Emotional pornography

Hmmm.

No immediate answer on what the term 'emotional pornography' might mean to me, Boomerang... but
something in the question reminds me of a New York Times slide show I saved yesterday. Back in a bit with a link.

OK, here's the link for the article, "Will We Ever Arrive at the Good Death?", in yesterday's Magazine section.
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/08/07/magazine/07DYINGL.html

(you have to register to read the NYT online, for those who don't know that).

To the lower left of the article is a multimedia slide show (just click on the title under the picture of the faces of a couple) that I found very moving. I don't think of that as emotional pornography, but then again...

Thanks osso.

I've been questioning myself trying to discover where my own limits are regarding such things.

I was wondering -- if they were to televise an execution would I tune in?

And then I started thinking about Nick Berg. I googled him and almost every site that came up said that it had video of his execution. I have never watched it and I am not compelled to watch it now. But it appears that a LOT of people are/have been.

Is this perhaps emotional pornography?

Further, when does something go from being news to being emotional pornography? Is it when the reporters start reporting that there is nothing to report?

Where does empathy/sympathy stop and obsession/voyerism start?

Munchausens syndrome by proxy and its variations.

Not that I'm certain.Just an idea.

Those are both really excellent examples, osso and spendius -- something I need to think on for a bit.

Another thing I though of:

My brother is in the military and he is stationed at the Pentagon. Last year he told me that he had to sit through a slide show of the photos taken in Abu Gharab (spelling?) prison. He could understand why some people are clamoring to have the photos released but he can't understand why anyone would want to see them who absolutely didn't have to. (And no, he would not tell me what the photos showed nor did I ask so don't ask me.)

Knowing this, I wonder if I would look at them if they were available.

I would guess that it referrs to acts that are purely driven by sense/emotion and by-pass the old rational brain.

In newspapers and such, it would be 'yellow journalism' or tabloids that are all sensual crap ...and the facts may or may not be represented at all, or grossly manipulated/ fabricated.

Not that long ago, a man in my apartment had a stroke. The ambulance and fire truck came roaring up to our apartment complex, and a tonne of the neighbours stood around gawking as he was carried out on the board. He was in a serious condition. I took pictures: gawking faces, slack jaws, kids trying to run up to the scene. It was a regular circus: and all this for one man and a stroke. It seemed kinda ridiculous: the poor man probably felt like he was on parade. How helpful were these people in helping him? It was probably harder on him then if we would have all just stayed in our rooms. Even me, I was thinking of what a story it was in human ridiculousness. Anyhow, is this what you are referring to?

Interesting topic. Regarding the photos, I would like them to be release but would not like to see them. I would like for some courageous reporter to sum them up for me so that I can know how bad it is without having to see it.

It's funny you mention Greta Van Susteren. My current complaint about Fox news isn't its partisanship, it's that it appears to obsess over things like Natalie Holloway, Lacy Peterson, missing and abused children, etc... There are a lot of things happening in the world that I'd like to know about, but I don't need to keep vigil at the television waiting for a break in the Holloway case.

Maybe we as Americans don't have enough misery in our lives so we need to tune in to others'.

Offhand, I don't think that slide show as it is seen accompanying the article in the link is 'pornographic' - it isn't gratuitous, isn't misusing the photos, in my opinion.

I have no idea, boomer. I guess they may be talking about our living vicariously and thus secretly feeling "glad it isn't us." I watched briefly the plight of those children in Niger, but I won't watch again. Too much for me. As for the munchausen by proxy thing, Spendius. That's not quite what you mean, I'm certain. You're probably thinking of the munchausen syndrome.

Aristotle's ideas about tragedy and catharsis might have some relevance, except that media circuses lack the dignity that true tragedies merit. as an aside, i wonder if the term media circus harks back to the Roman circus, perhaps unconsciously, rather than the Barnum & Bailey variety. I also wonder if the phenomenon of "reality" shows is a manifestation of the same impulse that drives media circuses.

I know what you mean flushd -- it's almost like getting to experience something without taking the risk of experiencing it for one's self. I guess in that way, emotional pornography is not entirely different from sexual pornography.

Yeah, FreeDuck, these "tragedy vigils" are strange.

