Morality, Standards and Acceptance
Morality, Standards and Acceptance In Susan Sontag’s essay, Freak Show , she criticizes the photographed works by Diane Arbus, an American photographer. Arbus is known for working with ‘freaks’ as subjects. Some of the examples are the giant, nudist, and the people with dwarfism. What is special about her photos was that the subjects are usually staring straight into the camera, and this often creates intimacy between the subjects, photographs and the audience. Sontag, in her essay, says that subjects in Arbus’s photos are “lacerating” and this is contrasting to their “calm” manner. She also says that the “quality of attention” - shown in the photographs - “creates the moral theater.” Using those specific words, Sontag criticizes Arbus for not being ethical about the subjects that are vulnerable. What does she mean by lacerating subjects? How do these photographs create moral theater? This leads to the question about morality. What is morality, wh...