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Anthony Mello
UWRT 1102
Instructor: Fran Voltz
March 28th, 2015
Journal #10
I can remember one of the first times I ever saw a picture depicting any type of horrible
event. I was around 7 years old and I had found an old Time Magazine in one of my classrooms
and looked through it. While looking through it I saw a page filled with pictures of children in
some location of the world (I cant quite recall where), who were horribly malnourished and
starving. Though at the time I lacked all the knowledge of many concepts of what was happening
in the picture, I can still remember the exact feeling that I had felt in my stomach when I first
viewed it. But, as I got older I of course was exposed to more and more, eventually desensitizing
my feelings and sympathy towards things such as violence, hunger, and other atrocities going on
around the world. This process occurred naturally over time and is expressed through the ideas
of Susan Sontag and her belief that the over-exposure of horrific images takes away from our
sense of shock and outrage. I tend to agree completely with her theory about this. Everywhere we
look we see the same horrific images of war, famine, and destruction. Its ironic how a method of
getting knowledge out about things going on in the world actually makes us desensitized to it and
not feel the same empathy towards the subjects. When seeing these images over and over again
things like this start to just become a norm in society. They become common to the average
viewer and make it seem as though this is just how the world is and will always be. It spreads
farther than just the media, though a massive amount of our culture is expressed through horrific
images. We see horrific movies, novels, video games, and inappropriate advertisements, that all
make shocking events and actions seem so common and unimportant.

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This is somewhat of an extreme example, but we see the same thing in gangs and even in
the army. People who are in these violent atmospheres and are around death and violence and
horrific things all the time lose their sense of empathy and tend to become emotionless towards
acts they once believed to be shocking. The average citizen doesnt have this direct exposure, but
pictures and images do provide us with glimpses of this exposure which over time appears to
have the same desensitizing effects as this direct exposure. I know for a fact that this has
occurred to me and I can bring up various examples. I was exposed to images of war and
violence throughout my life through assignments in school and the internet and media, and by
the time I got to high school death and tragedy just seemed to be a normal thing to me. I
remember in particular watching videos of both the World Wars in my twentieth century
American history class, and not feeling a thing. I noticed I wasnt feeling a thing or even thinking
and questioning what was going on in the footage. In my head I wasnt watching thousands of
human lives being lost; I was just watching some old war film that had no meaning. I noticed this
and tried to empathize with the film and make myself realize that those were human lives being
lost in the film and that the violence I was witnessing wasnt normal or okay in any way. But I
couldnt feel anything about what I was watching. I was too used to seeing this kind of violence
and it couldnt register in my head how severe and awful the video I was watching truly was. I
feel that I only feel compassionate towards something atrocious when I first learn about it and
am exposed to it. After a while it just becomes the same old story like everything else and I just
dont care for it regardless of if I know I should or not.
Although I do feel desensitized by the exposure of these images, they do make me feel
more engaged with whats going on in the world and things that happen and have happened in
history. I feel that I can get a glimpse of a real problem or tragedy in the world and that I can

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learn about it and know that it exists. Knowing that these things go on is important to me and Im
not entirely sure why. I feel I just like knowing an event happened or existed because I feel that
every event or problem has its own significance in some way. I do have to say this engagement
isnt quite full, though. I feel I would be far more engaged through direct exposure to the images
we see. I feel like this wouldnt desensitize me, but actually make me more compassionate and
sympathetic towards things. The direct exposure shows you the reality of a subject. Its not just
some image which makes it seem artificial to some extent, its the real thing and you can feel
every emotion of the reality of the subject at hand.
I dont feel as if Im forced into any false reality created by others through their use of
images and pictures. I do feel somewhat distant and not fully engaged, however. The only way to
change this would be experiencing it for myself so I can feel the true reality and impact behind
an event or subject. By experiencing something for yourself, you can come to your own
conclusions about things and not be forced into any perspective by types of media and images.
You are only in the false reality of these images if you allow yourself to be. Everyone is fully
capable of deciding for themselves what they gather from an image, and if they feel it isnt
enough to draw any conclusions from, they are capable of learning more and even possibly
experiencing it firsthand.