Neda Soltani: Is Her Faces Of Death Video A Good Thing?

Video of a beautiful Iranian woman named Neda Soltani, 26, dying on a street in Tehran, after being hit by a single sniper bullet in the heart while protesting for democracy, has made its way across the internet. Within hours of her death, posters of the young woman’s face, open-eyed and bloody, were being brandished by demonstrators in Los Angeles and New York City.

People are saying she is the new face of a movement much the way that the students who faced off with tanks in Tiananmen Square were in 1989. But this feels more like the media is exploiting some sick fucking video of a girl’s last moments of life leaving her body. The footage is disturbing, even panic-inducing, and doesn’t really make us think about the cause in Iran. Which we already believed was important. It makes us think about our own mortality. And that would be the sick fascination. This all reeks of a line crossed.

http://www.nydailynews.com/news/us_world/2009/06/21/2009-06-21_neda_young_girl_killed_in_iran.html