“Shock” Value: when you don’t want to look, but you can’t look away

Revealed. Photo by Nicholas Kristof

Trigger warning.

I was bowled over recently by disturbing yet beautiful images by the amazing Lynsey Addario, who has spent much of the last decade photographing the often difficult life for women in Afghanistan.  The New York Times published a powerful piece on suicide by self-immolation among Afghan women, and the sad and sometimes stupidly mundane reasons that drive them to do it.  If you haven’t read it yet, do.

What really pushed me over the edge, though, was the accompanying six-minute video, in which Addario interviews several women in an Afghan burn unit.  Trigger warning, it is gut wrenching.  It is six minutes of hell: women moaning and writhing in pain, reaching scorched and infected arms, cringing through badly disfigured faces.  Before our eyes, we watch two women  – one just 13-years-old – take their final breath.  You can hear Addario’s own choked panic as she asks, incredulously, “is she dead?”

I find myself drawn to these horrible images and videos, especially when they involve realities for women. To me, social justice is about bearing witness to the horror or injustice around us, even if – of especially if – it happens 8,000 miles away, to a woman we would never meet.

I rationalize that however uncomfortable I feel witnessing these images or videos is a paltry sliver of what it is in reality.  As a human being, I owe at least that much, though I absolutely understand that many people have dealt with serious emotional or psychological traumas that mean they can’t.  It’s not compulsory for social justice, just my own personal avenue.

In the last few months, there have been a slew of graphic outcroppings in the media, particularly depictions of the often unseemly or horrible realities of women.  (note: there have also been some really positive pieces about strong and victorious women worldwide – this is not to discount that or portray a one-sided picture).

Sometimes they have been slightly sad and mostly mundane, like Penelope Trunk’s tweeted miscarriage or Angie Jackson’s abortion tweet.  Others have been incredibly horrifying, giving readers serious pause:  a Mother Jones reporter who live-tweeted a rape in Haiti, Nicholas Kristof’s blog post that revealed the real name and photo of a 9-year old orphan raped in the Congo, Lynsey Addario’s gruesome footage of a real-time maternal death in Sierra Leone, Time Magazine’s in-your-face cover of an 18-year old Afghan woman sans nose and ears.

All of these graphic images, videos, and words have been met with various levels of disturbed consternation, and some for good reason.  Critics are rightfully concerned about the privacy and consent of the women involved, or the burden of espousing “too much information.”  The value of shock has emerged as a serious question to ponder.

There are two participants in this situation: the revealed – the woman photographed or described – and the witness.  The former’s agency and privacy is the most important thing, and to overlook this for the sake of wow-ing the latter… is inexcusable and exploitative.  But when done “right,” the effect of graphic and shock amazingly powerful.

Especially when it comes to illuminating rights abuses or simple realities for women, shock is a really powerful lever. Shock has inherent value, because so much of life is mediocrity, complacency, and desensitization.  (disclaimer: I live in NYC where the tolerance for shock is very, very high).

Kristof was reamed by readers after his revealing post about the young rape survivor, and his response acknowledged that he’d crossed even the NYT’s own protocol on confidentiality, but that he’d carefully weighed the privacy of his subject before publishing, and he explained why he moved ahead with the post:

It’s impossible to get rape on the agenda when the victims are anonymous. Human beings just aren’t hard-wired to feel compassion for classes of victims, but for individuals.

I really agree, and you might say the same for maternal mortality or disfigurement.  Media exists as a platform through which to tell stories and to jar us.  On its best days, it can enable a radical closeness between reader and the subject, or witness and revealed, not otherwise possible.  This is especially important for those of us who live in cool apartments in liberal bubbles, here in the richest country on Earth.

Even if we don’t run out and join the Peace Corps, or donate $50, there is an inherent value in simply knowing.  The long, painful death of a mother in Sierra Leone isn’t her reality…it is the reality.  This awareness not only lends prowess to the issue overall, but gives a nod to an individual that has probably been undervalued her entire life.

As for accused TMI proprietors like Trunk and Jackson, while it’s not something I would reveal myself, I think they’re important messengers of the female reality, helping to de-mystify and get in your face.  Even after all these years, there are some “womanly things” that people still want to lock away behind doors, and I don’t see why.

Yet when it comes to shock, what about desensitization?  And when we harp on the horrid, do we risk people writing it off as “just the way things are?”  Moderation is key, and the value of shock is precisely its rarity.  So don’t exploit.

Agency makes all the difference here, and is the key.  What is the difference between a Vietnamese monk, sitting in the middle of traffic, ensconced in flames to protest the government, and an Afghan woman, shamed by her uncle and abused by her husband, who hands her infant to a relative, douses herself with lighter fluid and lights a match?  When we witness the horrible self-immolation of this woman, we are also witnessing her lack of agency…or her lack of ability to exercise her agency.

That was a major takeaway for me after reading the NYT’s multi-media piece on self-immolation in Afghanistan.  To exist in a life where you could be so scrutinized, so oppressed, so burdened with expectation, that burning 85% of your body in a botched suicide attempt is your “out.”  Well, the pain compounding the pain is mind-blowing and, for me, that is a shock that won’t soon fade.

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