Pornography, Videography, and Ukraine

Getting a Rise out of Other People’s Grief

We don’t need any more gratuitous pictures of Ukraine violence. Image of blank space, courtesy of Annie Sprott on Unsplash.

We know what “pornography” is. According to my online source, Dictionary.com, pornography is “sexually explicit videos, photographs, writings, and the like, whose purpose is to elicit sexual arousal.” Many of us are probably goody-goodies and avoid “porn”-ography, but we indulge in other types of “ographies” and that indulgence is sometimes disturbing. It is particularly disturbing in our constant exposure to immediate images of war violence.

Much of the world is captivated by the present tragedy of Vladimir Putin’s naked assault on Ukraine, as it ought to be. The story has the elements of grand drama, including a brave stand by citizens overwhelmingly outnumbered by the armed forces of a madman, a leader propelled to unexpected heroism by circumstance, hundreds of thousands of white Europeans frantically fleeing to safety, and the tepid responses of other nations to a danger that “everybody” saw coming.

Back in “the old days,” images of war were ameliorated by time, distance, and visual censorship sensitive to American eyes. We could hear “on-the-spot” reports via radio, but the drama was still contained by a reassuring narrative voice and background noises which were ominous and signified danger, but heralded damage we could not see. Even during the Vietnam…