Like the collector, the photographer is animated by a passion that, even when it appears to be for the present, is linked to a sense of the past.
Susan SontagRead
The shock of photographed atrocities wears off with repeated viewings, just as the surprise and bemusement felt the first time one sees a pornographic movie wear off after one sees a few more.
Interpretation
Repeated exposure to shocking images dulls our emotional response to them.
Susan Sontag's quote suggests that when we are repeatedly exposed to distressing or shocking content—such as atrocities captured in photographs or explicit imagery—we become desensitized over time. This desensitization can reduce our emotional reaction and engagement with the important issues represented, making it crucial to be aware of how media can shape our perceptions and reactions to reality.
In practice
In a discussion about media's impact on society, this quote can highlight the dangers of desensitization.
Like the collector, the photographer is animated by a passion that, even when it appears to be for the present, is linked to a sense of the past.
Science fiction films are not about science. They are about disaster, which is one of the oldest subjects of art.
Gide and I have attained such perfect intellectual communion that I experience the appropriate labor pains for every thought he gives birth to!
Volume depends precisely on the writer's having been able to sit in a room every day, year after year, alone.
In NY sensuality completely turns into sexuality - no objects for the senses to respond to, no beautiful river, houses, people. Awful smells of the street, and dirt... Nothing except eating, if that, and the frenzy of the bed.
It hurts to love. It's like giving yourself to be flayed and knowing that at any moment the other person may just walk off with your skin.
How is it that we have created an economic system that tells us it is cheaper to destroy the earth and exhaust its people than to nurture them both? Is it rational to have an pricing system which discounts the future and sells off the past? How did we create an economic system that confused capital liquidation with income?
Have you no wish for others to be saved? Then you're not saved yourself, be sure of that!
It seems not more reasonable to leave the right of printing unrestrained, because writers may be afterwards censured, than it would be to sleep with doors unbolted, because by our laws we can hang a thief.
Taxation is not a method by which the community corporately provides itself with essential services, but a fund to be divided between different interests with political claims upon the state.
I have never smuggled anything in my life. Why, then, do I feel an uneasy sense of guilt on approaching a customs barrier?
Even through you and I are in different boats, you in your boat and we our canoe, we share the same river of life. What befalls me befalls you. And downstream, downstream in this river of life, our children will pay for our selfishness, for our greed, and for our lack of vision.
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