Last week, I urged us all to reconsider the way in which we tell stories. I believe oversimplification and a reliance on “us vs. the other” is destroying our ability to understand and relate to one another, which obstructs our chances of evolving culturally. And since what we choose to care about is entirely subjective, that means the stories we tell ourselves are incredibly important in shaping our values.
Now Jack Rice asks a loaded question that highlights the life-or-death consequences of the way we tell stories:
Would We Use This Photo If These People Were White?
My answer: Yes. Devastation isn’t about color, it’s about scope.
Natural disasters create destruction on a massive scale, and while everything in life can be politicized, the disintegration of an entire nation can only be understood visually. If we all heard that thousands of Hatians were dead and rotting in the streets, but all we saw were photos of weeping individuals, there’d be a cognitive dissonance: we need proof of such histrionic claims, and that proof must come in bulk to be believed.
Grotesquely, we also need a reason to pay attention. The global stage is increasingly filled with tragedies, and since Haiti might feel a little too “Katrina-y” for some viewers, it needs a way to distinguish itself not only from other current headlines but also from the memory of other recently-digested miseries.
And Now the Part No One Wants to Talk About
Apart from its literal documentary value, this photo — like all photos of post-earthquake Haiti — serves a larger humanitarian purpose: it’s meant to elicit an emotional reaction in its viewers, and spur them to take action to help alleviate the tragedy. Since aid is fueled by money, people need to be moved to donate in mass volume. The more vast and unspeakable the horror, the more likely that even people who have political reasons to justify or ignore the tragedy will be moved to take action.
If we understood stories differently — if we processed information according to a universal understanding of importance, rather than straining it through degrees of “us vs. them” — maybe we’d only need one image of a dead Hatian to make the world care.
But I doubt it.
Tags: America, ethics, news, perception, Sociology
