\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p><\/div> \t\t\t\t\t\u201cFaces of Death\u201d co-writer Isa Mazzei. <\/em><\/span><\/p>\n \t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tLOGAN BIK<\/cite><\/p>\n<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n \n\tThe original \u201cFaces of Death,\u201d which claimed to be a documentary, heralded the rise of the viral video. A white-coated narrator leads the viewer through a collection of snuff films. The VHS release was super popular, despite the \u201cbanned in several countries\u201d warning (promise?) slapped on the cover. It was whispered about at sleepovers, the subject of numerous rumors, but when I first watched it, I thought it fell short of its reputation. Since I had seen so much real snuff, I could tell that most of the videos were staged, although \u2014 and this was confirmed to us by the film\u2019s producers \u2014 at least one of the videos has an actual dead body.<\/p>\n \n\tIn doing research for the film, Daniel and I listened to a podcast about people employed by social media sites to review content that has been flagged as explicit. The podcast investigated if viewing this content, day after day, week after week, could cause actual PTSD, despite the moderator remaining safely on the other side of the screen. The DSM says yes \u2014 but only when done for work. The DSM-5 criteria for PTSD explicitly states that a diagnosis of PTSD \u201cdoes not apply to exposure through electronic media, television, movies, or pictures. Unless this exposure is work related.\u201d1<\/p>\n \n\tIn 2021, a year into writing our adaptation, I\u2019m on my couch when my phone vibrates. Are you watching this? The texts come from many places at once. I open a Livestream from the parking lot of the King Soopers grocery store half a mile from my old high school. It is the grocery store where my first boyfriend bought me my first Cherry Garcia ice cream, the grocery store where I was once bitten by a tiny chihuahua. It is the grocery store where right now several of my friends\u2019 parents and neighbors are going to die. Though I am only watching a witness\u2019 livestream, I feel like I\u2019m doing something wrong. I cannot look away. I think if I do, something worse will happen. It does not occur to me that nothing worse could happen.<\/p>\n \n\t\u201cIt\u2019s kind of fucked up, if you think about it,\u201d Daniel says, two years later on set in New Orleans. \u201cTo put real death in a feature film, we have to go through all these legal loopholes. But Instagram can just\u2026 show it? What is that?\u201d He\u2019s right. For a movie studio to make money off real violence they must first discuss it with a room full of lawyers, draw up contracts, releases. But social media companies make money off of ads and not videos directly. They can hide their culpability. In a lot of ways, I realize, this is what our \u201cFaces of Death\u201d is about.<\/p>\n \n\tI think about the most violent video I\u2019ve seen online. Ronald Merle McNutt, a U.S. Army veteran, sits at his desk. He\u2019s got a dark leather jacket, a long curly beard, and a rifle. His last words are pointed: \u201cHey guys, I guess that\u2019s it.\u201d He places the rifle against his chin and pulls the trigger. The technical definition of snuff is a death video made for profit \u2014 and this is not that. But that doesn\u2019t change the fact that companies are making money off of it. Daniel and I decide it is important to confront people with the nature of online snuff by changing its context. We want to talk about the depersonalization that screens can cause. We want to create the sense of being complicit in something wrong. We want the audience to leave the theater feeling complicated and maybe a bit mad at us.<\/p>\n \n\tWe need to find real dead people. I start on Twitter, on Instagram, on Reddit, on 4Chan. I find the video of the man with his mouth open like a fish. Paris barely glances over. \u201cIs that the Russian impaling one? I already emailed them, the dude died though.\u201d If the person was dead it was a lot harder to get a release. We\u2019d have to hunt down next of kin. \u201cI guess we can just blur his face.