Under Construction @ Keele 2019 summer 2019, vol 5 issue 1 | Page 37

Rosi’s decision to film close-up shots of the refugees allows the emotions of the subject to
dominate the frame; however, regardless of the intimacy of the shot, the image of the
‘stunned refugee’ fails to provoke empathy from the viewer when taking into account Lodge’s
notion of “compassion fatigue”. 31 While it is inevitable that people who are forced to
experience such life-threatening conditions to reach Europe would be ‘stunned’ to have a
camera in their faces, Lodge’s observation of media depictions of refugees implies the need
for counter-accounts. A film like Fuocoammare could represent an opportunity to generate
alternative images and perspectives of refugees; yet, Rosi’s film fails to do so.
In order to bridge the gap of empathy between the Western world and the suffering
of displaced people coming from Africa, as Richard Rorty puts it: ‘we should stay on the
lookout for marginalized people – people whom we still instinctively think of as “they” rather
than “us”’ 32 as we should ‘try to notice our similarities with them’. 33 While Rosi’s dual
narrative illustrates an attempt to provoke connections and similarities between those living
on the island of Lampedusa and the migrants, his approach is deeply problematic. In regards
to television images of global suffering, Michael Ignatieff writes that ‘[t]he images from
Ethiopia do not assert their own meaning; they can only instantiate a moral claim if those who
watch understand themselves to be potentially under obligation to those they see’. 34
However, Rosi’s dual narrative indicates that the images of the injured refugees alone are not
enough to encourage the audience’s empathy as the film constantly relays images of suffering
refugees alongside images of Europeans living their everyday lives. At one point in the film,
Rosi presents two different images of young men suffering: one seasick European on a fishing
31
Lodge, Therapy, 5.
Richard Rorty, Contingency, Irony and Solidarity (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989), 196.
33
Ibid.
34
Ignatieff, “Is Nothing Sacred?,” 59.
32
30