Susan Sontag's 'Watching Suffering From A Distance'
Susan Sontag’s “Watching Suffering From A Distance” discusses why people need to see photographs that contain disturbing imagery. According to Sontag, seeing such images is important to enhancing general awareness of the suffering of others. The failure to do so or to not acknowledge the unpleasant aspects of human nature is tantamount to ethical decay.
Her words are academic and her tone acerbic. The claims Sontag makes are supported on hearsay and vague statements. She insults those who do not agree with her and belittles them often. “Watching Suffering from a Distance” is fueled by bias, by passion and it still works, according to the author’s intentions.
Sontag’s arguments are sound enough, reasonably discussing the merits and drawbacks
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Sontag uses this metaphor, of Hell, to convey deep and continuous suffering, to draw the reader in. She uses a great deal of metaphor and exaggeration throughout, especially when it comes to detractors of her position. She calls their point of view “...this moral depravity...” (437) and repeatedly refers to them as childish, a reaction at odds from the logical and intellectual person she presents herself as. Later in the narrative, even as she is examining the reasons that people shy away from graphic images, she insinuates that people unwilling to confront such images are consumerist and unduly insular: “...an accusation of the indecency of regarding such images... flanked... by advertising for emollients... and SUVs” (439).
This ties into the larger emphasis on ethics and emotion that Sontag uses. While she seems to be basing her points in a learned sensibility, she appeals to emotion often. The aforementioned insults turn her own opinion into the moral high ground. Her vocabulary integrates terms such as ‘impugn’, ‘ethical’, ‘atrocity’, ‘accusation’, and ’superficiality’. If she is not attacking with her words, then she is being attacked by others. The essay that first seemed like a reasoned debate has been turned into a battlefield. The reader must be with her or against her; there is no middle
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