Dystopia now

[glaurung]

The website [nowthatsfuckedup.com] has become a stomach-churning showcase for the pornography of war -- close-up shots of Iraqi insurgents and civilians with heads blown off, or with intestines spilling from open wounds. Sometimes photographs of mangled body parts are displayed: Part of the game is for users to guess what appendage or organ is on display...

A series of photos showing two men slumped over in a pickup truck, with nothing visible above their shoulders except a red mass of brain matter and bone, is described as 'an Iraqi driver and passenger that tried to run a checkpoint during the first part of OIF.' The post goes on to say that 'the bad thing about shooting them is that we have to clean it up.' Another post, labeled 'dead shopkeeper in Iraq,' does not explain how the subject of the photo ended up with a large bullet hole in his back but offers the quip 'I guess he had some unsatisfied customers.'

-- The Nation, "The Porn of War" (2005)

Last night to the flicks. All war films. One very good one of a ship full of refugees being bombed somewhere in the Mediterranean. Audience much amused by shots of a great huge fat man trying to swim away with a helicopter after him, first you saw him wallowing along in the water like a porpoise, then you saw him through the helicopters gunsights, then he was full of holes and the sea round him turned pink and he sank as suddenly as though the holes had let in the water, audience shouting with laughter when he sank. then you saw a lifeboat full of children with a helicopter hovering over it. there was a middle-aged woman might have been a jewess sitting up in the bow with a little boy about three years old in her arms. little boy screaming with fright and hiding his head between her breasts as if he was trying to burrow right into her and the woman putting her arms round him and comforting him although she was blue with fright herself, all the time covering him up as much as possible as if she thought her arms could keep the bullets off him. then the helicopter planted a 20 kilo bomb in among them terrific flash and the boat went all to matchwood. then there was a wonderful shot of a child's arm going up up up right up into the air a helicopter with a camera in its nose must have followed it up and there was a lot of applause from the party seats but a woman down in the prole part of the house suddenly started kicking up a fuss and shouting they didnt oughter of showed it not in front of kids they didnt it aint right not in front of kids it aint until the police turned her turned her out i dont suppose anything happened to her nobody cares what the proles say typical prole reaction...

--George Orwell, "1984" (1948)

Thanks to Billmon for the Orwell quote.

Comments

[wolfinthewood.livejournal.com]

I have been thinking about this. 'Black' humour is a well-known desensitizing mechanism for coping with extreme situations and unbearable sights. Firemen use it, for instance, among themselves, and who can blame them?

This site not only offers 'stomach-churning' images of war, but through the captions, it imposes a particular response on the viewer - the desensitized response of the soldier. I suppose that the web and the digital camera combined make it impossible to suppress such images in the good old-fashioned way. So it becomes necessary to re-engineer the public response away from shock, horror and disgust to one of gleeful enthusiasm. This website is helping to do that work.