Should the dead be photographed

I think their is a difference between flag drapped coffins, in which the persons state is concealed, and a death pic.

You could show a scantilly clad women on primetime, but you can't show her naked. Two different realms, but the same premise.

I would be more leniant towards a death pic in the memorial sense, where a person has been prepped/posistioned in 'morally concience ' way rather than a blatant 'blood shot'.

Actually, some people still take photographs of their dead family memebers. Some even send them to family members who were unable to attend the funeral. I actually have a picture that was taken of a deceased aunt who died in the sixties and probably one of my Grandma somewhere. What's the difference between taking a picture of a dead relative or going to their viewing?

It is only recently that people have become squeemish about pictures of dead people.

I think with the techno-world we live in now, where imagery is more readily available, not to mention the War related death scenes, contribute to pictures of the dead being more accessible.

Could this also be a small part of the moral breakdown in today's society?

I'm going to play devil's advocate and throw another way of looking at this to you. Isn't what you're proposing a form of censorship? If you don't want to look, you can always turn the channel or go to another web page. I'm not saying I appreciate pics of the dead, just bringing up something else to discuss on the topic.

Me, personally, I have a morbid fascination. I will not deny it -- rotten and ogrish are my favorite websites.

But, why do I like looking at pictures and videos of dead/dying people?

I've never seen a dead person up close and in person. Aside from bugs, I've only seen one dead cat in my life (which was heart wrenching in and of itself). But, I looked. I made myself look.
By looking at people who've died, I'm poking a stick, prodding... I'm coming face-to-face with death as best I can. I am, in a certain way, coming to terms with the fact that I am going to die. It's one thing to simply say "I accept it", it's another thing entirely to make your brain understand the full length, breadth, and depth of such a concept...

To gaze into the eyes of a dead person is a meditation on/of death. _Why not_ look at it?

It's fascinating to me to see the anatomy of people, or lack thereof depending on their particular fashion of death. Most of the pictures I've seen are particularly grotesque, and truly stomach churning. I've seen videos that caused me pain -- but I made myself watch because I do not see the point in denying it. Someone went through that.... who am I to turn away from it because it's 'too gross' or 'inhumane'?


It is de-sensitization. I've realized that it's very hard for me to separate the images on the news from the images of tv and movies. It's hard to understand anything as real unless it's in my face... There've been several incidents that have happened that I watched on tv, yet felt absolutely nothing because the images and videos shown were movies... they were tv shows... It's taken a long time and a lot of 'mental convincing', as it were, to really get it into my head that yes, these events took place... yes, these events involved real people...



The notion of censorship is an interesting bit.. truly. There've been several suits against various websites because of images portrayed... family members very disturbed that their loved ones were up for viewing. Should the site owners have worked to contact the family about the photos? Possibly. I personally wouldn't care -- they're dead. I just wouldn't click on that particular photo...

I maintain that *nothing* should be censored -- if I, or you, or whomever doesn't like it, then don't look/click. Simple as that. Don't try and guard me and mine, that's my duty and obligation. Not yours.

I think there's a time and a place for pictures of the dead- there's a big difference to publishing pictures of a dead person in a coffin, someone who's been tragically killed in war, a picture of a 7 week old rotting corpse etc...I think its kinda a vague question "Should the dead be photographed" because i think it depends entirely of the situation and circumstances.

In war, pictures of the dead can have very strong consequences on the living- at one point, we live so far away from the horrors of Iraq, but at the same time we play such a big part in such a people's destiny- we are playing with lives. Sometimes people's opinions start to change when they see the realities of such a situation- a child with gunshot wounds lying in the dirt on the side of the road, a man dead in hospital from car bomb explosion wounds, a husband crying over the body of his dead wife. People all of a sudden no longer just seem like statistics, the blood and death of it all of a sudden brings us back to a part of reality that often seems so distant.

I think its important to stay in touch with the harsher aspects of life like death, because otherwise we will become too distant from them and take life for granted. Life can stop anytime- a photo of the dead is a vivid reminder of that. I don't think people have to see photo's of dead people if they don't want to, however i feel that if they do then there should be some sort of access to such photo's (which is the current situation).
However of course we should still be respectfull towards the dead- a lack of respect towards the dead just reveals a more animalistic and primitive side to human nature.

I think one of the big problems with your question is there seems to be a myth that society was once a picture of morale protection. The phrase “moral breakdown of society” is thrown around all the time but the problem is that this time period is nothing more than a myth of perception. When most people talk about the USA’s moral breakdown they are usually comparing it to the “good old days” or a period of time they perceive as having superior morals - (Typically, a small period of time after WWII from about 1945 to 1960’ish give or take some years). However, close examination of any time frame will expose great horrors and morale injustices. There is no moral breakdown. We perceive the world to be getting worse because we grow up from an age of innocence and steadily learn just how bad the real world actually is. We carry with us a romantic view of a past era when things were better but the truth is that it has always been the way it is today.

Originally posted by zerotime
I think one of the big problems with your question is there seems to be a myth that society was once a picture of morale protection. The phrase “moral breakdown of society” is thrown around all the time but the problem is that this time period is nothing more than a myth of perception. When most people talk about the USA’s moral breakdown they are usually comparing it to the “good old days” or a period of time they perceive as having superior morals - (Typically, a small period of time after WWII from about 1945 to 1960’ish give or take some years). However, close examination of any time frame will expose great horrors and morale injustices. There is no moral breakdown. We perceive the world to be getting worse because we grow up from an age of innocence and steadily learn just how bad the real world actually is. We carry with us a romantic view of a past era when things were better but the truth is that it has always been the way it is today.

