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Rieder: What's the allure of graphic images?

Rem Rieder
USA TODAY
This undated image made from a video released April 19, 2015, by Islamic State militants appears to show the killing of a group of captured Ethiopian Christians in Libya. The 29-minute video purportedly shows two groups of captives before their deaths.

Why do we watch?

What is the allure of reading about and looking at images of hideous behavior, unspeakable violence, deeply disturbing reminders of man's inhumanity to man?

On Sunday and Monday, USA TODAY's most popular digital article, on both mobile and desktop, was a story headlined, "ISIL video purports to show killing of Ethiopian Christians." The story did not include the 29-minute video released by the Islamic State, but it did include images from the video showing armed Islamic State members marching the Christians to their deaths.

Important news, to be sure. A big story, no doubt. But why? Of all the things going on in the world, why would this be the most popular item for USA TODAY readers for two days running?

To help sort this out, I turned to Roy Peter Clark, a senior scholar at the Poynter Institute, a journalism education outfit in St. Petersburg, Fla. In addition to his journalism chops, Clark has a doctorate in English literature with an emphasis on Shakespeare, whose works included no shortage of violence. This is a subject that Clark has been thinking about for quite a while.

To get things started, Clark told me about a conversation he once had with — talk about A-list name-dropping! — Elie Wiesel, the noted Holocaust survivor and human rights activist and an authority on the Holocaust. Clark remembers asking Wiesel about someone he knew who collected Nazi memorabilia.

That, Wiesel replied, was a double-edged sword. In some cases the impulse is to collect evidence that reminds us of horrendous behavior that took place on the face of the earth. But in other instances, Wiesel says the motivation is more mysterious, perhaps unhealthy, perhaps stemming from a fascination with the macabre.

This undated image shows a frame from a video released by Islamic State militants that purports to show the killing of journalist James Foley in August 2014.

Fast-forward to the Islamic State, whose videos of the beheadings of journalists James Foley and Steven Sotloff attracted so much attention last year. Clark sees echoes of Wiesel's two-edged sword.

"There's some sense of needing to see what the real threat is to civilized nations," he says. "Some may go to study the uses of propaganda. But some secretly see some affinity with the killers."

The battle between the civilized world is sometimes framed as a clash between the 21st and the 11th centuries. "You think about the history of these events and how they are being transformed in the digital age," Clark says. "These seemingly barbaric acts of extreme violence are shown all over the world on the Internet."

Forget Bill Clinton's old bridge to the 21st century. This, Clark says, "is a bridge of a thousand years."

South Vietnamese National Police Chief Brig Gen. Nguyen Ngoc Loan executes a Viet Cong officer with a single pistol shot in the head in Saigon, Vietnam on Feb. 1, 1968.  The photo, by photojournalist Eddie Adams, became one of the Vietnam's War's most indelible images, winning a Pultizer Prize in 1969.

The Poynter scholar points out that that there is a long and varied history of public executions — beheadings, burning at the stake, death by guillotine (seen as a humane innovation because it carried out its deadly task so cleanly), hangings, people being drawn and quartered.

"These were public events," he says. "They provided for some people a form of public entertainment."

Much has been made of the way the Islamic State has used its vicious deeds as a form of propaganda. But that, too, has roots deep in the past. Clark points out that executions centuries ago "were a means for tyrants and others to demonstrate their ruthlessness and strength."

As for today, Clark sees a "bifurcated response" on the part of the American people when it comes to bloodshed. On the one hand, "there is a greater appetite and tolerance than ever for faked violence, for staged violence, for cinematic violence," he says.

He points to such phenomena as Game of Thrones and zombie movies with extreme levels of violence. Clark himself is a big fan of Cinemax's Banshee, which he describes as one of the most violent shows on television. He says he likes it for the story, which he freely acknowledges is like the old line about reading Playboy for the articles.

Yet the reaction to actual carnage is radically different. "There are many examples of acts of violence that are real that generate tremendous outrage and consequences on social media," Clark says. "There may be a fascination with real violence, but there is a tremendous amount of disgust."

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