They say that beauty is in the eye of the beholder. It is different for all people; what one person may consider beautiful, then next person may consider ugly. Beauty is one of the wonders of the human existence. It is subjective and based on opinion. But all people can agree on one thing, war is never beautiful. Or is it? Is there beauty in the destruction of ourselves? Can a photo truly bring out the beauty in the one piece of our world that all people believe to be ugly, disgusting, and terrible? Susan Sontag’s essay, “Regarding the Pain of Others”, argues that even in the most unlikely and disturbing places, beauty can be found.
Sontag begins her essay by saying how there is a “challenging kind of beauty” (257) in the destructiveness that we call war. She believes that in these images of war there is a certain deep, disturbing type of beauty that is under the surface of all the destruction and mayhem. I disagree with Sontag in this way because I personally see no beauty in the images of war from any period of time. In my opinion, there is no such thing as a beautiful war. There is nothing beautiful about eighteen year old boys getting torn apart by gunfire, or fathers being blown up by mines. Even in recreations of war, there still is no beauty in the artful scenes that are created to tell the story of a band of brothers.
Sontag uses the “authenticity of Spielberg’s acclaimed re-creation of the Omaha Beach landing on D-Day” (258) to suggest that there is a certain epic beauty that can be captured by few people. After listening to my grandfather, who parachuted behind enemy lines on D-Day, I completely disagree with Sontag. He said that he couldn’t watch the entire opening scene of Saving Private Ryan because he had seen too many people die already. There is a stunning realism in Spielberg’s work that some may classify as beauty, but I classify as torturous for those who know what war truly is. In the D-Day scene of Saving Private Ryan, there is nothing beautiful in seeing a man—no, a boy—searching the beach for his arm that had been blown off by a grenade. There is nothing beautiful in seeing a boy lying on his back, intestines in his hands, screaming for his mama.
Sontag goes on to talk about the Holocaust and how people get the wrong image about concentration camps: “What makes the images unbearable—the piles of corpses, the skeletal survivors—was not at all typical for the camps […]” (261). Sontag is saying that although there are people dying in this way, this was not typical and how images like this can paint a more extreme image for what actually happened and distort how people view a certain event in history. This sentence makes me unsettled. My grandfather told me about going to a camp and seeing the piles of bodies of people who had died after the Nazis left. It may not be the way the Nazis had planned on making them die, but these people died because of their captors. In these images I see no beauty; I see nothing that can be seen as redeeming or worth praise. I was also told by him that he watched people in the concentration camps die from soldiers trying to feed them and yet because they were used to not having food they died because their bodies couldn’t handle the load. Maybe others see beauty, but I get sick to my stomach because of these images.
In other wars throughout American history, images are said to have been distorted for use in propaganda to support or to undermine a war. In the instance of the Vietnam War, the images of the My Lai Massacre were published in many places to show the effects the war was having in Vietnam. These images were used to sway people to not support the war and protest the United States’ involvement in the issues of Vietnam. Photographer Ron Haberle captured images of the My Lai Massacre that have been seen across the country in through various They say that beauty is in the eye of the beholder. It is different for all people; what one person may consider beautiful, then next person may consider ugly. Beauty is one of the wonders of the human existence. It is subjective and based on opinion. But all people can agree on one thing, war is never beautiful. Or is it? Is there beauty in the destruction of ourselves? Can a photo truly bring out the beauty in the one piece of our world that all people believe to be ugly, disgusting, and terrible? Susan Sontag’s essay, “Regarding the Pain of Others”, argues that even in the most unlikely and disturbing places, beauty can be found.
Sontag begins her essay by saying how there is a “challenging kind of beauty” (257) in the destructiveness that we call war. She believes that in these images of war there is a certain deep, disturbing type of beauty that is under the surface of all the destruction and mayhem. I disagree with Sontag in this way because I personally see no beauty in the images of war from any period of time. In my opinion, there is no such thing as a beautiful war. There is nothing beautiful about eighteen year old boys getting torn apart by gunfire, or fathers being blown up by mines. Even in recreations of war, there still is no beauty in the artful scenes that are created to tell the story of a band of brothers.
