“The U.S. media has played a central role in promoting this culture of fear among its audiences through a continuous stream of news stories about natural and man-made disasters and blockbuster films depicting apocalyptic scenarios.” (Podalsky) When 9/11 happened, we saw the news covered with images of collapsed buildings, ash, and injured people. When the storm hit the entire US state, we saw images of destroyed homes and rescue activities. Some images might be difficult to look at, but we are drawn to them. People react to provocative things like people's suffering and pain. For example, from images of bony, hungry children to images of bloody scenes in wars, we cannot resist paying attention to them and feeling sympathy. However, by comparing the two films “Babel” and “Life and Debts” and analyzing the text, it shows us that, as a method of expressing problems, excessively showing people's suffering is ineffective, misleading and unnecessary. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on "Why Violent Video Games Shouldn't Be Banned"? Get an original essay In the unconsciousness of the public, the media has used a huge amount of suffering images. One of the reasons to use brutal images is because it is the most direct way to get people's attention. For example, imagine looking at your friends' posts on Facebook or flipping through the pages of a magazine. You will probably decide to stop for a second and look at a picture of a woman crying, or a picture of a man bleeding rather than some advertisement or your friends smiling at a party. This is because those provocative images immediately trigger the audience's thoughts. We start to think about what is happening and want to find out what is behind this image. Another type of media that contains extensive use of suffering imagery is films, especially films that attempt to express a point of view or issue. Like “Babel” and “Life and Debt,” both films have an issue to express, but they express it very differently. "Life and Debt" is a documentary that mainly uses interviews and voice-overs to express the problem, the film successfully expresses the anger of local Jamaicans towards the World Bank (indirect way of business invasion) and the sarcastic attitude of the director Stephanie Black. On the other hand, “Babel” is an example of melodrama, “Babel engages its subject with feeling. That is, the film's concern with questioning the cold logic of the law becomes the impetus for formal experimentation as it appropriates a sensational cultural form (i.e., melodrama) to move its viewers in unexpected ways. (Podalsky) Babel uses exaggerated scenarios and extreme character traits to exaggerate the tension between the law and immigrants, in order to force the film's point of view on the audience. In Melodrama, the director forces the audience to think about the issue behind the context through conveying the pain of others to them. According to the text, melodrama has two characteristics. “(1) The prolonged duration of scenes of suffering that position that ecstatic state as a transparent sign of moral good and (2) the frequency of their use to invite the viewer to serve as a witness to this suffering.” (Podalsky) In “Babel,” close-ups and extreme close-ups are used frequently in the film when the character is experiencing impulsive emotions or is in deep pain. As we look at the image of suffering, it once again triggers the audience's moral sense, we feel compassion for what we see. Let's also start processingthe information we get in the film. So we ask society and ourselves what are the reasons causing the tragedy and how we can solve it. However, melodrama also has its flaws. Susan Sontag, American writer and director, in her book “Concerning the Pain of Others” questioned the effectiveness of showing images of suffering through a third-person position. In a film, the camera shows the audience reality, but at the same time puts us in a third person position – witness. Since the audience is not in the same position as the victims, the victims' pain will not be conveyed as effectively as intended. We may not understand what the real message behind the scene is, no matter how uncomfortable the images are. “Photographs of an atrocity can elicit opposite responses. An appeal for peace. A cry for revenge. Or simply the confused awareness, continually replenished by photographic information, that terrible things are happening." (Sontag) When the audience sees the older brother dead from a gunshot in “Babel,” his father cries over his body. When the wife was injured, the tourists immediately thought that the attack was from a terrorist and only worried about themselves while the wife could not be saved. The audience will react by feeling compassion for the character, therefore thinking about how foolish and selfish the human being can be rather than thinking about the message of the immigrant and the law. It's fair to say that once people felt sympathy for the Father of Babel who lost his son, we already removed ourselves from the possibility that it could happen to us. The more exaggerated the pain is portrayed, the less attached the audience feels to the victim because we know those incidents may not happen to us. This is another flaw of melodrama that only activates the audience's compassion instead of the desire to help, and usually this compassion turns into satisfaction with our own lives. “At its worst, compassion involves appropriating the suffering of others to demonstrate the moral superiority of the compassionate person. At best, the individualizing dynamics of compassion distance us from recognizing structural inequalities.” (Podalsky) Few major earthquakes have occurred in China in recent years. Every time my family watched the news, my mother would turn to me and say, “How horrible is this? We should be satisfied with what we have now." The statement is right, but I feel morally wrong thinking this way. Besides donating money, what else will we do to help them after the feeling of sympathy. Even the act of donating feels like a statement of appreciation for not being a victim. «Compassion is an unstable emotion. It must be translated into action, otherwise it withers.” (Sontag) Just like what Susan Sontag mentioned in the text, compassion is not a weak emotion that can easily fade away. When I was a child, there were many homeless people sitting on the street corner and shaking from head to toe. At that point I was extremely sympathetic towards them and tried to give them coins. However, as time went by, I grew up, saw them from time to time, and knew that there were people who acted homeless for money. Gradually I lost my sympathy for them. Likewise, we may lose “interest” in the issues that were continually expressed by the pain of others, one day we may no longer have any compassion. “Life and debt”, on the other hand, do not express people's thoughts. compassion with provocative images. The film also puts the audience in the position of the third person: the judge. The movie doesn't.