ISIS and the intimate kill

Simon Cottee writes for the Atlantic :

It isn’t all shock and gore. Sometimes, it’s mock and bore. Consider the video that ISIS released a few weeks ago of the British hostage John Cantlie “reporting” from the besieged town of Kobani on the Syrian-Turkish border. The video’s theme is the unreliability of Western media coverage of the conflict in Syria and Iraq, expressed in a tone of mocking contempt. The larger theme is the invincibility of ISIS and the duplicity and weakness of the West. The video opens with some striking aerial footage of war-ravaged Kobani, filmed from a drone. But it’s a big yawn thereafter.

On Sunday, however, ISIS released what is arguably its most horrifying beheading video to date, reverting to the shock-and-gore doctrine that has come to define it. The viewer doesn’t see the actual beheading of American aid worker Peter Kassig, but is shown his severed head, lying at the feet of the suspected British terrorist known as “Jihadi John.” The scene is preceded by the mass beheadings of 18 men whom ISIS claims are members of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s armed forces. The victims are paraded about by knife-wielding jihadists and the camera lingers on the hostages’ faces as they kneel, stricken with terror. The pounding of heartbeats commences, just one of the video’s many special effects. Then the cutting starts, all at once. Unlike in ISIS’s previous beheading videos, there is no merciful cutaway. The viewer sees everything.