Sontag uses the “authenticity of Spielberg’s acclaimed re-creation of the Omaha Beach landing on D-Day” (258) to suggest that there is a certain epic beauty that can be captured by few people. After listening to my grandfather, who parachuted behind enemy lines on D-Day, I completely disagree with Sontag. He said that he couldn’t watch the entire opening scene of Saving Private Ryan because he had seen too many people die already. There is a stunning realism in Spielberg’s work that some may classify as beauty, but I classify as torturous for those who know what war truly is. In the D-Day scene of Saving Private Ryan, there is nothing beautiful in seeing a man—no, a boy—searching the beach for his arm that had been blown off by a grenade. There is nothing beautiful in seeing a boy lying on his back, intestines in his hands, screaming for his mama.
Sontag goes on to talk about the Holocaust and how people get the wrong image about concentration camps: “What makes the images unbearable—the piles of corpses, the skeletal survivors—was not at all typical for the camps […]” (261). Sontag is saying that although there are people dying in this way, this was not typical and how images like this can paint a more extreme image for what actually happened and distort how people view a certain event in history. This sentence makes me unsettled. My grandfather told me about going to a camp and seeing the piles of bodies of people who had died after the Nazis left. It may not be the way the Nazis had planned on making them die, but these people died because of their captors. In these images I see no beauty; I see nothing that can be seen as redeeming or worth praise. I was also told by him that he watched people in the concentration camps die from soldiers trying to feed them and yet because they were used to not having food they died because their bodies couldn’t handle the load. Maybe others see beauty, but I get sick to my stomach because of these images.
In other wars throughout American history, images are said to have been distorted for use in propaganda to support or to undermine a war. In the instance of the Vietnam War, the images of the My Lai Massacre were published in many places to show the effects the war was having in Vietnam. These images were used to sway people to not support the war and protest the United States’ involvement in the issues of Vietnam. Photographer Ron Haberle captured images of the My Lai Massacre that have been seen across the country in through various media. In this image, Haberle captured a mother and her baby dead in the middle of a road, after being killed by American troops after they tried to flee from the soldiers. The baby is seen bloody and battered, with his clothes being torn apart. This image is an image of war, in which I challenge anyone to find a hint of beauty. Judging by the basket full of clothes, this pair must have been going about their daily business when they were shot. In the bottom right hand corner, there is a rifle barrel, showing that these people were killed recently and deliberately by the U.S forces. Ron Haberle was able to capture many images of the massacre, because he traveled with the U.S. troops through Vietnam.
http://www.salem-news.com/articles/march162008/my_lai_remembered_3-15-08.php
In another image, Haberle photographed a large group of people that were killed in the middle of a road. There are upwards of twenty women and children dead on a muddy road in the middle of a rice paddy. Sontag may see beauty in this type of destruction, but in my opinion, any death of innocent people in not beautiful at all; it is disturbing, revolting, and very unsettling. It is human nature to kill; it is our instinct in order to survive, but there is no such thing as beauty in killing. Seeing the image of these dead children reminds me of seeing young men and boys being torn apart by a machine gun on Omaha beach in Saving Private Ryan. The destructiveness and chaos of war is a phenomenon that allows for no beauty.
http://www.salem-news.com/articles/march162008/my_lai_remembered_3-15-08.php
In Ron Haberle’s photograph of a soldier burning a group of hooches some may find an artful beauty. In my opinion there is nothing but sadness. Imagine coming home to nothing; there is only a scorch-mark where your home used to be. After realizing what has happened to your home, you try to run as fast and as far as you can, only to be tripped up by the bodies of your former neighbors who have been gunned down. As you get back up, you are shot in the back of the head by a savage, unrelenting soldier. Through this, I think it is easy to understand why there is no beauty in war. By imagining the devastation happening to me, I can never see beauty in the destruction of lives and homes. My greatest fear is having a family member die, which makes me think that there is a family who will never see their son or daughter ever again.
