An appetite for snuff
“There are some things that you see, and you can’t unsee them. Know what I mean?” — “8MM”
Ever since WikiLeaks.org released “Collateral Murder” on Monday, the blogosphere has been all over the 2007 decrypted video that appears to show US military Apache helicopters mowing down 12 in Baghdad, among them two Reuters employees, a photojournalist and a driver, and injuring two children in the process. As for what exactly what happened in the video, that remains unclear. The military asserts the video is heavily edited and fails to point out that several of the men on the ground are armed, one with an RPG and another with an AK-47. Liberal bloggers have pronounced it footage of a “slaughter” of lambs. Neocons have declared it “anything but ‘Collateral Murder,’” wondering, “(And who drives their kids into the middle of a war zone anyway?”).
The public reactions range from outrage to reason, but, by and large, what nobody seems interested in addressing is why everyone is so interested in watching it. In fact, the purported conversation around this particular piece of live-action war porn is so hyperbolic, so fraught with haughty indignance and driven by self-appointed experts who, for the most part, know little to nothing of what it’s like to engage in combat or what actually happened that it makes you wonder if the dialogue around it is a masterful bit of misdirection, a convenient veil intended cover up our own collective interest in watching what amounts to a snuff film.
Of course, this isn’t the first video of its kind. Last year, it was all about the Neda video, a snuff video so riveting that it actually won an award. HBO’s “Terror in Mumbai” wouldn’t exist were it not for play-by-play cell phone recordings and surveillance footage of the terrorists carrying out their murderous plan. And it seems like only yesterday that everyone was watching an 11-member assassination team kill a Hamas official (over which Gawker gushed: “It’s like Munich, but real.”).
So, it seems, “Roller Ball Murder” has finally come to pass. In the 21st century, death is entertainment, and the only thing that can whet our appetite is watching people die. After all, where else could we go after we all watched “2 Girls 1 Cup”? Porn is so passe, and snuff is the new, new thing. In the olden days, you had to leave the house to rent “Faces of Death.” These days, snuff is piped into your home 24/7, and if you feel any quiver of self-revulsion at your desire to watch other people dying, you can upload the video to your blog and weigh in with your own admittedly under-informed two-cents on it. That way, you can pretend you’re engaged in, you know, a conversation. It’s not like what you’re in the business of is trading in snuff, right? No. Not you.
The adult movie industry has been doing something like this for years. Did you know you can download videos in which adult performers contract HIV? The results are way slower than what you see when an Apache launches a torrent of rockets into a crowd in the middle of a street. But, hey, that’s different. It’s not like you knew. It’s not like you’d want to see that. Would you?
Even the New Yorker is posting videos of people getting killed. Before you know it, snuff will have jumped the shark. And then what will we watch?
Post Your Comment
You must be logged in to post a comment
T/S Members
Log in with your True/Slant account.
I see your point here though I think there is legitimate news value in watching/reporting on this video. It seems to me that it is the overall culture of violence we have that is the problem. For example the popularity of the movie “Taken” which was a non-stop highly graphic murder fest from the word go. Seriously I stopped counting after 30 people were killed in various inventive and horrific ways. There is too much violence for violences sake in our popular “culture” sold to us by the same people that then decry our declining morals and lack of respect for human life.
Forgive me, Susannah, but I strongly disagree with your characterization of this film as a “snuff film.” It’s a piece of footage that for a change let’s Americans to make their own judgments on how war is pursued and what its impact is. Did you consider the Abu Ghraib footage pornography? By drawing this analogy, I don’t mean to demonize the shooters here. More needs to be known, but that’s the point.
As The Times notes in its military blog today, some folks within the military are disagreeing. The Washington Post reports that the military may re-open an investigation. But beyond that, one reason this country has stayed in two wars for nearly a decade is because our wars are largely invisible to those not fighting them. And that is dangerous. We don’t even show the coffins. As I noted right after the Iraq War began in an oped in the Christian Science Monitor, “War is hell, and unless we see that with some regularity when it’s being fought, we may well make the mistake of pursuing it over and over again.
Furthermore, the responsibility of good journalists is to provide what was described more than a half-century ago in a report on the press as ‘a truthful, comprehensive, and intelligent account of the day’s events in a context which gives them meaning.’ In a visual world, that account includes pictures, even highly unsettling ones.”
During the days of the civil war, there were onlookers who would camp out on nearby ridges with telescopes, where they could watch the battle. Some worked for newspapers, but many were simply curious citizens.
Today, we have gunsight camera footage. As video surveillance becomes more inexpensive and easy to deploy, there will be more of this “war porn.”
Some of this is good. If it helps to train troops better, then this is exactly the sort of thing we need. Though it happens in every military battle, the fewer new privates who lose their wits in combat, the better off we’ll be.
On the other hand, showing this video to the people at home is also a good thing. The next time congress comes up to vote for a military action, we should think about what these videos look like and ask ourselves whether this is REALLY necessary.
“…a convenient veil intended cover up our own collective interest in watching what amounts to a snuff film.”
wow! really?
“(And who drives their kids into the middle of a war zone anyway?”).
Someone else may have said but you now own it for the reference. The answer is people that live in an occupied fucking country infested with blood hungry Christian fundamentalist mercenaries.
“These days, snuff is piped into your home 24/7, and if you feel any quiver of self-revulsion at your desire to watch other people dying, you can upload the video to your blog and weigh in with your own admittedly under-informed two-cents on it. ”
Pot, I’d like you to meet my good friend kettle.
“Even the New Yorker is posting videos of people getting killed. Before you know it, snuff will have jumped the shark. And then what will we watch?”
It doesn’t matter what you watch. You won’t understand any of it. I’m afraid facebook and the internet machine have eliminated your already diminished capacity for critical thought.
Great false equivelancy stuff in the first paragraph though. You’re a shoe in for the CNN gig. I hope your husband or son or whoever’s serving their fifth tour in IrafPak Operation Kill ‘em all comes home safe.
What an offensive and asinine article!
It boggles the mind that Ms Breslin, a journalist, needs to have spelled out for her the reason “why everyone is so interested in watching it.” Well here it is: the video shows what may well be a war crime committed by the US (your) military – an incident which the military investigated and judged acceptable. A good citizen might want to hold the military and government to account if it is committing crimes. And as Mr Lanson says above, accurate pictures and reporting of war are crucial to citizens forming their own opinions.
Then Ms Breslin goes on to claim that commentators have no right to criticise as they “…know little to nothing of what it’s like to engage in combat or what actually happened…”. This craven excuse could be used to rationalise any war crime. It shouldn’t have to be asserted that soldiers are responsible for their actions. The 38 minutes of video and radio show more than enough about “what actually happened” to conclude that something inexcusable took place (the van in particular). One wonders from her comments if Ms Breslin actually bothered to watch the video before banging out an article.
The child of slain Reuters reporter Saeed Chamgh lamented (http://english.aljazeera.net/news/middleeast/2010/04/20104782857326667.html )
“The American has broken my back by killing my father.”
But that’s just hyperbolic and fraught with haughty indignance, right Ms Breslin?
[...] her essay, titled “an appetite for snuff,” Breslin writes: “In the 21st century, death is entertainment, and the only thing that can [...]
[...] stuff, really. I guess I should’ve posted a trigger warning with that WikiLeaks.org video. Oooops! Come to think of it, probably 87-percent of the internet needs a goddamn trigger [...]
[...] Susannah Breslin: An appetite for snuff That video of American armed forces members killing lots of people has a lot of people in a tizzy [...]