Last night on BBC 2 I saw a documentary entitled “Race Hate In Louisiana”. The documentary was about the repercussions of an incident that took place at the local High School in Jena, a small Southern town in Louisiana. I’m not going to comment on the incident or express an opinion, mostly because I doubt I would be in possession of all of the the facts and nuances of the case on the strength of seeing one documentary and, besides, as an internal US issue it’s most probably none of my damn business. No, the thing that most shocked me, to an unexpected degree, were 3 old still images that the program started with.

The 3 images in question were of lynchings in the Old South. I have seen the images before - they always bring to mind the old, brooding and shattering Billie Holiday masterpiece “Strange Fruit” - but I was quite unprepared for the visceral shock of seeing these images again flashing quite quickly - 1-2-3 - across my TV screen. I say unprepared because along with the physical shock I felt a deep - almost soul deep - sadness. Nothing surprising there, you may say, an entirely natural reaction but… We all see and have seen many shocking images (too many) and the capacity for these images to really shock must, to some degree, be diminished by sheer quantity - shock fatigue for want of a different term. Also, at the time, it struck me that I wouldn’t have been so shocked if these had been firearm murders or executions so it probably was some deep seated revulsion at the choice of method involved in these heinous crimes.

Truth to tell, I’m not entirely sure myself as to the exact reasons why these particular images had such a capacity to shock me more than any number of others that I could think of but it does illustrate the power of certain images and that was something that I had tended to grow cynically doubtful of. I had cultivated a sort of world weary “Nothing can shock me anymore” attitude. It took these 3 images to remind me again of what I should have known all along.