The Unreality of War

The day after the first night of heavy bombardment of Baghdad, I was having a conversation with a 15-year-old son of a friend, which presently drifted into war territory. With a disconcerting degree of glee –eyes lighting up as if to he was referring to Ponting’s Finals’ exploits – he inquired if I had watched the zabardast damakhae on TV the night earlier!

I quickly decided that shock would be an inappropriate and artificial response. After all, there had been something voyeuristic in my own viewing experience of the event, even as I kept reminding myself of the fear that such bombardment –surgical or not –must strike in the hearts of the ordinary citizens of Baghdad, and worked up a healthy dose of indignation for Bush and Hussein.

Restricting my response to a gentle reminder that lives were endangered in that wonderful spectacle, and a challenge to put himself in the shoes of an ordinary Baghdadi, I pondered on the issue of the media blurring the line between fiction and reality, which, up to then, had seemed little more than the psychobabble of under worked social theorists. Suddenly, the idea that our—all of our; not just our children’s—realities being shaped too much by television seemed not so far fetched. This, by the way, happened to be a particularly well-informed and socially concerned teenager, with whom I’d more than once discussed the discontent of mass media. Yet, video images that particular operation Shocked us little and left us in only in Awe of the wonders of modern day technological warfare.

To be fair, the CNN’s Wolf’s Blitzer did, despite his name, express as much horror and consternation as is permitted a journalist. But the seriousness of his words couldn’t hold up to the awesome, awful, spectacle of a building vaporizing amidst thunderous booms and streams of AAA lighting up the night sky. Pictures depicting the tragedy and gore of the wounded (if not the dead) would not make it to the air just yet and, if coalition forces restricted journalistic mobility a la Gulf War I, maybe never.

The snazzy graphics and dramatic made-for-the-event music don’t do much, I imagine, to sharpen the ever blurring line between thrilling fiction and shocking reality. If this is taken to its logical conclusion, shock might well be a word our media-blitzed generations might never associate with the TV-viewing experience. And if television continues to be an increasingly larger shaper of consciousness and portal of information about the ‘outside world’, will this condition not render our senses more uneducated, more impoverished--even as we claim greater awareness by way of information. Information that is, alas, desensitizing!

The intent of this writing is to float the (unoriginal) idea that, as useful and even necessary as the mass news media is, programmes—even newscasts--need to come with advisory ratings. I have never been an advocate of censorship, but when one sees the seriousness of war treated, or experienced, as little more than an action-packed thriller, one is led to consider the merits of regulation.

At any rate, one is compelled to the need for education on and debate of these issues, which I hope this forum might generate.