This is unusual in the USA, where news photos with gore are tabboo. Most Americans consider violent death an obscenity.
In Spain and southern European media, graphic gore is the norm. The TV news is even more gruesome, showing bodies being pulled from wreckage, out of waterways, from under trucks, etc.
They tell North America we're indulging in censorship, and lack the backbone needed to look death in the face. Perhaps it's due to us not having faced wholesale war, famine, or holocaust within our borders for 150 years.
It's a cultural difference well illustrated in our churches: most US churches have nice clean decorative crosses. In southern Europe they have a twisted, bleeding victim nailed on. Or even in the supermarket, where all the meat is in nice sanitized plastic-wrapped packages, with not a hoof or beak or swag of fur in sight to remind us this was a living animal not long ago. Our friends overseas get the whole hog hanging in the window... or a smiling suckling pig on a platter!
Go figure. Vive la difference. Rebekah
Posts: 385 | Location: a pueblo in Palencia, via Pittsburgh USA | Registered: 15 February 2003
I don�t think it�s extremely uncommon for the USA. I have all the NY papers that came out Sept 12 and the photos were along the same lines. I remember the daily news printed a huge photo of a HAND laying on the ground. Now, three years later, they wouldn�t think of doing it but when a tragedy like this happens they want you to be against the terrorists and how can you hate these people if you don�t see what they�ve done? A blown up train is one thing. A blown up train with people inside is another.
Yes, similar pictures did come out in Madrid, by the way.
Melinda
Posts: 292 | Location: Miami | Registered: 26 January 2003
Now, my question is this. to all of you. If you didnt see graphic pictures from the Madrid attack, would you have been able to grasp the full horror of the act? No. That is the point. I think Americans are way too sensitive to "icky" things so they pretend they dont see them. Wake up! I live in NY, have lived in Madrid and seeing a hand lying on the street was the LEAST carnage you could have expected on 11-S. You cant "sanitize" terrorism.
Kat
poor grad student
Posts: 104 | Location: NYC NY | Registered: 18 November 2003
you are right, terror cannot be sanitized. But should it be packaged and sold and plastered across public newsstands? The severed hand, for instance: There are dozens of decisions made between the moment the hand lands on the pavement and the time its image is beamed worldwide, to the shock and horror and millions of OMGs. Someone decided it was a compelling image that told the story. It doesn't matter WHOSE hand it was, or if it has special meaning to survivors. It becomes a Symbol. It enters the public realm. It becomes OUR hand, in a way.
Is that person's contribution to the world any more or less than it would've been, if their death had not been so violent and politically motivated, and their component part had not become a public image?
(I may be playing Devil's Advocate here: I'm a USA news reporter after all.)
Yeah, lots of Americans are overly sensitive to "icky." But I think in this case the natural revulsion and fascination humans have with death and corpses is multiplied by the meaninglessness of the violence...And the fact that these victims were mostly white, middle-class commuters who look and act lots like us --not black Africans or Arabs or "those foreigners."
I think the most repulsive thing about the graphic images is how quickly the person whose body said hand belonged to suddenly ceases to be a Person, a personality, a mom or son or brother. In death their body becomes depersonalized, an illustration, a commodity, an image for sale.
Posts: 385 | Location: a pueblo in Palencia, via Pittsburgh USA | Registered: 15 February 2003
It is worthy of noting that most publications use the images of gory death to the advantage of furthering their agenda but discard those that go against it.
Therefore, horrific images of 11-S and 11-M are shown in Newsweek, Time, and Life and even on television but the horrific images of the Iraq War (e.g. the intentional bombing of the crowded restaurant by the USAF) are not covered or shown. Americans were whipped into a fever pitch over the images of 11-S (and perhaps now 11-M) but were carefully shielded from those in the Iraq War. They were shown videogame-like clips, Iraqi casualties were ignored (no US count of civilian loses was kept), and cameramen were prevented from showing the true face of the war.
Barbaric images exist on both sides. Most westerners are only getting the images that show their own victimization and that is VERY dangerous.
Posts: 289 | Location: Madrid via DC via Mexico via ... | Registered: 01 August 2003
i agree with most here who say that graphic imagery is not the norm in u.s. media.
but...
