Regarding the Pain of Others by Susan Sontag

I read Regarding the Pain of Others a good six weeks after I had written about Invisible War.
In this analysis, Sontag debates why it is that our response to war imagery is numbed.  I found this text quite hard to read - although interesting, it is quite heavy going and my reading time is during my commute, which is when my brain is either waking up or shutting down!  To be honest, to write a coherent review, I'm going to have to read it again.

Throughout the text, Sontag provides historical context behind war imagery, argues that people even enjoy looking at violence, and that our response is now numbed by the proliferation of war imagery, which can now be transmitted in real time.  I've heard these arguments before, and although I disagree and believe that it largely depends on the individual, the arguments are familiar to me.

The debate that surprised me though is in chapter 8, in which Sontag argues that people should be realistic about the depravity inflicted by humans against each other.  She contests that if you are continually surprised about the existence of this cruelty, then you have not yet reached moral or psychological adulthood.  Personally, I would argue quite strongly with this.  I think it is for that very reason that we have war journalism, that the photographers themselves feel a need to communicate their own shock.  I can look at war images and I appreciate the photographic skills at the same time.  Of course I know that war exists, but I'm not comfortable with it and I don't enjoy it, and I am still shocked by the cruelty that people are capable of, and that there is a need for wars in the first place.  And I think we need the imagery to keep us aware of this.

To illustrate this point, a little while ago, I was on the train going to work.  There was an announcement that there would be delays at Vauxhall due to a person having been struck by a train.  Being a regular commuter, I often hear these announcements, so you could say that I am suffering the audio equivalent of the reactions described by Sontag.  Although these situations are very sad, they are so frequent, that I have got used to hearing them.  But, as my train went through Vauxhall, I saw the body lying on the platform covered by a blanket, so just the form of the person was visible, and this was very shocking, and it really brought home that is was a person that had been affected and not just another announcement.

And then I realised why we need war journalism: hearing about something is not enough.  To be truly appalled by something, to do the point where you may protest or feel the need to take action, you need to see it.


Bibliography

• Sontag, S. (2003) Regarding the Pain of Others, London: Penguin Group