Imagery-the Driver of the Media

This week we read Susan Sontag's essay called Regarding the Pain of Others, she analyzes our society quoting it as a "society of spectacle." This is to say that our media in today's confinement of newspaper, magazines, online resources and books are driven by imagery but specifically highlights war imagery. Sontag goes to question that without the photograph, is this really happening? Yes, it is really happening but the photograph makes it "real." The war has become a spectacle, our news has become a form of entertainment whether it is horrifying images or not. Yet, without having any real connection to these images we begin to feel immune to their horror using the example of the borgeouis sitting eating their breakfast reading about the war without any sympathy since our media has become so hyper-saturated with these tales and images it is all the same to them. Stemming from that idea Sontag then goes to say being "adept of proximity, without risk" viewers are safely able to question the sincerity in order to refrain from being moved by these images. With that, our appetite has become wet, and hungers for more (she uses the term "ghoulishness"). With photography we are offered a glimpse of this reality from a distance but when these images are hung in a gallery does this change what we are seeing? We then have more questions of rationalization as it asks the viewer to really pay attention, reflect and examine: Who caused what the picture shows? Who is responcible? Is it excusable? Was it inevitable?
These kinds of questions are what we should already be asking, but with only the representation of an image surrounded by a story we loose context of what the photograph really is asking us to see. Great point of Susan Sontag's.