Hollywood Oscars and the genuinely horrific

It was televised live. In fact it could have been a movie. Tragedy or farce. Slapstick comedy more probably. It was produced by Oscar and directed by well known showbiz titans, PwC.

 

The plot was based around a movie which wins an Award, but doesn't because another one does, only then to find it has. In scenes of high drama, the error is realised and the prize is passed on to the correct team. Hooray. Amidst emotional tsunamis and scenes of heart-breaking pathos and bitter sweet “what-might-have-beens”, actors and actresses recount the emotional roller coaster journey of the evening as platoons of post traumatic award counsellors rush to the scene to offer assistance to bereaved celebrity luvvies whose mantle pieces will now remain slightly less cluttered than, only moments before, they thought they would be.

 

It could have been real life. Wait a minute. It was. Yes, we really did hear an actress describe the award mix-up scenes as horrible. Poor creature. What a sheltered life she must lead. Horrible, horrific, or whatever adjective you wish to deploy, is not appropriate for the rather silly faux par committed by PwC, which is small beer by their lofty standards. After all, this is the lot that gave Tesco a clean bill of health whilst they were busy misstating their profits by £250 million, so what's mixing up a few envelopes.  Horrible (defined as something that causes horror) is children being repeatedly barrel bombed in Syria, an event that is hard to recall Hollywood marking with indignant protest. Horrible is thousands of people in West Africa dying of Ebola or the fate, not that long ago, of children born out of wedlock in Ireland that were placed in the so called "care" of the Catholic Church.

 

This is not to deliberately shout down award ceremonies or cynically taking pleasure at what for some would have been deeply disappointing and embarrassing evening. However, there is an important point, and it's called a sense of proportion. It's gone missing.

 

So, where is our sense of proportion? Why is it that when the, by comparison,  well off and healthy suffer a misfortune, an inconvenience (an awards ceremony mix up)  or even a wrong (being denied a visa, say), is it so much more newsworthy than when the "masses" far away suffer some chilling fate or terrible catastrophe that should be an affront to all of us. So Donald Trump talking about building a wall or being invited to tea with the queen or whatever, has proven more newsworthy that the execution by Syrian dictator Assad of 13000 people who dared object to his dictatorship. That’s not people killed on battlefields or bombed into oblivion by his (or Russia's) air force. Thirteen thousands executed by hanging in the cellars of his prisons.  Many city centres have been stopped by demonstrators in recent time, but not a single one to do with the barbarity of these executions. Travellers stuck in an airport because of bad, mad or unnecessary new visa requirements and scenes of foaming indignation follow. Far away impoverished people (almost certainly all Muslims) in another land are being brutally executed with industrial scale efficiency by the thousand and barely a whimper of protest or concern from us. Someone (not) getting an award for best film of the year has generated way more media coverage.

 

How have we got to this point? That chilling quote of Stalin's comes to mind. When listening to an official enumerate the mass of deaths due to the great famine in the Ukraine, Stalin interjected, saying that, "if only one man dies of hunger, that’s a tragedy. If millions die that a statistic".  Although Stalin would not have known (or even been remotely interested), there is something here about how our response to moral outrages seems to be limited, even silenced, when confronted by the terrible fates that befall large groups of people.  We identify acutely with individual suffering and tragedy, which is why charities will hone in on stories of individual distress (just think how even animal charities will deploy heart rending accounts of the mistreatment of a poor horse or dog or cat etc.). However, its seems our ability to emphasise with intense emotion quickly trails off as the tragedy moves from the individual on to the many and thousands and the hundreds of thousands.  This is quite a well-researched area that even has a term - genocide neglect. Perhaps that’s why no one is out there demonstrating about 13 000 executions or the hundreds of thousands killed by Assad in that civil war.

 

So next time we catch ourselves venting our indignance at some slight or pettiness reported by hyperventilating talking heads on the box or on line, we should, from the comfort of our heated (or air-conditioned) homes, spare a moment to think about those almost infinitely greater but under reported outrages occurring simultaneously elsewhere. It’s the least we can do - there won't be any demonstrations.