Utilitarianism and

Mediated Terror
ANTHONY READ

Is our consumption of mediated violence marked by “the profound

pleasure of not being there”? Discuss this claim in light of the Hedonistic
Calculus as an EMU rationale. Respond to this question: If the pleasure of
consuming MT/WICA exceeded the pain involved in producing them,
would that make our MT/WICA consumption – on that basis – morally
 good?

Jean Baudrillard, in The Miraculous Status of Consumption (1998), addresses human

consumption of mediated violence with a marked lean towards “not being there”,
and its pleasurable outcomes for the consumer. He turns our viewing into
“everydayness”, similarly to Sontag’s idea of sympathy as innocent and impotent,
without real judgement or value placed upon it by the viewer (2003: 91). The
Hedonistic Calculus, as put forward by Bentham (and elaborated on by Mills), sheds
a new light on the way in which we consume these events. The utilitarian way of
approaching this question is an important one, in that it is still a widely used method
of moral judgements today (White 1988). Technically, Bentham and Mills’ method of
numerical analysis may support the above question on pleasure of consumption
versus pain of production: the pressing point is, should it?

Baudrillard utilises the ‘sign’ from an early point in his essay. He engages with
Saussure’s idea of the sign being a combination of the ‘signifier’ (the actuality of the
event depicted) and the ‘signified’ (the possible meanings gleaned from that text)
(Hoenisch 2005), but he adds a new point into the mix. He argues that the
“universality of the news item” is what causes us to become so disengaged with
what is happening on screen. The pairing of the “actualised” dramatisation and
“deactualised” distance within mediated violence causes us to simply ingest the
signifier alone, and “signifieds of the signs are largely immaterial. We are not
engaged in them” (1998: 152-153). Baudrillard suggests that these events are
mediated to use from a distance, and so we feel safe. This could be the pleasure he
refers to when talking about “not being there”. But even “being there” has issues of
its own.

Because we are consumers of mediated violence, it reaches us in certain ways:

through radio, television, newspapers, blogs, and so on. The keyword here is
‘mediated’, as the original message is passed through a medium to reach our
senses. Therefore, in a way, the medium perceives the information for us to begin
with. Then, as humans, we receive that information through our senses, and our
brains interpret it into a meaningful message. Sontag has brought up the point about
photography “[bearing] witness to the real” while having, “necessarily, a point of
view” (2003: 23). She reconciles the fact that photographs, although taken by a
machine, are framed by people. But perception can be misleading, and errors can be
made when we perceive anything (Stanford 2005). So even if we were placed in the
actual violent situation depicted by the media, the events would still be perceived by
our senses. The Truth of the matter lies hidden behind the veil of perception.
Perhaps the ‘pleasure’ Baudrillard refers to is the gathering of knowledge. Aristotle
said that the pleasure of viewing these images comes from “learning, that is:
reckoning what category a thing belongs to” (2008). By consuming the images of
violence, we can safely view and learn from them, and be pleasured by them,
without having to risk our own lives to gather it ‘first-hand’ (if there is such a thing).

And here we are, trapped inside our society, watching these acts of mediated
violence broadcast to us almost consistently. How do we make something of them,
morally speaking? Bentham and Mills provide one useful method of moral thinking
with their Hedonistic Calculus. Geared towards the end result of “the greatest good
of the greatest number” (White 1988: 43), their method is highly teleological.
Teleology is an results-based theory, and engages with the utilitarian school of moral
thought, where the end result justifies the means in which it is reached. Their
Hedonistic Calculus, while explained in great detail by White, can be used in a
smaller approach to many of our daily moral qualms. Should one study into the
evening or go out to party? One can apply this theory to this situation to discover
what they believe they should do. However, the Calculus is also flawed, and by
applying it to the dilemma of watching this mediated violence, we may come no
closer to an answer than before.

