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Hardcore History #61
Painfotainment
Pain is at the root of most drama and entertainment. When does it get too real? This very disturbing and graphic show looks into some case studies and asks some deep questions. WARNING Very intense subject matter.
Audiobook
First published January 27, 2018
About the author
Dan Carlin
84 books1,382 followersDan Carlin is an American political commentator, amateur historian, and podcaster. Once a professional radio host, Carlin eventually took his show to the Internet, and he now hosts two popular independent podcasts: Common Sense and Hardcore History. Carlin broke into the television news business in Los Angeles in the late 1980s. He has worked as a television news reporter, an author, a columnist, and for the last dozen years, a radio talk show host. No longer broadcasting on terrestrial radio, Carlin has achieved recognition in internet radio, podcasting, and the blogosphere. Currently, he hosts two popular podcasts, both of which are frequently among the highest-ranked podcasts on review sites such as Podcastalley and iTunes.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 33 reviews
April 23, 2020
This was hard to read at times. It comes with a trigger warning.
Sidenote: I first understood what a trigger warning is back when I was reading Worm. It's a warning that the book contains potentially distressing material, but I thought "It's just a book; I can handle it." I quit during the Leviathan arc..
In Painfotainment, Dan talks about the practice of public tortures and executions, which was taking place ever since antiquity, and even as recently as the 20th century. He examines three different points of view: the victim's, the state's, and the executioner's.
Did you know that public executions drew huge crowds? People would go watch a real person get tortured or killed a few dozens meters from them, while they were socializing, snacking, or gossiping. What do you make of that? I had a hard time just hearing about breaking people on the wheel, dismembering them, burning them alive. On the other hand I've deliberately killed virtual people on Grand Theft Auto. What does that tell you?
Sidenote: I first understood what a trigger warning is back when I was reading Worm. It's a warning that the book contains potentially distressing material, but I thought "It's just a book; I can handle it." I quit during the Leviathan arc..
In Painfotainment, Dan talks about the practice of public tortures and executions, which was taking place ever since antiquity, and even as recently as the 20th century. He examines three different points of view: the victim's, the state's, and the executioner's.
Did you know that public executions drew huge crowds? People would go watch a real person get tortured or killed a few dozens meters from them, while they were socializing, snacking, or gossiping. What do you make of that? I had a hard time just hearing about breaking people on the wheel, dismembering them, burning them alive. On the other hand I've deliberately killed virtual people on Grand Theft Auto. What does that tell you?
September 17, 2018
Even though the subject matter (primary concerned with public executions throughout human history and the general theme of 'extremes of the human experience') is something that will immediately tick a lot people off, the way in which the content has been presented: its depth, color, comprehensiveness and ingenuity is absolutely impressive. This kind of literature is pretty much non existent in the popular media and it will certainly bring about some new perspectives for the reader.
February 4, 2018
As always, Dan Carlin hits a home run. This fascinating look at one of our baser human desires, the desire to watch the suffering and death of others, is incredibly interesting. History is only as interesting as the one teaching it, and Dan Carlin makes it live and breathe.
January 27, 2023
Is cruelty a basic (& necessary) part of who we (humanity) are?
It's disturbing to hear of the "content" humans used to enjoy... or perceive as a spiritually moving. Painfotainment gives a closer look on execution "gigs" throughout (the written) history and explains the power of authorities (government & church), executioners, audience and the "entertainer" (the condemned).
The most fascinating take away of Painfotainment for me is that public executions were hUuuuuge, overwhelmingly widespread (and various performance–wise) in different civilizations, but after a long "revolution(=progress) in human sensibilities" this "trend" simply went out of fashion. Cruelty takes various forms and some centuries ago even guillotine has been perceived as a mans progress towards being more humane! And speaking of the cruelty nowadays – simply "we enjoy it fake". And let's just hope there is no counterrevolution...
It's disturbing to hear of the "content" humans used to enjoy... or perceive as a spiritually moving. Painfotainment gives a closer look on execution "gigs" throughout (the written) history and explains the power of authorities (government & church), executioners, audience and the "entertainer" (the condemned).
