Violent death on television

The Black Dahlia is currently ranked as the sixth highest-grossing film for the weekend of September 22-24. As I've posted previously, it's the story of a victim of one of the most notorious crimes in recent American history. There are scenes in the film showing her mutilated corpse; her body had been cut in half, burned with cigarettes, a breast nearly sliced off, and the corners of her mouth had been cut to give her a grotesque smile reminiscent of Victor Hugo's The Man Who Laughs. Indeed, the novel and film versions feature prominently in both James Ellroy's noir novel and in the current film.

In the past, news photos of her body showed her covered, with both halves together to resemble a more normal body. In fact, a search of the Corbis photo archive (formerly Bettman Archive) brought up a news photo. (In the interest of delicacy, I won't post the image here, but here is a link.)

This brings me to my point. Man's inhumanity to man is pretty well documented. You can make the argument that seeing images helps to raise awareness of the problem at hand and hopefully do something about it. Back in the 1980s, the Western news media showed images of the Ethiopian famine. People were forced to confront the fact that so many people in an area of the world most Westerners don't often think about. The ensuing reaction was awesome. There were two benefit songs, one from the UK and one from the US; people donated money to aid in the relief effort. In that case, the publicity worked.

And that's one example. Another, perhaps better, example is documentary footage of Holocaust victims. Most of us have seen pictures of skeletal human bodies stacked like cordwood or film of crematoria as the smoke billows up into the sky. It's gruesome, but necessary if we are to remember the atrocities committed on the European Jews.

So, from the historical perspective, it's not hard to accept that some upsetting imagery is desirable. But there's a difference between historical and news footage that is intended to enlighten and inform, and the gratuitous display of violence in the name of entertainment that is intended to entertain and shock the audience.
The Black Dahlia is in the latter, the Black Dahlia is in the former.