Page 2143 - Week 08 - Wednesday, 9 September 1992
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ADJOURNMENT
Motion (by Mr Berry) proposed:
That the Assembly do now adjourn.
Media Depiction of Violence
MS SZUTY (4.43): I rise again in this Assembly to discuss a magazine cover that I find offensive. This time it is not in relation to its denigration of women, but in its depiction of overt violence. Madam Speaker, the magazine is not one which is usually associated with sensationalism, but one which enjoys a certain reputation for its political articles and its monthly gallup poll on political leaders the Bulletin. I refer to the cover of the 4 August edition and I seek leave to table the magazine.
Leave granted.
MS SZUTY: Madam Speaker, the cover depicts a person being killed with a knife. The attacker appears to be ambushing his victim from behind a tree. The headline overprinted on the picture is "REVENGE", in large red letters. The subtitle reads: "Murder is the ultimate revenge: how far would you go to get even? Page 36". Turning to the article, the reader is informed that the photograph is of a Karen guerilla killing the other person, who appears younger than the murderer.
What revolts me about the image used is that it does not relate to the article which is, in the main, about revenge and how it is a taboo in Australian Christian thinking. The article outlines Australian revenge by examples of people growing trees on their properties to block neighbours' scenic views, or a businessman trying to damage an adversary's reputation. There are other pictures used in conjunction with the article showing South African and Bangladeshi violence. While the captions are barely descriptive of the pictures, the pictures in no way back up the story. There are 13 references to ethnic groups in the article in the space of five paragraphs.
In every case, struggles for freedom and long-term ethnic wars are dismissed as motivated purely by revenge. The riots that followed the Rodney King trial in the United States are dismissed as being a case of revenge by African Americans against Korean shopkeepers. There is no mention of the jury verdict and the outrage felt by black Americans that this was a miscarriage of justice and that there had been a blatant abuse of power. There were elements of Korean-African-American conflict in the riots, but to dismiss them as an example of revenge and nothing more, particularly when the bulk of the article discusses the seemingly benign Australian experience, implies racist attitudes.
I find the sensationalist tactics, of using these images to depict what is, if read without the pictures, a rather bland article, highly offensive. We have had in this Assembly what I felt was a very constructive airing of views on the demeaning depiction of women in magazines. I find that there is as much offence in the gratuitous use of violent images. As in the case of so-called soft porn magazines, people visiting their local newsagencies should not be confronted by such images.
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