Theoria

Yesterday it was announced that Steve Irwin’s death and the stinger of a stingray was caught on film, apparently a policy that Irwin himself had demanded from his film crews: film regardless of what happens. The problem, now, concerns what to do with these tapes which do, in fact, show him encountering a stingray, the stingray stabbing him, him pulling out the stinger, and then dying. That is, we literally have a guy filming an edutainment show which is supposed to demonstrate, on the one hand, that wild animals are dangerous and that they shouldn’t be toyed with and, on the other hand, a blend of scientific and aesthetic appreciation for these animals, which necessarily involves putting yourself at the mercy of these animals. I never really watched his show – like most people discussing his death and, in the grand scheme of things, his death is no more significant than a murder victim’s, a soldiers, pedestrian’s or someone who had a heart attack. Perhaps because of my detachment to the matter – as though it were even possible to actualize an ethical relation to abstract concept of ‘human’ – I find the way people discussing the story (and story is the appropriate word here) much more interesting than the story itself.

Like all newspapers that should be covering more interesting and important matters, but aren’t and, instead, are running pools on when the video will make it to YouTube, the Toronto Star has an article today where they pondered the “ethics” of the matter and – quite predictably – they dig up an “expert” to fill in the blanks; to give it the gloss of “real” journalism.

Here’s our expert, a professor of “media ethics” at the University of Western Ontario:

“This is probably no big surprise in the age of the Internet,” says Smith Fullerton, who is working on a book on how newsrooms make ethical decisions. “We live in a virtual world where we think death is entertainment.”

I’m not sure what the last sentence means – as though our pleasure in the pain and death of others arises only with the internet. Rather, isn’t this one of the oldest, most ancient, and most revered forms of entertainment? Is the professor unfamiliar with the Circus? (Did she not see Gladiator or Spartacus?) is the professor unfamiliar with the supplice? (I thought media studies people went through a Foucault phase…) Does she not watch the news? (I thought Vietnam was a major event in the history of news reporting.) Is she unfamiliar with boxing, martial arts, or – given her location in Canada – hockey? Has she never heard of dog fights, bearbaits, or cockfights?

People, of course, tell me I’m crazy when I say that stock phrases like “I am so angry with him, I could kill him” should be interpreted literally – or at least as expressing a fundamental desire. Maybe I exagerate a bit, but this woman is kidding herself (I wrote “killing”!). Or, maybe, it points to a fundamental narcissism: we, whenever and wherever we are, are the ones who do everything for the first time.  Or, maybe, it points to a fundamental moral anxiety: this “new” technology makes horrible things possible.