The most fascinating take away of Painfotainment for me is that public executions were hUuuuuge, overwhelmingly widespread (and various performance–wise) in different civilizations, but after a long "revolution(=progress) in human sensibilities" this "trend" simply went out of fashion. Cruelty takes various forms and some centuries ago even guillotine has been perceived as a mans progress towards being more humane! And speaking of the cruelty nowadays – simply "we enjoy it fake". And let's just hope there is no counterrevolution...
January 7, 2020
This was a morbidly fascinating review of capital punishment in European history. It completely upended several of my misconceptions about the purposes, psychology, and sociology behind state-sanctioned torture and murder.
Pre-Reformation, the primary implicit purpose of public torture and capital punishment was, of course, to brandish the consequences of disrupting the status quo. But the stated purpose of torture was religious purification. The audience participated, often praising and cheering on the victim toward their 'salvation.'
This process only worked if everybody was in on it. But when Protestants weren't buying into the program, "out-Christianing" the system by protesting their suffering, then public sentiment slowly began to shift. The executions began to take on the appearance of spectacle. Crowds were fascinated by these Protestants who resisted their fates and made the process unpredictable. Simultaneously, with literacy and the printing press came newspapers gossiping salacious details about the victims and their accused crimes.
Meanwhile, concentrated state power was diverging from the church, and this fractured the unity of public purpose behind public torture and executions. Authority insistence on the purpose of deterrence were at odds against weakening religious attitudes of purification through suffering. Authorities began demanding last rites and confessions be performed privately.
Revulsion toward the practice among the upper class grew, as industrialization meant wealth became less determined by noble stature. This increased during the Enlightenment, as the feminine ideal of women and children as pure, gentle creatures was increasingly at odds with their enthusiastic and sizable participation in the brutality. The torment aspect gradually lessened, as 18th century rulers established reforms and standards. In some cases, rulers preserved the illusion of butchery, while mandating the victim be mercifully executed beforehand.
Public executions were at the height of their popularity even as authorities discontinued them. After the French Revolution, authorities grew fearful of large crowds for any reason. It didn't help that as executions became more of a spectacle, that audiences might attack or even kill an executioner with either poor skill or whose victim elicited the crowd's sympathy. Crowd sympathy toward the sentenced could easily be funneled into wrath toward the state, the opposite intention of the execution as a deterrent. This happened during the Bloody Code period in England, in which Draconian punishments for mild blue-collar offenses brewed public outrage.
Interesting factoid: The British were fond of hanging, but from short ropes. This made hanging a brutal event, often lasting several minutes of intense agony. Sometimes out of mercy, the crowd might pull down at the victim's feet, to end their misery more swiftly.
We scoff at public torture and execution, but it still happens across the world, e.g., Saudi Arabia. Relatively recently, in 1916 in Waco, TX, a black man falsely convicted of rape was tortured and murdered in front of thousands of spectators. Skip reading the rest of this paragraph if you are squeamish. His fingers, toes, and genitalia were cut off. Afterward, very much alive, he was covered in oil and for over an hour was raised and dipped by chain over a bonfire. He repeatedly tried climbing the chain to escape the flames, but kept sliding down because he lacked any grip. Postcards showing his mutilated body parts were mailed out, and children even pulled teeth from the man's charred corpse.
In short, it seems our modern appetites for cruelty have been merely channeled into more acceptable artificial and limited paths, e.g., violent cinema and contact sports. But the hunger is still there.
Pre-Reformation, the primary implicit purpose of public torture and capital punishment was, of course, to brandish the consequences of disrupting the status quo. But the stated purpose of torture was religious purification. The audience participated, often praising and cheering on the victim toward their 'salvation.'
This process only worked if everybody was in on it. But when Protestants weren't buying into the program, "out-Christianing" the system by protesting their suffering, then public sentiment slowly began to shift. The executions began to take on the appearance of spectacle. Crowds were fascinated by these Protestants who resisted their fates and made the process unpredictable. Simultaneously, with literacy and the printing press came newspapers gossiping salacious details about the victims and their accused crimes.
