Disaster Pornography and Japan

A few weeks ago, we had a guest lecturer in my Christian Ethics class from the Duke Center for Reconciliation. Danny Arnold talked about a variety of racial and class issues involved in representing other cultures, particularly developing ones--how white Westerners (or, as I'm learning to call us, Northerners) can easily fall into objectifying people of the global South through images of poverty that, even (and sometimes especially) when they are intended to be a call to action, they really only end up objectifying their subjects. I may write more about that later, but suffice to say the lecture caused my professor to explain to a classmate of mine that I have "the gift of tears." It was wrenching.

As I said, I may talk about "poverty pornography" another time, but just for the moment I'm more interested in discussions around "disaster pornography." I'm not talking about action movies with scantily clad women (though, please, stab me in the eyeballs). I'm talking about our tendency, fed by media outlets, to seek the most graphic images and stories we can find that come out of natural or man-made disasters. 9/11 is an easy example; media coverage of the earthquake in Haiti caused the U.N. to express concerns; and these days, I'm wondering how much of every minute, horrible detail I've heard about Japan is really edifying or appropriate.

The earthquake and tsunami hit Japan at the tail end of my spring break. A day or two into the tragedy (which, as we all know, continues to unfold, particularly in the area of nuclear power), I was sitting on the couch with my dad watching the news. It was all about Japan--footage, interviews, helpful diagrams explaining tectonic plates and mapping the movement of the wave across the Pacific. At one point, my dad commented that seeing all this is really horrible, but in some strange way he finds himself enjoying it. The media tries to make it entertaining, and when we add that to this odd human tendency to be drawn to the macabre--you know the thing about not being able to look away from a train wreck?--it's a potent combination.

I'm not saying we ought to avoid seeing disturbing images to protect our delicate sensibilities. I strongly believe that Westerners (Northerners...), particularly those (like myself) who occupy the middle and upper-middle class, need to be confronted with images that jerk them out of their comfortable lives, even for a moment. We cannot simply shield ourselves from the suffering of others, especially as Christians--"If one member suffers, all suffer together with it" (1 Cor. 12:26). We should be praying for our brothers and sisters in Japan. (By the way, the United Methodist General Board of Discipleship has a regularly updated online database of worship resources for times of crisis. Check it out.) But the verse does not say, "If one member suffers, all the other members gather around the TV and say 'it's so sad' while being secretly entertained."

I'm guilty of this. I think it's something we need to guard ourselves against individually, and we need to call upon the media to be more responsible and respectful. A lot of it is very much on the line, but you know the bad stuff when you see it. One scene I saw on CNN that struck me involves an interview--if it could even be called that--with a woman in California, where waves from the tsunami reached several hours after the earthquake, tossing boats around in a way that was far less severe than what Japan experienced but still frightening. The women barely got out a few words before getting choked up and holding a hand up to the camera, saying, "I'm sorry, I'm getting really emotional right now, I can't do this."

Why did they need to show that? Clearly that woman didn't want to be on camera. If she saw the clip, she probably wasn't happy about it. But for whatever reason, we want to see people suffer, and the media knows that. The funny thing is that I keep hearing news outlets commenting on how stoic and well-organized the Japanese are--reporters point out that even in crowded airports with countless people stranded, they haven't seen anyone cry or get upset. They say they're impressed, but I can't help but wonder if they're a little disappointed.

Let's back up a second. I Googled "disaster pornography" (with MUCH trepidation), and lo and behold, Urban Dictionary has a definition (cue more trepidation). Here's the first bit of the entry for disaster porn: "When the media puts horrific or tragic images on a 24 hour loop, constantly driving them into your head, and then refers to the events portrayed as an 'unspeakable tragedy.'" Nail on the head. When we spend a lot of time trying to talk about and show what is rightly called an "unspeakable tragedy," something is off.

That's about all I have to say for the moment--here are more articles and blog posts to check out if you want to read further:


Here's an article that raises some important questions about media coverage of looting and starvation in Somalia. "Reduced to nameless extras in the shadows behind Western aid workers or disaster tourists, the grieving, hurting and humiliated human beings are not asked if they want to be portrayed in this degrading way."

This thoughtful blog post deals directly with disaster porn and Japan. "Do we look? Do we look away? If we do not look, are we ignoring the plight of fellow human beings, irresponsibly contributing to our own numbness in the face of others' tragedy? If we do look, is there a line to be wary of crossing, somewhere between responsibly informing ourselves and becoming consumers of disaster porn?"

And finally, this article is amusing for making fun of Western (Northern) news correspondents like Anderson Cooper, but it's about more than that. "Rather than reporting on what made Haiti so poor and therefore its infrastructure so susceptible to collapse, we get clips of Haitians momentarily cheering 'USA!' as food packages trickle into their devastated capital."

[Sidebar: I have nothing against Anderson Cooper. He's just a really easy target. :)]