Question:
Any comments on entertainment?
Answer:
I was reading Susan Sontag’s Regarding the Pain of Others (2003) when I began to research on this exhibition. I’d like to present my own “needy” questions on our horrific global infotainment industry in response to Sontag’s work. In her words, war and catastrophe, “to be witnessed day after day by television cameras, introduced the home front to new tele-intimacy with death and destruction. Battles and massacres filmed as they unfold have been a routine ingredient of the ceaseless flow of domestic, small-screen entertainment.” So my questions are:
|
 | 1) Where does morality stand, when we are being fed catastrophic events as entertainment, why do sights and sounds of tragedies, violence and blood in faraway countries excite us in our living room?
2) How could we respond emotionlessly to the global trading of weapon the same ways as we trade toys? Edmund Burke once remarked, “For evil to triumph, it is only necessary for good men to do nothing.”
3) Can a tank ever be a naïve object, once we try to make sense visually of the emptied plastic packages of guillotines, missiles and all weapons of mass
destruction?
4) What do I think about the brutality of well-dressed ministers in power of “playing with a button” … in front of some screens, sitting comfortably (viewing explosion) and subsequently going in front of other TV cameras (or screens) to speak about “Good will finally defeat evil! Democracy wins? Freedom prevails?”
I don’t have any clear answers for the above questions, as an audience, how about you? |
A bleeding Toy from Childhood
An interactive T-34 tank Wood with an antique-like rusty steel interior, 2.9m x 2.39m x 6.2m MegARTstore, Heritage Museum, Hong Kong, 2006 All
Content © 2007 Amy Cheung |
