The death of Muammar Gaddafi
I have the luxury of writing this as a person unaffected by the brutality and unconscionable violence which marked Colonel Gaddafi’s regime. I did not lose sons or daughters in Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie, members of my family did not disappear into Libya’s dark prisons, never to be seen again. All that means that I cannot possibly imagine the joy or relief of those for whom Gaddafi’s regime is over.
However, that does not prevent me recoiling from the wanton repetition of footage of a barely alive and bloodied man being tossed from one fighter to another like a rag doll. When definite news was scarce yesterday, news services chose to loop the shaky mobile phone footage of Gaddafi (or was it his corpse?) over and over again. I felt like I was watching a kind of victory porn. Isn’t the nature of porn that it diminishes both watched and watcher, making them less than human? Doesn’t it turn victims into objects and watchers into voyeurs? There are reasons why we have conventions on these things, I believe.
Maybe this photo , by Goran Tomasevic, says more than any number of images of Gaddafi’s bloodied corpse. Where is Libya heading now?
preachersa2z
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9 comments
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October 21, 2011 at 7:48 am
Sr CatherineWybourne (@Digitalnun)
Thank you, Richard for these wise words. The Spirit seems to have been moving us both along similar lines.
October 21, 2011 at 9:32 am
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October 22, 2011 at 10:09 am
polestarben
The simple truth is that he had to die, he had to be shown to be a coward hiding in a sewer begging for mercy, a mercy he forgot to show his victims. He had to die to end the war, without him there is no resistance, a resistance that may well have resulted in many more “innocent” victims being injured or killed.
As far as I can see apart the fact that many in the West are glad he is dead (and I am one of them), the only people who are genuinely celebrating his death are the Libyans. Are you in fact criticising them for their actions, or would you rather not criticise and pretend that they were not behaving as the footage shows? As long as you don’t have to watch such disturbing images then everything is OK?
October 22, 2011 at 11:17 am
preachersa2z
You raise an interesting point. As I said in the post – I am far too removed from the situation to judge those doing the rejoicing, even if I felt it right to do so. My concern here is more about whether the images are necessary to the reporting of the story or not – and what they do to those who watch them.
October 22, 2011 at 1:43 pm
Richard Littledale
You raise an intereesting point. As I pointed out – I am much too far removed from the situation to cricise those directly involved. I think my concern is more with the necessity of these images to the reporting…& their effect on the viewer
October 23, 2011 at 6:14 pm
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October 26, 2011 at 7:06 am
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October 27, 2011 at 1:02 pm
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