To complement his Hedonistic Calculus, Bentham included his definitions of what

were to be considered right and wrong, with right being attached to ‘pleasure’ and
wrong to ‘pain’. White says that “for Jeremy Bentham, what makes human life happy
or satisfying is pleasure” (1988: 43). This raises several questions, none of which can
be answered with any degree of objectivity. Firstly, bodily pleasure and pain can be
reversed in some cases, such as sado-masochists, who derive ‘sexual gratification’
from physical pain (Medical Dictionary 2010). Secondly, Bentham bases the Calculus
on a totally quantitative analysis, where numbers are allocated for particular feelings
of pleasure and pain. What happens if one person’s pleasure, as outlined above, is
turned inside-out and upside-down? The calculus is then rendered useless, according
to Bentham’s ideas of right and wrong.

Thirdly, ‘the greatest good for the greatest number’ eliminates people’s humanity. In
utilitarianism as a whole, people are reduced to blank-faced numbers. Their nature,
personality and history are reduced to nil. If we say that 100 must be sacrificed to
save ten thousand, we forget who the people are that we are sacrificing. What if the
100 people are cancer-curing scientists and the ten thousand are convicted
criminals? Mills attempts to qualify Bentham’s ideas, but only ends up differentiating
between “higher and lower pleasures”, the ‘higher’ being intelligence and mental
pleasures, and the ‘lower’ being ignorance, stupidity, and sexual pleasures (White
1988: 54). Lastly, what ‘end’ are we trying to reach? The end for one decision only
forecasts the beginning of another, right up until our moment of death (if not into it,
depending on our views on the afterlife). To judge our moral choices on the ‘end’ of a
moment forgets that we have to continue that judgement into the future; into the
multiple ‘ends’ we have to reach. As Dr. Manhattan says at the ‘end’ of Watchmen
(1995), “Nothing ever ends”.

So how does the Hedonistic Calculus work with the question above? If the pleasure of
consumption outweighs the pain of production, in terms of mediated violence, does
it make it morally good? If we were to stick with Bentham’s calculus, yes it does. The
pleasure is greater than the pain, so the right outweighs the wrong, and our
consumption is justified. But, as outlined in the previous paragraph, this calculation
is forgetting the human aspect. The pleasure involved is confused: is it aesthetic
pleasure, pleasure of knowledge or a moral goodness? The pain is also confused: is
the pain of production a physical or mental pain? And what about the pain of the
creator, as opposed to the subject? And who are we to judge that the pain of one
person does not outweigh the pleasure of any number watching? The numbers put
forward by Bentham are totally subjective, and his calculus seems to raise far more
questions than answers. But if we were to view these acts of mediated violence and
stick to Bentham’s calculus to the letter, according to the above question, we would
be morally justified. All we have to do is forget that they are actual people we are
watching, make them into blank numbers, and let the justification wash over us.
Plan Anthony Read

References
← Aristotle, 2008. Poetics, New York: Cosimo Classics.

← Baudrillard J., 1998. ‘The Miraculous Status of Consumption’, The Consumer

Society: Myths and Structures. SAGE Publications: London.

← Hoenisch, S., 2005. Saussure's Sign. Available at:

http://www.criticism.com/md/the_sign.html [Accessed May 4, 2010].

← Moore, A., 1995. Watchmen, New York: DC Comics.

← Sadism and masochism - definition of Sadism and masochism in the Medical

dictionary - by the Free Online Medical Dictionary, Thesaurus and Encyclopedia. Available

at: http://medical-dictionary.thefreedictionary.com/Sadism+and+masochism [Accessed

May 4, 2010].

← Sontag S., 2003. Regarding the Pain of Others. Penguin Books: London.

← The Problem of Perception (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy). Available at:

http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/perception-problem/ [Accessed May 4, 2010].

← White T., 1988. ‘Jeremy Bentham, Utilitarianism and Pleasure’, Right and

Wrong: A Brief Guide to Understanding Ethics. Prentice Hall: New Jersey.