Catastrophe Televised: Accelerated Time, Telescoped Events, Distorted Perceptions

AbstractThis article examines the impact of TV disaster coverage on viewers’ temporal perception and sense of reality, through the lens of Dany Laferrière’s Tout bouge autour de moi (2011) and Ryoko Sekiguchi’s Ce n’est pas un hasard: Chronique japonaise (2011). The first book, written in the form of a journal, covers the devastating magnitude 7.0 earthquake that struck Haiti on January 12, 2010, and its aftermath. The second book, also written as a journal, deals with the triple disaster—earthquake, tsunami, nuclear meltdown (Fukushima)—that occurred in Japan on March 11, 2011. Both authors suggest that the media, and images, more broadly, play a crucial role in fashioning viewers’ perceptions of disaster by constructing an artificial reality that draws on the real, yet at the same time imposes its own temporality, chronological sequence, and logic. In addition, Laferrière’s and Sekiguchi’s reflections on the circulation and constant replay of images of disaster raise ethical questions about the media’s appropriation and commodification of suffering, the traumatic impact of images of atrocity, as well as our widespread addiction to watching disasters unfold in real time on television.Keywords: Dany LaferrièreRyoko SekiguchiimagedisasterTV coveragetemporality Notes1 I am referring to the French title of Boltanski’s book, La Souffrance à distance.2 I am using the distinction proposed by Susan Sontag in Regarding the Pain of Others (40–47) between handmade images (paintings and drawings), which evoke (it is an invented horror by an artist), and photographs, which show and count as evidence, thus provoking both shock and shame in the viewer.3 For a detailed account of how images are redeployed during the news coverage of a catastrophe, one can consult Geoff King’s article “‘Just like a movie’?: 9/11 and Hollywood Spectacle.”Additional informationNotes on contributorsAlina CherryAlina Cherry is Associate Professor of French at Wayne State University in Detroit, where she teaches contemporary French and Francophone literatures and cultures. She is the author of Claude Simon: Fashioning the Past by Writing the Present (Fairleigh Dickinson UP, 2016), as well as articles on Jean-Philippe Toussaint, Marguerite Duras, Claude Simon, and Joan Miró. Her current book project focuses on the 2010 Haiti earthquake and the 2011 triple disaster—earthquake, tsunami, nuclear meltdown—in Japan.