You have any statistics to back that up?

I don't have to do a historical search to come to the conclusion that things are much worse today as opposed to yester-year.

To say there has been 'no moral breakdown' is a bit flipant IMO. The things we accept as everyday life today, would never have been accepted decades ago.

A historical review would show that much of what occurs in todays society that is deemed acceptable by most, would not have been in the past.

Originally posted by Grailkeeper

To say there has been 'no moral breakdown' is a bit flipant IMO. The things we accept as everyday life today, would never have been accepted decades ago.

AND there are many things that were accepted in decades ago that would never be accepted in todays society. Racism, the way they treated woman, the way that workers were treated, the way that health care was handled, how the handicap or mentally disabled were treated. These are just some of the many many things that were awful and ACCEPTED in the "good old days".

Of course I am referring to the early 1900's of American history. To really define the "good old days" YOU must define what YOU believe to be that time period. For myself, my preception, is that the old west was my "good old days." My views are romanticed about that time. I can say now, sitting in the comfort of my home, that I would love to live in the late 1800's but the truth is that was an extremely hard to live, full of injustice, and I would probably want to return after a week.

Most people however consider the good old days to be sometime in the early to mid 1900s. During these "good old days', diseases and crime were rampant. If you think the Justice system of the USA is bad now go back 60 to 90 years. They didn't even consider rape to be that important of a crime. Rape did not become a sexual assault crime until the 1960's. If you were raped before that you would have very little chance of getting a prosecution because no one wanted to hear about it or deal with it - which was basically the modo the good old days. Maybe that is why people believe it was a better time.

My grandparents were good people. They were born in the early 1900's. They lived through the depression. Both of my grandpa's fought in WWII. They worked steel mill labor jobs for most of their life. They never committed any major crimes that I know about. They lived what I would call a fairly moral life on the surface. However, I remember as a child going to the VFW and hanging out with my grandpa and his war buddies. The one thing that I remember now as an adult looking back was that these were great men who served their country and fought hard in WWII but they were also drunks and the biggest racists that I have ever met in my life. Looking back I think of the terrible hypocrisy and irony of men who hated Hilter and the Nazi's but were the most vicious racists I have ever known. But this type of racism was completely accepted in their "moral" "good old days" time.

I was a history major for most of my college academia until I left to start my own business. History has always fasintated me. One thing that I have learned about the past is that life was DIFFERENT in the past, but do not confuse different with morally greater because that has never been the case. There are variations between the times but overall we are no better or worse than the people who have lived before us.

Here is a books to read. There are lots of history books and websites that talk about this subject.

The Good Old Days--They Were Terrible!
www.amazon.com...



[edit on 4-1-2007 by zerotime]

Originally posted by zerotime
I think one of the big problems with your question is there seems to be a myth that society was once a picture of morale protection. The phrase “moral breakdown of society” is thrown around all the time but the problem is that this time period is nothing more than a myth of perception. When most people talk about the USA’s moral breakdown they are usually comparing it to the “good old days” or a period of time they perceive as having superior morals - (Typically, a small period of time after WWII from about 1945 to 1960’ish give or take some years). However, close examination of any time frame will expose great horrors and morale injustices. There is no moral breakdown. We perceive the world to be getting worse because we grow up from an age of innocence and steadily learn just how bad the real world actually is. We carry with us a romantic view of a past era when things were better but the truth is that it has always been the way it is today.

It depends on what your definition of morality is. Yes, the 50s and 60s were a time of terrible racial discrimination and injustice. But it was also a time of heavy censorship. People dressed more conservativly and profanity was seldom heard in public place. TV shows would not enven show married couples sharing the same bed. But sexual censorship was accompanied by political censorship. By freeing one, we freed the other.

When I was in high school, we had one student get pregnant (out of a class of 300) and drop out of school. She married the father, which was the way things were done back then. I recently took my neighbor's 12 year old to school and counted four junior high scool aged pregnant girls walking to class. Perhaps this is what is meant by "moral breakdown."

Originally posted by darkelf

It depends on what your definition of morality is. Yes, the 50s and 60s were a time of terrible racial discrimination and injustice. But it was also a time of heavy censorship. People dressed more conservativly and profanity was seldom heard in public place. TV shows would not enven show married couples sharing the same bed. But sexual censorship was accompanied by political censorship. By freeing one, we freed the other.

When I was in high school, we had one student get pregnant (out of a class of 300) and drop out of school. She married the father, which was the way things were done back then. I recently took my neighbor's 12 year old to school and counted four junior high scool aged pregnant girls walking to class. Perhaps this is what is meant by "moral breakdown."

What is actually kind of my point. If you read my second post I wrote that the times are "different." Neither are better. Which era would you take? The era when a minority person could be brutally beaten to death in the middle of the street with dozens of witnesses and no one is prosecuted because the attackers were white? Or the time when more teenage girls get pregnant and some bad language is played on TV? Which of those two time periods are morally superior? It is a simple view of perception. When someone says, “I wish these were the good old days” what are the odds that person is a woman, a minority or a handicap person. My bet is that 99% of the time only a white male will talk about the good old days because they have the perception that it was a better time for a person like themselves and on some levels they are correct.


[edit on 5-1-2007 by zerotime]