[lbo-talk] Memorial Day

[Jerry Monaco]

On 5/28/07, Doug Henwood <dhenwood at panix.com> wrote:
>
>
> On May 28, 2007, at 5:49 PM, Jerry Monaco wrote:
>
> > Yes disturbing, beautiful, slightly titilating and exclusive...
> > The photo
> > selections for these pieces always show us that there is a certain
> > kind of
> > grief that we should care for and not other kinds of grief.  Yes, I
> > find it
> > manipulative and slightly revolting that this sexualized grief will
> > be the
> > kind of grief we will always choose to display, to direct our
> > empathy, to
> > blind us from the ugly and grotesque representations of grief, that
> > are
> > simply not proper, when we think of death and loss.  Caring for only a
> > certain kind of grief and not another kind is always what the
> > sexualization
> > of grief is all about The New York Times will exclude the grotesque
> > from our
> > view but no one seems upset about it.
>
> Huh? There are horrific photos in the paper every day. GIs with their
> legs blown off, Iraqis with their heads smashed, and the grieving
> familiars of both. Do we read the same newspaper? This was a
> particularly arresting image because it was so unlike those. But it's
> hardly the only example.
>
> Doug

Obviously I was not expressing myself adequately.  I was not writing about
war images but rather the various images of grief, from the oh, so decorous
New York Times.

Where, where are there these images of grief? I am not talking about images
of war.  The only times we such images of grief that are a bit grotesque is
when it is in some land, or culture, known for being primitive

Yes we read the same paper.  I was not writing about war images... but
specifically these images of grieving and especially sexualized grieving.  I
spent too much time walking around old war cemeteries looking at these
highly sexualized images not to notice that the photographer and the editor
is publishing a necrophiliac bit of soft-porn.  Why not just redo it with
her naked for christ sake.  I mean, am I just simply crazy, or so alienated
from all this stuff that I see askew?

I find the image highly manipulative, upon thought, but maybe I think too
much.

Jerry