Dying On Camera
The Henry Nowack footage is so terrible but still I wonder about our need to see it.
We can now watch people dying in front of us. On our phones, screens, on TV. Real people, real deaths. The awful footage of Henry Nowack’s final moments as he was losing consciousness, is everywhere. He was 18 and dying of stab wounds.
His family released the bodycam footage which showed the utter failure of the police to help him in any way. He was cuffed, not believed and not given immediate treatment. I don’t know if that could have saved him, but it goes without saying this was an appalling way to die.
Every commentator on this case has been visibly upset by it. Their reaction is human; their tears are real. Maybe that will force policing to be better. Maybe there will be more riots. Maybe we will all learn something.This boy’s death has been politicised in disgusting ways, by the likes of Farage, in the very manner that his family asked it not to be.
I feel deeply uncomfortable about watching the final moments of another. I am possibly old-fashioned about death being an intimate and private moment. Obviously, it is not like that for all sorts of victims of murder and war but what happens when dying on camera is for public consumption?
Something in me feels that this is deeply wrong and that we must pull back from this, but it is too ,too late. I expressed my unease on X ( yes I know that’s probably the last place for a nuanced discussion and I will never learn). I tweeted “I understand why the family have given permission for footage of their dying boy to be made public. But I don’t want to watch it and am unsure that any of us should”
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