ABSTRACT
The thesis of the ‘spectacular death’ assumes spectatorship, and corresponds with the theories on the theatre of terror, which emphasises the centrality of sublime death and the engagement with the spectators. According to these approaches, terrorism elicits spectacular death imageries that both coax the media and coerce collaboration with the perpetrators. Until recently, terrorists were dependent on mass media in reaching out to ‘audiences’; however, the terror attacks at Christchurch (NZ) and Halle (Germany), in which the perpetrators were livestreaming the attacks on social media, is yet another phase in the struggle around the visibility of death and its contextualisation. This chapter explores the rise of terrorism as a spectacular death via new media, and the ethical challenges for the players involved. The discussion situates these representations of violent death within a broader historical framework of spectacular death and mediated thanatopolitics (politics of death), and explicates their adequacy and downsides. The chapter concludes by arguing that the removal of news organisations from the chain of circulation of newsworthy events results in the desecration of death. While media rituals of grievability allow the realignment of solidarity and human connectivity, the (society of the) spectacle reduces death to its representation and overstates its entertaining function.
