This Week In Pictures – a desensitised nation?

PopIcon · October 2011

This weeks pictures and moving images in the in the press
has left me sunken this Saturday morning. Gaddafi and his sons blood soaked corpses displayed on
newsagents shelves, between the smarties and the rows on chewing gum has left
me questioning societies blood lust. How far will editors go to shift their papers?

I have no desire to see this, yet I’m not given a choice. I
don’t want to become desensitised, I want to opt-in and not be false fed ripped
up, torn up pictures of the dead.

We are be becoming a desensitised nation, a nation of numb
people, where censoring is decided for us by those with sole agendas to sniff
out a pound note.

RodneyCharltonTrotta · October 2011

Seen a hell of a lot worse but i agree with what you are saying. No need for it especially when kids can easily see them. Should be protecting their innocence and not exposing them to the grim realities of the world so flippantly by having it on the 6 oclock news and splashed across the front pages. Plenty of time for them to grow up and realise what a the world is like.

Someone called up on LBC and said something along the lines of "you can see that in your living room on rolling news all day but if they show a couple having sex before 9pm on tv they would be up in arms" which says a lot about our priorities.

leftbehind · October 2011

Turn the channel over simple

Off_it · October 2011

Turn the channel over simple

How do you turn the channel over in a newsagents?

I know what he means. There seems to be a need to show things in graphic detail these days that there never seemed to be in the past (or maybe it's just me getting old). Some of the things they show on the news during the day when my kids are watching you wouldn't expect to see in a TV programme until after 9pm.

Addickted4life · October 2011

The week in terms of pictures as a Charlton fan:

Yann Kermorgant celebrates with Danny Green against Carlisle

Danny Hollands celebrates his goal against Carlisle

happy days.

Stig · October 2011

I agree. It seems to me that blood and gore are seen as entertainment nowadays. For example, horror films used to be based on suspense and the power of your imagination now its all just bloody torture porn junk. Kids play video games where you can kill zombies at a rate of one a second and every time you do, blood splashes up the screen. Newspapers carry full colour pics of grotesque incidents whereas in the past the most you'd get would be some grainy little b&w. Every night on the news there are images of people dead and dying. And then there's the internet where you can see all the nasties you want for a few keystrokes.

Frankly, it would be a miracle if people weren't desensitised to the levels of death, destruction and gore that they see. If people didn't very quickly become desensitised to it, everyone would be going around in a state of shock. The big question is, does it actually matter? The stock answer, particularly from those that enjoy violent films/games/tv..., is to state that it's quite benign or that people have a choice to avoid it. This is often stated along the lines of, "Well I like [xxxx] and it hasn't done me any harm". And so it does seem that most people can cope quite admirably with such a level of gore. My worry though is that not everyone is made of such stern stuff. There's a sizeable minority out there who seem to think that such violence is ok and whose moral compasses seem a little erratic to say the least. If those people become desensitised, what are the outcomes? I for one, can't help but think that the increase in bloody images we see in the media is not without links to the increase in knife crimes that we have suffered from in recent years. I'm not normally an advocate of censorship, but I do think there's a very good case for having less gore in our media.

jimmymelrose · October 2011

I have to say that I was quite shocked at the level of violence shown on an advert for a video game today after the Chelsea match. My 3 year old was in the room and I turned it off - that was just a video game advert!