Livia Stone: Film Analysis

Professor Livia Stone came in on Monday April 4th to give a discussion on a study she has done titled, “Suffering Bodies of Conformation: The Arts and Politics of Representing Structural Violence in Film”. In the article that we were supposed to read, Livia Stone explained her research that she did in Mexico. The issues that were observed in reading were the way bodies and humans were portrayed in the documentary in Ateco; in this documentary the focus of this was the violence that was present in Mexico with the farmers. According to the reading, “For more than a century, photographers have been hovering about the oppressed, in attendance at scenes of violence—with a spectacularly good conscience. Social misery has inspired the comfortably-off with the urge to take pictures, the gentlest of predations, in order to document a hidden reality, that is, a reality hidden from them (Sontag 1977:55)”what this quote displays is the use of certain images in media to display the pain and suffering that is going on in an array of areas in the world. …show more content…
One example the Livia used in class was the image that was taken in Somalia of a starving child with a scavenging bird behind her; she said that this picture won a series of awards but the conflict that rises behind this image is that it makes the people of Somalia look like they are incapable of helping themselves. These images are regularly used in commercials that ask for individual’s money, which leaves people in the position to help the others feeling that there is nothing that we can do to help these people in such awful