tsunami porn

Tsunami porn consists of two main components: the coverage and the response.

What happened in Asia last week is too enormous to comprehend. The mind nevertheless tries and when the mind tried to comprehend, the TV camera is not far behind. This disaster is of truly apocalyptic proportions. And yet....how many times do we need to see the stiff, bloated arm of a corpse, outsretched in agony in a sea of foul mud? The masked truck drivers, spilling bodies into ditches? The faces of fathomless dispair over and over and over again? The constant repetition of these images on our screens dulls our senses and desnsitizes us to the enormity of the event. The insatiable camera casts a wide, yet shallow net. We can see copious amounts of devastation but perversly, we understand less, not more when the images are repeated ad infinitum.

The need for huge amounts of help is unquestioned. But - as so often in the past - I am skeptical about any amount of money that flows to the affected regions. Damned if you do, damned if you don't. We must help the survivors, not just now but for years to come. But how do we help them? By sending billions that might disappear down the chute of local corruption or into the pockets of despots or worse, into the coffers of terrorists? I feel completely helpless for I know that an enormous amount of help is needed yet I fear that the knee-jerk response of the developed world (millions of dollars, erased debts, charity organizations) may not in the end achieve what needs to be achieved just as it hasn't over many decades in Africa and in South America.

Then there is the pronography of made-for-TV response. The children paraded in front of cameras reciting well rehearsed sentences in halting, pre-adolescent voices: " I call on the youth of Canada to raise a million dollars" Gee, when you're 10 you don't "call on" anybody unless you're parroting a script! The little girls in front of shopping malls, with their collection boxes for the "victims in my home country" Please! Leave the kids out of it!! A ten year old girl who was born in Canada speaking about her "home country" as if that really meant anything to her! Her home country is the country of her birth, her home is with her parents, her world is her classmates and friends. LEAVE THE KIDS OUT OF IT! It's supposed to tug at the heart-strings and wallets but it feels like porn: ultimately unreal and unsatisfying.

The horrible thing is that I don't know what the proper response is. It's impossible to do nothing and yet everything we do somehow seems wrong. Or simply inadequate. Perhaps the best way of dealing with this is sending in elite commandoes to help co-ordinate local Indonesian and Sri Lankan army efforts in the clean-up. Set up a modern support system. Make sure that there is drinking water and food on the ground for the survivors. Make sure that there is something to survive for: dignity and freedom. I don't know. Perhaps I'm just mouthing slogans myself. Perhaps that's a natural instinct.

But please, get the cameras out of the death pits and get the children away from the camera. That much we definitely CAN do!

May God help all the survivors and may 2005 be a little better than an average human year. As they say: 2005 WILL be average: worse than 2004 but not as bad as 2006....

Nostalgia isn't what it used to be