The Aesthetics of death

There has been a current upsurge in the sale of bootleg DVDs and Cds of scenes of mass destruction and death in Asia in the wake of the Tsunami (no pun intended). The cds are a hot item. Pirated Baliwood movies have had to take a back seat to the tsunami cds and the police have had to crack down on the black market pedellers. During 9/11 the scene of the planes crashing into the buildings was played over and over being hungrily devoured by the masses until someone decided we had had enough and the footage entered the realm of taboo. I remember as a kid my friends and I sought out videos called “the faces of death” which depicted graphic incidents of people dieing in all kinds of ways. After watching them we all felt ill yet when the next one came out we rented it, watched it and felt ill all over again. This was an adolescent curiosity no doubt yet I still have a curiosity to see some of the macabre things that happen in the world.

When I was in Cambodia during 1997 I experienced a coup and there was some combat in Phnom Phen. I was able to view embattled areas after the fact with some “x-military” australians who showed me what had happened in each incident. Whereever there were dead bodies there were a large number of people amassed around them. They were curiosity seekers and they stood around for hours just looking. This of course is not restricted to Asia. Seeing death I think reminds us of our own death and this fasinates us until the end. This is well known in Hollywood and the use of violence and death are big money makers. All you have to do is not get too macabre and gloss it over with a happy ending and bam! You rake it in at the box office. They understand the potency of the ultra macabre so they dole it out little bits at a time like a pusher man.

Please comment.

Some interesting reading on the topic:
http://www.jahsonic.com/Grotesque.html