The increasingly striking disproportion between the scale of wars like the one in Ukraine and the lack of images of the conflict doesn't seem to stem from a single factor. In any case, we must consider, among other things we won't elaborate on here, the confluence of a new puritanism with the emotional immaturity of a seemingly significant portion of younger generations. This combination has created a communicative ecosystem where war becomes a sanitized, filtered narrative, ultimately disconnected from its devastating nature. Conversely, and also in a neo-puritan vein, when armed conflicts are framed in childish terms of transgression/punishment, images previously filtered through the sieve of political correctness abound.
The new puritanism—which is not moralistic in the strict sense of the term, but merely aesthetic and emotional—imposes a kind of collective aversion to anything that might be too intense, too real, or too uncomfortable. Digital platforms, which are now the main source of information for young people, operate under criteria that penalize explicit violence, not so much for ethical reasons as for fear of losing advertisers or generating backlash. However, this neo-puritanism does not seek to protect the dignity of the victims, but only to preserve a user experience —to use that Anglicism that has become so popular— supposedly "safe." The aim is to banish any image that might shatter the illusion of a controllable, friendly, and cute world. The result is a war without visible deaths that exists only as a video game narrative or a fictional series, not as a bloody, dirty, and fly-infested physical reality.
Added to all this is the emotional immaturity of boys and girls who have grown up in highly mediated environments, yet surprisingly little confronted with the harsh realities of the world. Even pornography ends up becoming part of this stylized universe. They have been raised on immediacy, on the constant gratification of instant gratification, on protection from even the slightest discomfort, and they tend to react with rejection or saturation to images that demand reflection and moral responsibility. This immaturity is certainly not the fault of anyone in particular, but rather a consequence of a cultural model that has turned discomfort into a taboo and its consequences into invented pathologies. In this context, showing the reality of war is tantamount to breaking an implicit pact: that of not exposing anyone to emotions they cannot manage instantly.
The combination of these two factors creates a vicious cycle. Because the public is shocked—or pretends to be shocked—by graphic images, the media avoids them. Because the media avoids them, the public further loses its ability to understand war as a real and horrific phenomenon. And because war is perceived in an abstract way, it becomes more easily exploited. The emotional distance between society and the conflict grows, thus diminishing the pressure needed to demand accountability, to seek solutions, or simply to understand the concrete consequences of abstract geopolitical decisions. All of this has profound and far-reaching implications. A society that does not see war cannot understand it, and a society that does not understand war is more vulnerable to manipulation, indifference, and dehumanization.
Some of the most chilling images ever published in Europe during peacetime were probably those of the Els Alfacs campsite tragedy of July 11, 1978. It was a radical decision by the magazine. InterviewI had just turned 14 and I remember them perfectly. Luckily, something like that would be unthinkable now. Those truly nightmarish images had no journalistic justification whatsoever and violated basic ethical principles. The accident involving a truck loaded with propylene had terrible consequences, 215 dead, but, in the end, that's what it was: a random accident. A war is by no means a random accident. It is the result of a premeditated decision that affects the lives of innocent people. Therefore, the dilemma is not whether or not to show violent images—this immature and neo-Puritan perspective no longer has any rational justification—but whether these images contain elements that help us understand, or not, a given situation and, consequently, allow us to make political decisions that are not necessarily pleasant. We need to talk more about widespread immaturity. Right now, it matters a lot. Too much, in fact.
