Pomiędzy tabu a pornografią. Graficzne reprezentacje śmierci w prasie
Between Taboo and Pornography. Graphical Representations of Death in the Press

Summary/Abstract: In much‐cited essay “The Pornography of Death”, Goeffrey Gorer argued that, since the twentieth century, death had exchanged positions with sex as the taboo subject. Nevertheless, its portrayals had not completely disappeared, but rather re‐appeared in the form of entertainment genre – viewed as pornographic because of its brutality, exploitation, and distance from emotions like grief. This seminal claims are updated with a discussion of the relation between taboo and pornography in the context of contemporary media images of actual death. Examining the photographic coverage of death in one of the leading national Polish newspaper (also, compared to one German and one Australian), the article follows such questions as: How confrontational is that coverage? How actually visible and present is death? Does the news media participate in or challenge modern death taboo? Is there still much to value in Gorer’s argument in this context?

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