The observation essay ‘Witnessing: US citizenship and the vicarious experience of suffering’ by Carries Rentschler inspects the way the residents acquire and are probable to be a spectator to human misery by the means of mass interceded representations. According to the author, the residents ‘bear witness’ by the means of not only ordinary but also unexpected methods of media records.
The main topic of the article is the images of the violence, killings, and travail that are presented with the help of mass media; moreover, the author provides the reader with the vivid examples of how mass media applies these images in order to manipulate certain political and nonpolitical events.
Proficient and unprofessional vivid demonstrations of killing and brutality, for example, appeal to the audiences and requests them to prudently turn their attention to the imageries of travail and its reasons as a part of a traditional bereavement; however, these images could be applied in order to maintain soldierly accomplishments as well. The author claims that in its deceptively traditional methods, at that time, the performances of mass facilitated observing possess an unavoidably party-political constituent. This declaration appears to be the thesis statement of the whole article.
The author supports his thesis statement immediately with the examples of pictures and prints hanging in the windows of trade shops throughout the metropolises and smaller townships in the United States with the appeal to reminisce the fatalities of September 11th terroristic attack. These posters play not only the traditional role of memorial services and gratitude, as these deceased sufferers play the chief part in explanations and defenses for the war of the United States against terrorism as well.
Despite the fact that the fight with extremism provides a connotation to the appeal to pay witness to the reminiscence of the fatalities of the terroristic attacks on September 11th, conflict followers have made imperceptible a lot of the noncombatant and combatant losses of soldierly exploit of the Unites States and the United Kingdom in the confrontation as well. Furthermore, the party-political discrepancy amongst the deceased whose misery deserves to be displayed, and the fatalities that remain unnoticed becomes fabricated into the deed of bearing witness.
Moreover, the author states that perceiving establishes a custom of discriminatory responsiveness towards the sufferers of the military actions, and from time to time empathy to the deceased, in customs that every so often make imperceptible residents’ own contribution to national viciousness against other people.
One of the main claims towards the support of the thesis statement is the explanation of the concept of the ‘witness’. It indicates the situation of a stayer, a person that has observed the fierceness near him and survived to express what he has seen to other people. One of the most noticeable clusters of stayer-spectators in the Unites States and a lot of area of the Western domain are Holocaust fighters. The author states that this example is competent as the structured assemblies of survivors and their party-political agents have turned the practice of honoring the Holocaust survivors and increasing the awareness of the tragedy into a very mindful governmental scheme.
An observer, nonetheless, possesses an ability to indicate a consistently motivated variety of performances that African-Americans conduct in order to reminisce the inheritance of oppression and the combat against chauvinistic ferocity at the present day. The Holocaust is apparent as a range of survivor involvements and actions of observing, in addition to some of the administrative explanations stated before, for the reason that it has been very well renowned.
In several significant customs, then, the connotation of witnessing might change from that of the specific (narrative) involvement of the stayer towards the more widespread involvement of the mass media viewer. According to the article, to witness implies an action that is beyond simply observing or seeing. Moreover, it appears to be a method of physical and party-political contribution as well, when the individuals perceive and document what is every so often disguised by their apparent detachment from the proceedings, apart from, possibly, in those unexpected practices that the individuals make of broadcasting documents to remember the disaster.
To observe, perceive or overhear another’s persecution from in the distance is able, on the other hand, to establish the affecting and governmental systems of contribution to others’ misery. The individuals are able to take prurient inclination or immature attentiveness to the descriptions of others’ misery. The indirect involvement of others’ travail, at that juncture, occurs in the framework of the relations that individuals establish with substances, chronicles of the past events, even the procedures that people use in order to structure their day.
The strengths of the article are concentrated in the observation of the researches regarding the subject matter, as the author supports his arguments with the theory of mass media studies. The weakness of the article lies in the fact that the author applies his entitlements to the majority of political and non-political events, thus ranking the work of mass media to one practice of using the tragic events for their own purposes.