ID Mailbox. Cynthia
I recently read Hemingway’s In a Foreign Land. More than a hundred years have passed since the First World War, so naturally it is difficult for me to fully empathize with the Lost Generation. However, the ending of the story offered me another perspective that can connect to the modern day—namely, the intersection and interplay between tragedy and media.
Let’s first look at the ending of In a Foreign Land.
When he came back, there were large framed photographs around the wall, of all sorts of wounds before and after they had been cured by the machines. In front of the machine the major used were three photographs of hands like his that were completely restored. I do not know where the doctor got them. I always understood we were the first to use the machines. The photographs did not make much difference to the major because he only looked out of the window.
Above the major’s therapy machine were photographs of hands “completely restored” that resembled his own. If this happened today, it might be classified as false advertising: according to the story, the major’s hand was never actually restored. During the war, the therapy machines and the wounded were using each other—the machines gave the wounded their only possible hope of recovery, so they kept up with treatment even when numbed to it; and the wounded, as the first users of the machines, were also test subjects, experimental samples used to gauge the progress of medical technology. From the doctor’s perspective, these wounded men were less people than they were a “business opportunity” for the hospital: they would serve as the “best spokespeople” for the therapy machines, helping to promote them for profit. Even if the war ended one day, injuries and illnesses would not stop, so from a commercial standpoint, this kind of false promotion was an effective market strategy—telling consumers that they could achieve significant recovery after use, thereby stimulating consumption. Even if the results were poor, the hospital still profited.
But what about the wounded? As victims of the therapy machines, they did not recover. Their bodies remained disabled, their spirits destroyed by the era—they became subjects of tragedy. By the end of the story, the major’s hand still had not healed; his wife could not come back to life; and he could no longer fence. This contrast between “light and tragedy” is a cold reality: the people sacrificed under the banner of “super-effective” advertising are hard for the blind masses to see, becoming tragedies that go unnoticed.
A hundred years later, while false advertising has improved somewhat, the dark entanglement between tragedy and media still exists. For example, on platforms like Xiaohongshu, some content creators tend to document the miserable lives of others—such as the hard lives and toilsome existence of rural children and the elderly. Such videos generally attract considerable traffic and arouse sympathy among some viewers. These creators may even be praised as “noble” and “kind.” But the nature of the tragedy itself is not fully seen. For instance, behind the documented hardships, psychological pressures and other life difficulties are still overlooked. Not everyone is suited to be captured on camera, and not everyone enjoys being watched. Thus, recording tragedy itself often neglects more of the “humanity” and emphasizes more of the “commercialization.”
So what should online content creation be like? Exaggerated promotion attracts more traffic, while ordinary, plain content receives dismal data. For those who run self-media accounts with the goal of making a profit, profit is inevitably needed, and fabrication is therefore understandable. It just so happens that tragic themes are among the most traffic-generating, which is why we focus on tragedies in online narratives. And it just so happens that the internet prefers to document sunshine, thereby overlooking the core tragedy hidden in the shadows. This is an issue at the business level, and also a choice at the moral level. It is easy to talk about pursuing morality, but the real action still requires media creators to weigh and execute on their own—this is not something AI can tell us.
P.S.: Apart from the opening, this entire piece probably has little to do with In a Foreign Land after all.