Baring pain in the news media

My purpose in this presentation is to explore the availability of the pain spectacle in the news media and to examine how the human body is differentially exposed. More specifically, I compare images of bodies in pain in the news media based on the following criteria: published in the period 2000-2010, from cases of war, terrorist attacks and natural disasters. Images are collected from International news agencies databases and from major news websites. The paper attempts to go beyond the 3 main debates in media studies (truth, aesthetics, and ethics) and focus on questions of power and inequality.  I argue that, as moving and humanizing representations of pain and suffering may be, they constitute pedagogical forces of embodied difference.  Images of bodies in pain in the news media are becoming increasingly more ‘real’, unprocessed and immediate. Viewers are exposed to bodies that are tortured, bodies that have been burnt, crushed, broken. There are images of blood and bodies in positions that seem ‘unnatural’ or painful; bodies in abject conditions. How do these images function as evidence of another human being’s pain?  How does this excessive visibility function to humanize or de-humanize the exposed bodies? In this paper, I analyze how the human body is exposed (flesh, injuries, expressions) to communicate the experience of pain. I point out how discrepancies in the differential exposure of the vulnerable human body are not simply representations of ‘reality’ but productions of cultural difference and constructions of humanity or inhumanity.