Axiom Home Page Forums General Discussion The Water Cooler OT: beheading video...should one watch?

Yeah, I'm with Will. I happily admit that I didn't understand hardly a word of md55's post!

Okay, md55, here is the fundamental question I think we'd like you to answer: Do you believe that producing and distributing a violent movie like Kill Bill as morally wrong as beheading innocent men, taping it, and distributing the footage all over the world?

Fair enough, 2x6.

Tell me which part you don't understand and I'll try to help you out. I admit I had to read the first paragraph a couple times myself, but the other two are pretty clear to me.

I took your original post at face value, the question you asked was should we watch it? To me the question was about how it affected people and if it was a good thing to WATCH. The misunderstanding comes from passing moral judgment on the actions behind what was seen. I was addressing the issue of how viewers are affected by different material and how that can be very different based on ones life experiences, culture, beliefs etc.

I don't think you can really understand my point if you cannot suspend making value judgments that prevent you from seeing things from other perspectives than your own. If you keep thinking I am talking about moral equivalencies you will miss the point. Is their a moral equivalency between seeing a stretch of road from a car as you drive past as compared to walking along the road? You might manufacture one in your mind I suppose, but what I am talking about is experiencing things from different perspectives in order to see and understand more.

You are sickened by seeing the filming of an actual beheading as most of us would be. It goes against all of our conditioning and experience. The revulsion is almost overwhelming. It is very hard to understand how anyone could do such a thing, tape it and send it out into the world. It produces anger, even hatred towards those who have "created" this thing you have witnessed. It does not apparently produce that same reaction in the culture that produced it. Many in that culture however seem to think we are a depraved and corrupting culture and have started attacking us. We can’t understand it because we never intended them any harm, in fact never thought much about them at all.

There doesn’t have to be any moral equivalency whatsoever between two things from different cultures for each culture to feel harmed by the other. I was simply asking if in seeing something that so affected you, did you, or others, ever think about how the things we watch might be perceived as affecting others.

The ultimate point is the question: can the people of the world step out of their own self-absorption and really try to understand each other?

So I'll answer your question with a question: What difference could it possibly make in any significant way for me or anyone else to try and find moral equivalency between "producing and distributing a violent movie like Kill Bill as morally wrong as beheading innocent men, taping it, and distributing the footage all over the world?"

Here's another one for you md55. Please consider this AP story in light of md55's suggestion that "the misunderstanding comes from passing moral judgment on the actions behind what was seen."

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DUBAI, United Arab Emirates - A videotape shows British hostage Kenneth Bigley being beheaded by his captors in Iraq, a witness who saw the tape said Friday.
The witness, who asked not to be identified by name, said the tape shows six hooded, armed men standing behind the kneeling Bigley, whom the witness recognized from two previous tapes released by the kidnappers.

One of the six then spoke in Arabic for about a minute. Afterward, the speaker took a knife from his belt and severed Bigley's head as three others held him down, the witness said. The tape ends with the killer holding up the severed head.

British officials in Baghdad said they had no confirmation that Bigley was dead, and American military authorities said no body had been found.

Bigley, 62, was abducted along with two Americans from their home in the upscale Mansour neighborhood by members of Tawhid and Jihad, Iraq's most feared terrorist group led by Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, who demanded the release of all female prisoners held by the coalition in Iraq.

The two Americans — Eugene Armstrong, 52, and Jack Hensley, 48 — were decapitated a few days later.

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So, md55 asks us to suspend our "value judgments" and asks us to see "things from the other perspectives than your own." So turn off your cultural and moral "filters," just kick back and enjoy the video of these IslamoFascist Butchers (oops, filter must've kicked in) cut the head off of this hapless HUMAN BEING, this innocent, screaming, terrified, man whose mother appealed for mercy, this Mr. Bigley who felt the knife sever his head from his body, felt the agony, the dread as his most precious life was taken, the agony of trying to breathe after the trachea is severed, the realization that "this is how I die, murdered by the cheering faithful."

I mean really, md55 is right. Road Runner cartoons and their gratuitous violence, the Playboy Channel and its depraved sexuality are not only just as bad as the depiction of some IslamoFascist sawing the head off a screaming Mr. Bigley, but it could be argued that we made them do it, that these poor IslamoFascists were merely reacting to the insult and assault against their culture posed by our depraved entertainment media.

The problem with md55's request that we "turn off our cultural filters" is that what he is really saying is that in order to "understand," we must first set aside our morality and values, after all, who is to say one set of values or one culture's morality is superior to that of another?

I say, hold your values tight, recognize that the war which is being fought against us is a war against our values and morality. The list of murders is too long to recount, however, just think of 9/11, and the thousands reduced to ash and dust who had been going about their business in the beautiful twin towers on that dread day. That attack was an act of war, not the first, but certainly the one which roused the pride and sense of victory of IslamoFascists all over the world. So, now we struggle to formulate a policy and war fighting doctrine against a culture which makes war on us. What is the nature of the struggle? It is a struggle based on our sense of morality, our strong desire not to cause injury to innocent people. Distinguish this sensitivity, my friends, distinguish it from the mentality which views all Christians, all Americans, all Jews, men, women, children, as enemies and proper targets. Consider Beslan, consider Ma'alot, consider the Palestinian parents who urge their children to blow themselves up if they can also take some Jews with them, and thereby buy their folks a new house, get them a Saudi check in the amount of a lifetime of wages. Yes, friends, this is a war of values, and if you are asked to set your values aside in order to understand, recognize that you are being asked to set aside the one frame of reference which can provide you with understanding.