Not So Beautiful Life: A Study on the Treatment of Black humour in Life is Beautiful

The Holocaust is one of the most tragic events ever happened in the human history. It was a systematic, bureaucratic and state sponsored persecution and murder of around six million Jews by the Nazi regime and its collaborators. Our memory of Holocaust, especially of the people belonging to this generation has been shaped more by popular representations, especially in films. The film Life is Beautiful directed by Robert Benigni portrayed the horror of Holocaust connotatively using black humour as its main medium. A short analysis of how Benigni uses black humour and other visual-cinema techniques in bringing out the terror of Holocaust among audience is studied in this article. Though the movie seems to fall under the genre comedy, it discusses connotatively the serious issues related to the life of Jews under Nazi regime without any use of violent images or scenes that reflect the real terrors of Holocaust.

Imagineering, or what Images do to People: Violence and the Spectacular in the Seventeenth-Century Dutch Republic

This article studies the visual representation of violence in the Dutch Republic and the growth of a “staple market of images” in the early modern period. It introduces and employs the concept of imagineering for analysing what images can do to people when circulated in the context of a fast-expanding market. The advancement of the early modern print industry and imagery marketing produced a swirl of violent images. It was through this “spectacle of violence” and its related sensory and embodied experiences, that new ways of looking were introduced, which helped to craft new selves and realities. As the public manifestation of violence by ruling powers became less dominant, violence could become a matter of private consumption; a commodity to be enjoyed. Producers needed to create new markets as well as serve an existing one, satisfying clients in their inquisitive search for knowledge and excitement. Imagineering was not just a mimetic duplicate of its historical context, here, it performatively altered the imagination through the effective use of a new cultural infrastructure that enabled a visual abundance and continuous repetition and remediation of images.

Menores conectados y riesgos online: contenidos inadecuados, uso inapropiado de la información y uso excesivo de internet

This article presents some of the most relevant results of a survey of 2,900 Spanish minors aged between 9 and 17 years who are Internet users and who were asked about their online habits. It focuses on an analysis of their exposure to inappropriate content on the Internet, typified as information about injury to others or self-injury, ways to commit suicide, anorexia, bulimia, hate messages, drug use, or violent images. It also analyzes the exposure to experiences with viruses or malware and online fraud, and risks related to the misuse of personal information, sharenting, and excessive use. Differences are observed by age groups, and also by gender, for example, regarding the exposure to hate messages against certain groups, which during adolescence is noticeably more frequent among girls than among boys. The results, which are partially comparable to those of two equivalent surveys carried out in 2010 and 2015, allow us to conclude that the exposure to online risks has increased in recent years. Resumen Se presenta parte de los resultados más relevantes de una encuesta realizada a 2.900 menores españoles de entre 9 y 17 años usuarios de internet a quienes se preguntó sobre sus hábitos de navegación online. Se centra en el análisis de su exposición a contenidos inadecuados en internet, tipificados como información sobre formas de lesionar o autolesionarse, formas de suicidarse, anorexia, bulimia, mensajes de odio, consumo de drogas o imágenes violentas. También se analiza la exposición a experiencias con virus o malware y fraudes online, y riesgos relacionados con el mal uso de la información personal, el sharenting y el uso excesivo. Se advierten diferencias por franjas de edad, y también de género, por ejemplo, respecto a la exposición a mensajes de odio dirigidos contra ciertos grupos, que es notablemente más frecuente entre las adolescentes que entre los adolescentes. Los resultados, que son parcialmente comparables con los de sendas encuestas equivalentes realizadas en 2010 y 2015, permiten concluir que la exposición a los riesgos online se ha incrementado en los últimos años.

Terrible Revolution

The relationship between Mormons and the United States was marked by anxiety and hostility. Nineteenth-century Latter-day Saints looked forward to apocalyptic events that would unseat corrupt governments across the globe but would particularly decimate the tyrannical government of the United States. Mormons turned to prophecies of divine deliverance by way of plagues, natural disasters, foreign invasions, American Indian raids, slave uprisings, or civil war unleashed on American cities and American people. For the Saints, these violent images promised an end to their oppression. It also promised a national rebirth as part of the millennial Kingdom of God that would vouchsafe the protections of the U.S. Constitution. Blythe examines apocalypticism across the history of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, particularly as it would take shape in localized and personalized forms in the writings and visions of ordinary Latter-day Saints outside of the church’s leadership. By following the official response of church leaders to lay prophecy, Blythe shows how the hierarchy, committed to a form of separatist nationalism of their own, encouraged apocalypticism during the nineteenth century. Yet, after Utah obtained statehood, as the church sought to accommodate to national norms for religious denominations, leaders sought to lessen the tensions between themselves and American political and cultural powers. As a result, visions of a violent end to the nation became a liability, and leaders began to disavow and regulate these apocalyptic narratives especially as they showed up among the laity.