http://www.historynet.com/my-lai-vietnam-war-controversy-on-pbs-american-experience.htm
This sense of abandonment and isolation is prevalent in Haberle’s photograph of a body that was thrown into a well. Not only was this person shot, but they were tossed into a well and left to rot. Through these images, someone may think that the U.S. people would think that the war should be stopped and the troops should be immediately pulled out. Despite the terrifying nature of these images, they had no relevant effect on the American people. In fact, the man who gave the order for the My Lai Massacre, General Westmoreland, was praised and used as a propaganda pawn in the government’s effort to build support for the Vietnam War. In this way, it is shown that no matter how disgusting an image is it may not have any effect in trying to distort the overall view of a specific event or war.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ronald_L._Haeberle
Despite Sontag’s effort to convince me, the reader, that there is beauty in certain images of war and destruction I cannot say that I find beauty in anything to do with war. I have grown up in the Twenty-first Century: a century full of war and hate. I have lived through 9/11, the war in Iraq, and devastating hurricanes. I have seen images of genocides, starvation, and massacres. These pictures are burned into my brain; I will never forget seeing the planes fly into the World Trade Center; I will never forget seeing people stranded on their roofs. There is no beauty in destruction: from war to peacetime, from the My Lai Massacre to Hurricane Katrina. It’s not fair to those who have lived through it to call destruction beautiful. I don’t think anyone should have to live through such devastation, let alone relive it in these images we call “art”.
media. In this image, Haberle captured a mother and her baby dead in the middle of a road, after being killed by American troops after they tried to flee from the soldiers. The baby is seen bloody and battered, with his clothes being torn apart. This image is an image of war, in which I challenge anyone to find a hint of beauty. Judging by the basket full of clothes, this pair must have been going about their daily business when they were shot. In the bottom right hand corner, there is a rifle barrel, showing that these people were killed recently and deliberately by the U.S forces. Ron Haberle was able to capture many images of the massacre, because he traveled with the U.S. troops through Vietnam.
In another image, Haberle photographed a large group of people that were killed in the middle of a road. There are upwards of twenty women and children dead on a muddy road in the middle of a rice paddy. Sontag may see beauty in this type of destruction, but in my opinion, any death of innocent people in not beautiful at all; it is disturbing, revolting, and very unsettling. It is human nature to kill; it is our instinct in order to survive, but there is no such thing as beauty in killing. Seeing the image of these dead children reminds me of seeing young men and boys being torn apart by a machine gun on Omaha beach in Saving Private Ryan. The destructiveness and chaos of war is a phenomenon that allows for no beauty.
In Ron Haberle’s photograph of a soldier burning a group of hooches some may find an artful beauty. In my opinion there is nothing but sadness. Imagine coming home to nothing; there is only a scorch-mark where your home used to be. After realizing what has happened to your home, you try to run as fast and as far as you can, only to be tripped up by the bodies of your former neighbors who have been gunned down. As you get back up, you are shot in the back of the head by a savage, unrelenting soldier. Through this, I think it is easy to understand why there is no beauty in war. By imagining the devastation happening to me, I can never see beauty in the destruction of lives and homes. My greatest fear is having a family member die, which makes me think that there is a family who will never see their son or daughter ever again.
This sense of abandonment and isolation is prevalent in Haberle’s photograph of a body that was thrown into a well. Not only was this person shot, but they were tossed into a well and left to rot. Through these images, someone may think that the U.S. people would think that the war should be stopped and the troops should be immediately pulled out. Despite the terrifying nature of these images, they had no relevant effect on the American people. In fact, the man who gave the order for the My Lai Massacre, General Westmoreland, was praised and used as a propaganda pawn in the government’s effort to build support for the Vietnam War. In this way, it is shown that no matter how disgusting an image is it may not have any effect in trying to distort the overall view of a specific event or war.
Despite Sontag’s effort to convince me, the reader, that there is beauty in certain images of war and destruction I cannot say that I find beauty in anything to do with war. I have grown up in the Twenty-first Century: a century full of war and hate. I have lived through 9/11, the war in Iraq, and devastating hurricanes. I have seen images of genocides, starvation, and massacres. These pictures are burned into my brain; I will never forget seeing the planes fly into the World Trade Center; I will never forget seeing people stranded on their roofs. There is no beauty in destruction: from war to peacetime, from the My Lai Massacre to Hurricane Katrina. It’s not fair to those who have lived through it to call destruction beautiful. I don’t think anyone should have to live through such devastation, let alone relive it in these images we call “art”.

Posted by Shaz at 2:41 PM