\u201d I delete the part in my message about knowing the victim and simply ask if @username is the rightful owner of this video. I close my laptop. Sometimes I prefer not knowing if the person lived or died. I drive home through rainy New Orleans streets. In the murky twilight, everything looks like a corpse: a man electrocuted on the third rail, his dead body jerking with the current. A tiny child, tossed between the paws of a bear. A woman, face-down, blood mixing with mud. <\/p>\n \n\tI wonder if you can create a story about a monster using the monster. I\u2019m watching these videos for work. I wonder if that means that the DSM-5 applies to me. In line at craft service the next day Paris tells me he has found a website called NewsFlare. Its collection includes videos of violent accidents. Because it is a news website, it is all available to license, legally. They have train crashes and car crashes and animal attacks and industrial accidents and fires and \u2014 I load my plate with scrambled eggs, hash browns, hot sauce. I don\u2019t have trouble eating because I have become unfazed by death. I decide this isn\u2019t a good thing but I don\u2019t have time to think about it because I have a movie to finish and as long as everything is legal I can say I was just doing my best. Right? <\/p>\n \n\tAround the time I was hired to make \u201cFaces of Death,\u201d a study imaged the brains of combat veterans before and after playing Tetris. It found an increase in the volumes of the hippocampus, suggesting that playing Tetris might be an effective adjunct treatment<\/a> for PTSD. It was based on an earlier study which found that playing Tetris in the emergency room<\/a> immediately following a traumatic accident would decrease the amount of traumatic intrusive thoughts post-accident. The theory is that it works by disrupting the consolidation of sensory elements of trauma memory. The later study suggests it affects more than just the formation of traumatic memory \u2013 it can even potentially help treat it. It is the summer of 2025 and our film has wrapped production. I am visiting my hometown. My mother and I stop by the King Soopers grocery store \u2014 I have not been back since the mass shooting. When we walk through the doors we are blasted with icy air and that chemical smell of bread in plastic bags. It is busier inside than we expect: we shop in a rush. Back in the car, on my phone, I tab from Youtube to Instagram and scroll my stories. The sixth mass extinction is worse than previously predicted \u2013 and this time it\u2019s entirely caused by humans! Scroll. A perfect night for beet gnocchi. Scroll. POV: you found your dream bikini. Scroll. Belarusian traveler attacks Iranian toddler at Moscow airport, leaving child in a coma. A blurry video shows a man bashing a child against a hard, shiny floor. As we pull out of the King Soopers\u2019 parking lot, I realize that I forgot to have a profound experience. <\/p>\n \n\tIn Feminist Tech, Neema Githere uses the term \u201cdata trauma\u201d (first coined by Olivia Ross) to describe the effect of scrolling through a feed and encountering images of violence alongside memes and selfies. It is the glaring incongruity of watching a mass shooting underneath a YouTube banner ad for Dove Deodorant (now aluminum free!). I recall scrolling my Twitter feed a few years prior. Beneath a meme about eggs, I witnessed my favorite artist\u2019s suicide note: \u201cI\u2019m away now, thanks.\u201d Githere imagines a framework for recovery<\/a> from this particular type of trauma and in this way, offers a glimpse of hope: There is a possibility where we do not normalize this. <\/p>\n \n\tI think about all the people I paid to license the videos they took of accidents, of dismemberments, of death. In the end we decided we wouldn\u2019t show the faces of people who actually died and that we\u2019d mostly show accidents where people lived. We\u2019d argue for hours about the ethics of this too. After the mass shooting they closed the King Sooper for several months, balloons and flowers and stuffed bears lined the side of the road. When they renovated and re-opened, they framed it as resiliency and strength in the face of adversity. Don\u2019t let fear win! Avocados on sale today only. There is a possibility where we do not normalize this. (Is there?) <\/p>\n \n\tToday, I watch the video of the assassination of Charlie Kirk. I wonder at the hundreds of images I have seen in the past few years \u2013 of famine, of genocide, of a brother carrying his dead sibling in a plastic bag. I have not been paid to see any of these videos \u2014 the distinction is absurd. I have seen death every day, and I have seen it decontextualized, ripped away from its source and placed in neat square boxes between advertisements and pictures of my friends. I watch the video of Charlie Kirk several times. I cannot look away, because watching it is a spell. I wonder what the monster is that I\u2019m trying to protect myself from. I finally close my phone and open my laptop. I open my browser and I search for a game.I play Tetris, just in case.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n