PainfuL ImageS

Some of us have had our fill of analyzing the recent cartoon fest which seems to have begun as a cultural war and quickly descended into real WAR, with violence, burnings and deaths.

We have all endured the hypocrisy of barbarian Muzlim protesters who set fire to the Danish and Norwegian missions in Damascus, where Syrian newspapers routinely print the most vile racist cartoons of big-nosed Jews.
And of course as all sane people know none of those "big nosed Jews' ever stormed an embassy demanding "amputations and deaths".


"But drawings are drawings, so a question arises. Have any modern works of art provoked as much chaos and violence as the Danish caricatures that first ran in September in the newspaper Jyllands-Posten"

Which brings me to my digression.
The Pornography Industry.
It is one which normalizes images of terror and hate, but as long as it provides sexual gratification, discrimination based on sex is overlooked entirely.

And while everyone deplores anti-Muzlim sentiment or racism against blacks, they will make allowances for the proliferation of pornography. In the porn world we find the total acceptance of "images" which degrade, dehumanize and advertise the disrespect, hatred and domination of women, who are merely sexual objects.


"What may be overlooked this time is a deep, abiding fact about visual art, its totemic power: the power of representation. This power transcends logic or aesthetics. Like words, it can cause genuine pain."- according to NY Times Lesson in Imagery
"To many people, pictures will always, mysteriously, embody the things they depict."

Those who are truthseekers know the statistics- the rape, the horror, the trafficking of women, and all the untold PAIN that the sex ..ahem...'industry' causes.
Others choose to remain ignorant so they can continue to rationalize the harmlessless.

In pornography, Jewish women are raped by men dressed in Nazi uniforms..
Andrea Dworkin's in depth discussion
Black women are shown as slaves being whipped by their White Masters; Asian women - because of the Western fantasy of their "submissiveness" - are tortured in the most horrific ways- being burned by cigarettes, battered, bound, and penetrated by pens, coke bottles, baseball bats, and even knives.

And yet all we hear is how utterly harmless this multi-billion dollar little diversion is.

"Trained to see pictures formally, as designs or concepts, we can often overlook the way images may not just symbolize but actually "partake of what they represent," as the art historian David Freedberg has put it."

Perhaps women and men of true conscience ought to learn a lesson from all of this madness.
Not advocating amputation and random murders like barbarian savages are doing all over the world now in response to the perceived offense..

but SPEAK OUT ...let your voices be heard.

Images can and DO hurt.


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And speaking of letting your voice be heard:
See a fascinating story at The Blue Star Chroniclesabout the Dane's Unique Moral Courage