I remember standing in line at the grocery and seeing one of the tabloid headlines about "Celebrity murderers". There was OJ, Robert Blake and Scott Peterson.

Scott Peterson is a celebrity? How in the hell did he get turned into a celebrity?

OH! WAIT! WE turned him into a celebrity.

Osso, I agree. There might be cases where photojournalism crosses the line into emotional pornography but I don't think that photo essay does.

There was an interesting discussion on another thread about Nick Carter's Pulitzer winning photo. Some people found it very exploitive.

Hmmmm.

I'm going to do some thinking on photojournalism in relationship to this topic.

I'm no expert, Letty, but isn't the "by proxy" one the deal where you make someone else sick over and over in order to get attention? That seems more pornographic than doing it to yourself.

I think I get what they're referring to with emotional pornography, but where does that go? I think it's really important for people to be shaken out of their comfort zone now and then, especially in terms of things that are ongoing and that they can influence in one direction or another.

Maybe the comfort zone is part of it, that the emotional pornography is the stuff that is not actually out of the comfort zone.

I find myself thinking of a horrible scene in "Middlesex" about the burning of Smyrna. While the details are fictional, they are based on a real event that was every bit as horrible as the fiction. It was awful to read, but made an obscure tragedy with lasting repercussions more real to me. This is actually how I get a lot of my history, through fictional accounts that then lead me, because of interest, to factual accounts.

I think that's all important, even though it packs an emotional wallop.

OK so back to pornography. I think the idea is less about images per se as the idea of someone who has a need -- a sexual need, an emotional need -- and how that is met. A guy who isn't getting any has a sexual need met through pornography. A middle-class housewife with a boring life has an emotional need met through exhaustive coverage of the Natalie Halloway case. Not so different from soap operas.

Boomer, Yit put it more scientifically than I. <smile> Actually "proxy" means that folks will harm, even kill their offspring just to garner sympathy. Read The Devil's Dance, sometime. The syndrome simply means that people will lie about something to garner attention, i.e. one girl kept sending herself threating notes just to have the other tenants of the complex show her concern and love. That's a true story.

Having given this some thought since i saw this thread, shortly after you posted it, i'd say i have come to the conclusion that "emotional pornography" is a very apt term. I was raised in what one might term a socially strict ethos. One was not to laugh at the misfortune of others, it was rude to stare, and those who gaped and gawked at others in their tribulations were the most self-evidently ill-bred and ill-mannered of louts. Much of what i was taught to do and be may be subject to criticism, but i don't believe that that part of is. There is some element of the "there but for the grace of god go i" in all of this, but more than that, i think there is a morbid fascination with intimate details of someone else's misery which qualifies as being "pornographic." I have not participated in a single one of the Aruba tragedy threads, and when the Peterson case and the one about the woman in Florida on life support were much in discussion, i avoided them, as well. I commented on the Florida case once, and that was only in response to a posting which had pretensions to psychological analysis with which i disagreed. I regretted getting involved, and stayed away thereafter.

This sort of fascination still seems to me a sign that those indulging are ill-bred and ill-mannered. It is such a commonplace here in Ohio, that the people on radio news reporting traffic conditions will comment that there is an accident on such and such a highway, and it should be avoided because traffic has slowed down to stare. You see that all the time in Ohio, that drivers slow to a crawl to rubberneck at an accident scene. People are creeps.

Setanta, it's not just Ohioans; rubbernecking happens all the time in California, where you'd think people are used to fender benders. And of course, LA pioneered the live coverage of high-speed car chases.

Or low-speed chases, if you count OJ.

^^ what Set said. :wink:

I too avoid the sensational stories on the news and on A2K. I did venture into the Terri S thread only to state it was none of our business. I feel the same way about most coverage that goes beyond the first telling of the news in a personal story.

The question that drives me most mad is a reporter's query, "How do you feel?" to someone who has just lost a loved one. Give me a break, shoot the reporter.

and i watched the OJ chase, i couldn't help myself; i can't rationalize it, either; celebrity status shouldn't make anyone fair game.

I watched it too, mostly because I was laughing at the continued use of the word 'chase'. It was more of a follow, than chase. The coverage was absurd. I watched the trial for a very short while until it became obvious that it was all about television and grand-standing. Maybe if the cameras hadn't been rolling, the prosecution would have won their case.