David Cameron’s comments, this October, over Facebook’s decision to allow graphic videos on its site – in particular, one depicting the decapitation of a woman, thought to be in Mexico – have added fuel to the debate on internet censorship. In an article in the New Statesman, Laurie Penny succinctly skewered Cameron’s choice of words: that Facebook “must explain their actions to worried parents”. As Penny points out, it is the victims of violence that our primary concern should lie with, and hiding crime to soothe fretting parents does nothing to protect these real victims. “Somewhere out there a woman in a pink top may be lying dead. That her corpse can no longer frighten children on the internet will not comfort her family – and it should not comfort us”. The brand of censorship suggested by Cameron’s phrasing is, indeed, one that we should ward against – censorship as closing our eyes to reality, of choosing the privilege to forget.
Does this then mean that the instinct to censor is entirely misguided? Penny is right that if people are horrified and disturbed by a beheading video, that is surely the only natural reaction, and not one that ought to be apologised for. Yet part of the danger of uncensored, unlimited viewing is that it encourages not horror but apathy – an image loses its power to shock, once it has become interweaved into the fabric of our everyday lives. Many of us have left the room for our tea break during a TV appeal for African poverty, or thrown a leaflet on the fate of refugees onto the same recycling pile as the pizza adverts that it came with. In so doing we are not trying to be callous. But it is impossible and exhausting to maintain an emotional engagement with such extremities during every minute of every day – to do so would leave us unable to function. This is why format is so important.
Just as many of the unsanitised images of pain brought to our attention by charity appeals have now become ubiquitous and, thus, no longer shocking, so too may the kind of graphic violence witnessed in the Facebook beheading. It is disconcerting how quickly an internet search can yield promises of terrifying degradation. In just 0.36 seconds (according to Google) I can watch “various masked men assault a man with a bat and electric stungun”, “two partners […] castrated and beheaded” – all part of the proliferation of Mexican cartel (“narco-killings”) videos. Nor have I had to do the pervert’s handshake and enter some shady corner of the web for this – this site is the first result, right below the smiling colours of the Google logo.
It is part of learning about the world around us that we must confront disturbing images. We have all visited exhibitions on the Holocaust, sat through documentaries on trafficking and prostitution. But when we visit a museum or sit down to a serious programme, we are agreeing to approach its material with a particular mindset – to take the time to think seriously about something, its context, its ramifications, and to try and understand all those involved; to meet them halfway, in a sense. The internet often requires no such effort on our part. We do not need to allocate a time to mentally commit in this way, but are all too easily washed through a stream of links. We can end up viewing terrible things out of nothing but morbid curiosity, because it is there – easily and cheaply offered to us, to tempt our disbelief. If what we see troubles us enough to disrupt our day, we can at least take comfort in the fact that we have not lost our sense of wrongness. But the more exposed we are, the more desensitised we will become.
The act of censoring the internet may be impossible. We can only penalise higher profile sites, like Facebook and Twitter, while content will continue to flourish elsewhere. But large, mainstream companies of Facebook’s kind arguably do still have a responsibility, if not in censoring violent material entirely, then in framing it or controlling its access in such a way that viewing it must be a thoughtful and responsible decision on our part. It is unacceptable to have a world in which the extreme suffering of some becomes the mere viewing fodder of others, abandoned as soon as day-to-day distractions call. When it is also easy to sleep with eyes open, we must defend our capacity to be horrified.
