Looking at Atrocities: A Study of the Human Attraction for the Pain of Others

This thesis focuses on images of war atrocities. It takes its cue from the fact that news, television and social media constantly expose us to images of war. Yet, these images seem to attract the spectator rather than cause horror and repulsion. Building on Susan Sontag’s work Regarding the Pain of Others (2003), this thesis aims to study the human attraction to the sight of pain and death. To analyse this phenomenon, I am taking as my case-study the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, looking at images of the conflict that are circulating in Western media. The thesis is structured in three parts. The first chapter looks at the history of the human attraction to the pain of others and tries to explain the reasons behind it, drawing on various scholars such as Susan Sontag, Edmund Burke, and Georges Bataille. The second chapter moves to my case study: the war in Palestine. By looking at images coming from Gaza, the chapter offers an analysis of war photography, considering the main issues that surround the topic of photographs of atrocities. The last chapter aims to understand how distant wars can be instrumentalised by the media to the point that the public becomes indifferent to them. Staying on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, the chapter discusses how images of the war are presented by Western media. This thesis, argues that there is, in fact, in the human being an attraction to the macabre and the repulsive, and that images of war satisfy this attraction.