Dax related recently after watching a gory (but not so scary) horror movie that "blood and gore really doesn't scare me anymore. We've been desensitized by the media - games, movies, tv, print ads. over n over again. nothing shocks us anymore. even dead bodies from wars in the news look like smtg the SFX crew came up with. We mite be on an endless search for the new and the innovative - finding new ways to scare, shock and surprise."
How true. My relationship with death and videos started when my dad first brought back Faces of Death, a collection of real life deaths captured accidentally on video. Examples include hostages, stunts and family trips gone wrong. He said that we can never fully live till we appreciate death. I don't think those videos had the desired effect except to shock and disturb me for a few days. Don't get my father wrong. He's worked in the hospice and has seen many people die from cancer. I think that was the face of death he was trying to show me.
I think what had a greater impact was watching Saving Private Ryan for the first time. Seeing the horror of war in its most graphic and realistic yet was especially poignant as I was still in the army then (i think). It was the senselessness and reality of death on the field that really struck me. When I watch horror movies, I simply dismiss the death as just sensationalism. Ironically, even faces of death reeked of sensationalism. Saving Private Ryan was for me raw, hard, real.
[Warning: Disturbing scenes described]
The next episode occurred more recently after a bout of downloading death clips off the net. At first, it was grotesquely entertaining. There was the news editor who shot himself in front of a press conference. There was the famous shot of the Vietnamese officer executing a man - the video clip is spectacular; a spout of blood actually fountained in tempo to the last beats of his heart. There were point blank car crashes. A clip of a rescue attempt gone wrong when the cord broke and the rescuer and his ward fell from the helicopter, bounced down the cliff face, and rolled into a crumpled heap at the bottom. Get up! you say. Someone quickly go and save them! Do something! No. It is no use. They are already dead.
Tragedy? Yes. Disturbing? Yes. Disgusting? Yes. Intriguing? Yes. But even all that could not prepare me for one final clip. The most horrible and disturbing clip. Apparently, it was filmed by russian or czech soldiers during the czechnian conflict. A soldier, a young man, bound up on the pebble strewn ground. His hair is shaven, his body thin from malnutrition and all the fighting. The russian soldier stands proudly over his prisoner. The camera closes up on the prisoner's face, mocking him. the prisoner gives a weak smile. The russian soldier bends over and presses his head against the floor, as if to torture him. No. A large knife appears. The prisoner's eyes jerk in horror. His face contorted in a mixture of panic and realisation. Before your mind even has the time to comprehend, the knife saws into his throat. He convulses, coughs and dies right in front of your eyes. What words are there to describe the pain and horror viewed? Till this day, I cannot bring myself to watch this clip again, nor would I want to, nor any of the other clips. Yet, it is seared into my memory.
This whole business of death is so easy to ignore, dismiss or forget. Take 9/11. To many here, its simply just another memory. The war in Iraq, Afganistan? In fact, death and suffering is so omnipresent that we are overwhelmed; we shut it out. Perhaps it is only when we experience death first hand will we be able to feel, to understand mortality, and to take stock of what our life is. Carpe diam.