Melinda is right, the events of 9-11 changed a LOT in the u.s.a. and i think had a huge impact on the showing of horrific photos, hence after the attacks of 11-M, this policy was also used.
quote:
Yeah, lots of Americans are overly sensitive to "icky." But I think in this case the natural revulsion and fascination humans have with death and corpses is multiplied by the meaninglessness of the violence...
this goes beyond the showing of horrific pictures. in general, americans are "prude" and "puritan" in the eyes of most of europe.
not to get too far off topic but... a common, every day fashion magazine here in spain (such as elle, vogue, etc...) has no problems allowing an advertisement or article with a photo(s) of full frontal nudity, a scandalous idea in the u.s.a. and one that no fashion mag would dare allow.
when i was a high school teacher back in ny i recall receiving some mags from spain to use in my advanced spanish class and (since it was my first year) i had to have them approved by my principal. to my surprise, he discarded each and every one of the ads/articles that even showed a woman's breast. i even recall he made me rip out an article about breast-feeding since there were a few shots of a mother naturally feeding her infant, ANE YOU COULD NOT EVEN SEE THE BREAST IN THE PHOTO, just the back of the babys head against the mothers chest
Ah, yes. Nipplephobia. I remember an article once talking about a special job they have at Victoria's Secret. Apparently, there is this Photoshop dude whose job it is to remove obvious signs of nipples in the photos of the models that appear in Victoria's Secret.
Now the article went on to talk about the outrage women customers expressed in being misled at how revealing some of the lingerie in VS was. In the catalog it looked as if the items in question were opaque but in fact were far more transparent than the customer wanted.
American TV (non-cable) is happy to show a women being disembowled (e.g. Nightmare on Elm Street) during midafternoon Saturday programming but will launch federal investigations against a bare nipple or the f--- word.
Posts: 289 | Location: Madrid via DC via Mexico via ... | Registered: 01 August 2003
What I find disgusting is the liking of Spanish TV news to show you not appropiate images, even more when they are at lunch and dinner time, more than once I had to turn off TV in the middle of the news.
Posts: 153 | Location: Madrid (Spain) | Registered: 10 June 2003
Laurencio, if you live in Gij�n you must know what I mean, I'm not refering to this time, it's always, it's usual to see disgusting and unneeded images in news, they're always looking for the morbo and I hate that. And when I'm having lunch I want to enjoy it as much as possible, is that a sin? maybe you have understood me wrong because my English is going worse and each time I find more difficult to express myself
Posts: 153 | Location: Madrid (Spain) | Registered: 10 June 2003
Personally I don�t like seeing graphic pictures of bodies during mealtimes and it�s NOT because of me. I worked in the morgue in NY for a year - there is NOTHING that they can show me on the news that I haven�t seen up close and personal.
But I DO feel it negatively affects the children who are watching. Just a few days ago we told Mercedes, about to turn 6, that we were going to take the train to Cordoba for her father�s birthday present because he�s never been there. She began to scream, "NO! NO! NO QUIERO IRME EN EL TREN!" Her mother said fine, we�ll go in the car but why is she afraid of the train? She said, "Porque dicen en la tele que ponen bombas en el tren." It took an half hour of stories about the special box that sees into your backpack that they have on the Ave to convince her that the train was safe.
If just the idea of a bomb does that to a kid, what are the images going to do to her?
Melinda
Posts: 292 | Location: Miami | Registered: 26 January 2003
Melinda you do have a goood point there. It is not good to have children watch that kind of news. Children always want to feel safe an as adults we are all responsible to do this . I personally don,t care to watch excessive amounts of death. Just like you I have personally seen many people to there last days here on earth since I am a nurse I know how it can affect a person mentally if they are not prepared for these type of images. It causes sleep disturbances in some people unecessary stress, etc, That's not to say that we should'n't be more attentive to what's going on around the world . there are still many people who don't need to see excessive death images to know that there are really evil people out there who don't care about lives. We as adults should be more careful as to how much we really want to see. Realistically though television wants to make money and is not necesarilly interested in political issues nor how this affects society, But it would be nice and courteous of them that they would annouce prior to showing any gruesome news/ pictures that "this is may not be suitable for children" thus people would have a choice as to watch or not,
- rent or buy a cell phone from me for your stay in spain, more info at 
- already have a cell phone, get a spanish SIM card for it at 
