Death vs Pain

Essay on Death vs Pain

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Death vs Pain
There are many different ways that media exemplifies death, and in doing so, I have grown up exploring every aspect of media portrayals of death and violence and came to conclude that I am actually fascinated with death. What does frighten me is physical pain, and what I perceive the media to do most of the time is to condition us that pain is equal to death. The association can be either subtle or obvious, depending on the goal of the media source. Usually, whenever the media wants to capture our attention, it tries to reach our most basic instincts- pain and pleasure- but of course, because death is the subject, very rarely will pleasure be associated with it.

One important aspect of pain is that it is a very marketable subject, again, just like pleasure. The only difference is that it is only successfully marketable when the pain happens to others, and not to oneself (except if one is a Sado-Masochist where pain is pleasure, etc. so the feelings are reversed). I have noticed this whenever an epic film shows its trailer, for example, and the main characters go through an enormous amount of physical pain at some point during a battle scene, and all is glorified with beautiful scenery and words of wisdom. This captures our attention because the physical pain that we see is what might have been during that historical period, and at that time, we view people as dying very painfully by stabbings, disease, decapitations and so forth, and that fascinates most of us. On top of that, epic films glorify physical pain because it displays moral values of the time, such as honor and duty for one’s kingdom/country/lover/family/freedom/etc. In Braveheart, for instance, William Wallace was killed by disembowelment with a meat hook, and he was in excruciating amounts of pain as we could clearly see from the cinematographer’s close-up of Wallace’s facial expressions. But then again, Braveheart was all about the fight for freedom regardless of pain and death, but without them, the film would not have been as exciting or glorious.

We all relate to at least one form of pain, but we obviously don’t all relate to death. Therefore, it is simpler to connect them and tell ourselves that what we don’t know might be similar to a feeling we know. People, however, tend to choose a negative link with death such as pain rather than thinking of pleasure because they are afraid of the unknown. This idea brings about the very common notion of a fear of death in Western culture. Television and news media love to focus on tragic events that surround violence, pain and death because they know they are exploring a sensitive subject. People are automatically going to react. The news surrounding the September 11th attacks, for instance, was focused mainly on the firefighters and innocent people that lost their lives. The news made sure not to ignore the families that were hurt, and centered on their tragic stories of how their loved ones died. And also more recently, the firefighters who spent weeks searching for possible survivors, have been diagnosed with terminal cancers in various organs of their bodies, probably due to the deadly carbon fumes they inhaled. Articles, books, magazines, TV series, documentaries and films concentrated on the 9/11 attacks and its lost souls that were painfully killed. The topic of terrorism became the new sibling of pain and death. Any negative aspect of life was a favourite of death it seemed.

How does Western culture deal with death when it happens? I would like to bring the subject of 9/11 again to give an example of what I liked about dealing with death through the media in this day and age. As I mentioned before, many different forms of media conveyed the sad stories of the families who lost their beloved, and what was most controversial was when certain films and documentaries came out around the five-year anniversary of the attacks. I remember watching Larry King Live one night after the film United 93 came out, and listened to the interview of the families that backed the film and how they helped try to recreate an accurate synopsis for the film of the events that actually took place on the plane at the time. Larry King kept asking each family whether they thought it might have been too soon for these films to come out (also to follow was Oliver Stone’s World Trade Center), because some people are still dealing with their pain, and to me not surprisingly they all shook their head. The families responded enthusiastically that they were actually happy that they were able to share their experience with the creators of the factual United 93 because they wanted the world to know their personal experience of the events. They said how they wanted this story to come out and the world needs to know about it rather than them keeping it to themselves. In my opinion, I see this as a very healthy way of dealing with death or pain. The more one tries to repress pain, the more it is going to propagate inside oneself and manifest into other forms of pain, and possibly leading to one’s own death of spirit.

The last point I want to explore is a different type of pain that is experienced in association to death- that of the person who lost a loved one. The media is expert at glorifying the dead person, as to make them look larger than life, etc. but what about how the media portrays the feelings and state of the person feeling the loss? That is one aspect of the media that is endlessly creative. As an individual, creative media (such as art, creative writing, fiction films, etc) can develop many forms of how one deals with death in a positive or negative way. Character development in films, for example, can be centered on how a character’s essence is a defense mechanism as to not get hurt, like preparing oneself for pain before even experiencing it so that when one does, one is numb to it. This is a good case that illustrates what probably happened in the TV series Rescue Me. As a firefighter, Tommy saw so much death and pain that he eventually used his defense mechanism to protect himself from pain and thus became numb to it, however, it eventually manifested itself in another form- his illusions of seeing dead people.

It was maybe a small experience that leads me to view things the way I do. When I was six years old, a friend of mine drowned in the ocean over the holidays. When the school found out, they held a memorial service for her, but what struck me was something my mother told me. She told me not to fear for her because her parents told my mother that when she drowned, it took them two days to find her body, which was floating in the ocean away from shore. And even though they were devastated, they stopped crying the minute they saw her face- she was smiling. They never saw her more peaceful than the day they found her dead.

Disclaimer
The above essay was written by a college student and merely states opinions of a college student. However, if you feel strong about responding to the opinions stated, please write to articles@directorym.com and express your concerns.


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