Love Amidst the Tear Gas

After the hubbub over “Riot Kiss,” I’m not sure how to account for this.  I’m thinking about visual media seeking out and publishing couples in some form of embrace as info-tainment when citizens are otherwise getting their heads bashed in. Maybe what’s at play is the same passion exhibited during the Occupy movement. Liberation, after all, is a turn on. At the same time, it feels like sex and violence makes for a winning combination sprinkled throughout the news photo gallery.

(photo 1: Yannis Behrakis/Reuters. caption: Antigovernment protesters inside a damaged public bus being used as a barricade on Wednesday at Taksim Square in Istanbul.  photo 2: Stoyan Nenov/Reuters. caption: Protesters sleep near tents in Gezi Park near Taksim Square in Istanbul, on June 6, 2013.  photo 3: Vadim Ghirda/AP. caption: Protesters rest in a tent in Gezi Park, in Istanbul, Turkey, Wednesday, June 12, 2013. Riot police fired tear gas, water cannon and rubber bullets in day-long clashes that lasted into the early hours Wednesday, battling protesters who have been occupying Istanbul’s central Taksim Square and its adjacent Gezi Park in the country’s most severe anti-government protests in decades. photo 4: Aris Messinis/AFP/Getty Images. caption: A couple wearing gas masks walk in a street between Taksim and Besiktas in Istanbul, Turkey, on June 4, 2013 during an anti-government demonstration. What started as an outcry against a local development project has snowballed into widespread anger against what critics say is the government’s increasingly conservative and authoritarian agenda. photo 5: Deniz Celik/Reuters.  caption: A newly married couple pose for their wedding picture at Istiklal street near Taksim square in Istanbul, on June 2, 2013.)