Fetishising Violence, Marginalising the Human Dimension

摘要

Recently, in a suburban supermarket on the outskirts of London, shoppers were treated with the installation of large flat-screen TVs, hanging tilted from the ceiling and tuned to Sky News. I was in the queue for that anachronistic and Luddite ritual of a bygone shopping era, the manned checkout, when I saw horrific images flash above our heads. The report was of a suicide bombing somewhere in Israel. The screen showed pictures of ambulances screaming to the blast site, worried onlookers, blood-streaked children being carried lifeless and fragile, like china dolls, in the arms of doctors. There followed a brief shot of the anchorman talking on camera, and then shots of a square somewhere in Palestine, where crowds of bereaved people mourned children felled for no reason by the latest Israeli helicopter missile attack.