Images That Liberate: Moral Shock and Strategic Visual Communication in Animal Liberation Activism

Animal liberation activists’ visual output invites reflection on the relationships our society has with other animals who live, suffer and die as objects of human exploitation. This paper presents the results of 60 interviews with vegan animal liberation activists in Sweden, Denmark and Spain. The main goal of this research was to consider the effectiveness of different visuals and audiovisuals (particularly violent images producing moral shock) in 1) promoting change in speciesist attitudes (the adoption of veganism), 2) promoting action against speciesism (involvement in activism) and 3) sustaining both veganism and activism in the long term. A second goal was to examine how activists used visual materials in their own efforts to promote anti-speciesism. The third goal was to validate the author’s classification of violent images of farmed exploited animals. The findings suggest that exposure to moral shock was decisive in the adoption of veganism and involvement in activism in most cases. They also show that activists use these visuals to sustain their moral values and practices over time.

The Insurgent Image

Pictures speak louder than words. Violent acts create opportunity spaces––a hiatus in the political status quo shaken beyond comprehension for a brief time. In that moment, the state struggles to control the normality of its monopoly on violence and people’s confidence in the state’s ability to deliver security. If that space is prepared before the event with stories of struggle and grievance, the act caught on camera becomes a metaphor and an icon through which audiences connect to frames of understanding. Complex problems are simplified. And for a brief time an opportunity space opens to be exploited. This may be called shock doctrine. Chapter 4 explores the meaning of violent images from Iran to Pakistan and Northern Ireland.

Conclusion

Propaganda of the Deed and its capture and projection of violent images as metaphors for historical grievance act as a lightning rod in the contemporary media landscape. Its role has been transformed since its emergence as a late 19th century weapon of anarchist insurgency. The speed of digital technologies and low cost, mass access to consumer technologies of communication sit at the heart of this change. Globalization; increased mass; the Digital Revolution; the mapping of virtual networks onto physical social networks; and the dominance of communications in today’s politics converge to make a complex environment. Added to this, the speed of communications moves messaging from the local to the global, and from tactical to strategic levels in an instant.

Afterword

Capturing the mood of the times and written in the winter of 2020, the author reflects on complex changes to our societies driven by and contained within the prevalence of violent images. These now form part of the daily rhetoric absorbed by casual consumers of information. But mobilisers and influencers also feed them systematically into both popular, spontaneous protest and organized militancy and insurgency. From white supremacist atrocity in New Zealand to the tragedy of the suffering wrought by Islamic State in Syria to street protests by #blacklivesmatter in the Unites States, we witness the winds of change that are contributing to violent images and Propaganda of the Deed serving as political weathervanes and lightning rods for insurgency, revolution, and protest in the 21st century.

Spontaneous Revolution

Chapter 7 looks at the historic tension between top-down command-and-control vanguardism and fluid, organic expressions of spontaneity within mass populations according to revolutionary theories. It evaluates whether violent images and the response they evoke in audiences are sufficient to mobilize populations to rise up without the need for an organizing, centralized elite or vanguard. In other words, a leaderless revolution. Symbol-rich, shock-and-awe images cross nation state borders via electronic connections before triggering local grievances within social movements and the social networks that both underpin them and link them in what individuals increasingly perceive as a common global imaginary. Is the future one of organized overthrow of governments or state implosion when political elites can no longer maintain their own security and tenure under the force of waves of televised protest?

Introduction

An introduction to the proposition that violent images caught on camera are today’s strategic operating concept for insurgents and revolutionaries. Propaganda of the Deed acts as a lightning rod for constructed collective memory. Pictures and images of violence trigger crystallized messages that resonate with popular memories of grievance and injustice. These messages move so fast through interconnected global networks that hierarchically organized states struggle to respond in their decision making and actions. This introduction lays the theoretical foundations for a new theory of resistance and protest in today’s dynamic communications landscape.