting eachother to get a chance to be at the front, near the clearing around the girl, always careful to have nearly two meters of space to watch her writhe in, where you can see the people breaking out to kick her in the belly, stomp on her chest or blood-coated face as she was lying helplessly there. And why did they try to reach the front? Oh, to hold up their camera and record her suffering.
Yes, they were pulling eachother back, not because they wanted to stop the others from ending the girls life with a stone, but because they were in the way for their recording of the event.
Society today, I wish it had ceased to amaze me. Unfortunately, this seems to be the norm. When you have the power to stop someone from killing a helpless victim, you don't. You stand there, cheering, howling, and tape it with your cellphone, safe in the knowledge that you hold the camera, so you're doing your part. Watching the recording of the people behaving like this, short pans of the girl, and then up to the crowd, them pushing others away, directing their camera to the girl. The man who covered her with her skirt or pants, only to then kick her in the belly until she moved and they slipped off?
Or the man in the fine shoes who sullied them by stomping on her face, once he was done recording her suffering, of course.
The more I watch, the more I learn
If you light yourself on fire
The world will pay to watch you burn.
-- Course of Empire - Automatic Writing #17
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Best let them all watch it and see the beast right in ourselves. Why'd they record it? So it would become as unreal as it looked. I haven't watched it and there's still something, some switch in the brain I can keep bruising and which will keep on bruising, healing, hurting.
There is interesting reading on journalist ethos when it comes to interfering. Journalists, actually having an ulterior reason and a further goal of showing the world what is going on, usually have a code of keeping outside what is going on. Many journalists lie awake at night, wondering if they're doing the right thing.
I suspect there might be some part in that reason, here, but I also I know that we in the North-West are very naïve and sheltered when it comes to views of human life. To us, it is self-evident that a single human life is more precious than the honour (whatever that is) of a family, a neighbourhood, a town or even a city - or so, at least, we tell ourselves. In the usual Eurocentric way, we assume that this is the case everywhere. It isn't. In many parts of the world, human life is substantially less worth than various idealist principles, many of which, in turn, are without practical purpose in this day and age.
Whileas I don't think we should ever see ourselves as better than any other culture or people, there are things that are actually better here, because we've left certain stages of social evolution behind.
At least, so we tell ourselves.
The part about Photographers/Journalists is that they also have to make sure they do not shape the events they document, to avoid having a photographer/journalist rile up a crowd or tell them how to pose for the media.
This also brings the ethos in the other way. They aren't allowed to help, because helping changes the events...