The Pornography of Death

Abstract

A half-century ago the sociologist Geoffrey Gorer, in his study ‘The Pornography of Death’ (1955), argued that because death has become invisible, hidden away by modern society, our thwarted fascination with it emerges in reprehensibly graphic and violent representations of death in the media. Gorer claims that this surfeit of morbid representation is a form of pornography. His chief criticism of the media’s pornographic return of death (not unlike many critiques of sexual pornography) is that its violence and distanced emotional content blunt the viewers’ sensitivities to interpersonal violence and the profound implications of death in the real world.