Americans misconstrue death, reality of war
By Rachael Sizgorich
March 6, 2003 9:00 p.m.
During a recent trip to a military base in Texas, President Bush
urged troops to prepare for war and assured them that they would
fight not to conquer, but to liberate.
I was curious as to how Bush knows the difference between the
two, since his father made sure Junior would not have to conquer or
liberate in Vietnam. Sadly, Bush is not alone in this naivete
concerning war. Our society’s detachment and desensitization
to violence has made some (thankfully not all) Americans willing to
go to war more than people in other nations. We do not fully
understand the consequences of death.
With reality television and sex dominating the airwaves and
publications, death is the only remaining way to elicit shock. The
United States public has a fascination with death, and our culture
perpetuates misunderstandings about death. These perpetual
misunderstandings may explain Americans’ over-eagerness to go
to war.
In recent years, horror films have become increasingly popular.
Hannibal opened to $58 million at the box office, evoking questions
as to why people would subject themselves to these horrific images.
When I researched “America’s obsession with
murder” on the internet, 13,457 sites came up, underscoring
our country’s fixation with something that is so sanitized
and hidden in our society. At first, I felt that these death
aficionados were morally reprehensible (which they may or may not
be), but later I realized that many people view these films or Web
sites out of pure curiosity. This United States phenomenon is the
byproduct of a culture attempting to cover up aging and death.
Our culture also embraces youth and hides aging. One would be
hard pressed to find images within the media accurately portraying
an aging person. In fact, in a study by Meredith Tupper at the
University of South Florida, of 829 characters on prime time
television, only 68 were deemed elderly(65+). In our
“Never-Never Land” society, no one is supposed to grow
old. Once you begin to show signs of aging, you lose your value. We
hide away our elderly, shipping them off to nursing homes and
writing them off as nuisances. When death approaches we are quick
to send our elders to assisted living facilities. Almost two-thirds
of U.S. adults die in hospitals, away from their loved ones. And
once they do die, we are careful to preserve them; we do not allow
signs of death to show, because they remind us of the inevitability
of death.
Violence in television programs and films also contributes to
Americans’ unusual relationship with death. Violent images
bombard us everyday, desensitizing us to the atrocities they
portray. A recent study of media and violence found the average
television program contains an astounding number of violent acts.
In HBO’s “OZ,” for instance, there are 76 violent
acts per episode. One might scoff at this statistic, undaunted by
the number because the program takes place in a prison and airs on
cable. However, even network programs contain a staggering amount
of violence. The relatively mild “Walker, Texas Ranger”
on CBS had an average of 112 violent acts per episode. The violence
shown has a rippling effect, because the consequences are often
ignored. In most TV programs the violence depicted often shows no
physical or psychological harm and no judgment about the morality
of the act. This disconnection within the media between violence
and its effects carries over into our perception of death. We
“see” people being killed, but we do not comprehend the
consequences. We do not see the grief, the heartbreak, the guilt
and the anger death causes.
Which brings us back to President Bush and his pursuit of the
axis of evil. Americans are eager to go to war because we are
fortunate enough not to see the after effects of something so
horrendous. We have not had a war on our soil since the Civil War
over 130 years ago. Within these years, we have forgotten about the
realities of war. Our culture has done a stellar job of separating
us from the grotesqueness of death and dying, and in the process,
we have become blissfully ignorant.
Sizgorich is a fourth-year English student. E-mail her at
[email protected].