Meanwhile, concentrated state power was diverging from the church, and this fractured the unity of public purpose behind public torture and executions. Authority insistence on the purpose of deterrence were at odds against weakening religious attitudes of purification through suffering. Authorities began demanding last rites and confessions be performed privately.
Revulsion toward the practice among the upper class grew, as industrialization meant wealth became less determined by noble stature. This increased during the Enlightenment, as the feminine ideal of women and children as pure, gentle creatures was increasingly at odds with their enthusiastic and sizable participation in the brutality. The torment aspect gradually lessened, as 18th century rulers established reforms and standards. In some cases, rulers preserved the illusion of butchery, while mandating the victim be mercifully executed beforehand.
Public executions were at the height of their popularity even as authorities discontinued them. After the French Revolution, authorities grew fearful of large crowds for any reason. It didn't help that as executions became more of a spectacle, that audiences might attack or even kill an executioner with either poor skill or whose victim elicited the crowd's sympathy. Crowd sympathy toward the sentenced could easily be funneled into wrath toward the state, the opposite intention of the execution as a deterrent. This happened during the Bloody Code period in England, in which Draconian punishments for mild blue-collar offenses brewed public outrage.
Interesting factoid: The British were fond of hanging, but from short ropes. This made hanging a brutal event, often lasting several minutes of intense agony. Sometimes out of mercy, the crowd might pull down at the victim's feet, to end their misery more swiftly.
We scoff at public torture and execution, but it still happens across the world, e.g., Saudi Arabia. Relatively recently, in 1916 in Waco, TX, a black man falsely convicted of rape was tortured and murdered in front of thousands of spectators. Skip reading the rest of this paragraph if you are squeamish. His fingers, toes, and genitalia were cut off. Afterward, very much alive, he was covered in oil and for over an hour was raised and dipped by chain over a bonfire. He repeatedly tried climbing the chain to escape the flames, but kept sliding down because he lacked any grip. Postcards showing his mutilated body parts were mailed out, and children even pulled teeth from the man's charred corpse.
In short, it seems our modern appetites for cruelty have been merely channeled into more acceptable artificial and limited paths, e.g., violent cinema and contact sports. But the hunger is still there.
April 18, 2023
A look about the role of human pain in entertainment, and how our fascination with human carnage was not a new event. Dan looked at the role of death and our interest in it.
October 3, 2019
A brief historical overview on how pain and violence became a vice for entertainment. The Human species is infatuated with the death and destruction of its fellow humans.
February 20, 2023
Dan Carlin thinks out loud about public executions that have happened legally into 20th century. After that also illegally, like lynching in the US. He reads several eye-witness accounts and how it changed. And if it has actually changed, since any person today has seen more graphic violence on the TV, movies, games, internet, than any person throughout his/her whole life during the times when these public executions were the main entertainment in the city. The Painfotainment.
Episode 61 of the Hardcore History, currently still free. Food for thought.
Episode 61 of the Hardcore History, currently still free. Food for thought.
February 15, 2018
"Painfotainment" is an excellent commentary/companion for history books, movies (Braveheart, Gladiator, etc.), novels (think "Tale of Two Cities"), and even current news. If you ever find yourself reading about an execution in a book (Faithful's death in "Pilgrims Progress" comes to mind) and you find yourself going: "wait..what??" and scanning the bottom of the page for footnotes, I suggest checking out Hardcore History.
Well done Mr. Carlin
Well done Mr. Carlin
November 11, 2020
An enjoyable short read which gives a good summary of the background of capital punishment in Western Europe and why it began to die out with the age of enlightenment.
The book is probably too short to meet the usual standards laid out by the author but definitely is an enjoyable quick book and you can knock out in a day while travelling somewhere
The book is probably too short to meet the usual standards laid out by the author but definitely is an enjoyable quick book and you can knock out in a day while travelling somewhere
July 1, 2021
Love Carlin's podcast and this episode was similarly great to others, if more gruesome in its subject matter. I just wish he stuck to a sequential timeline and geographic mapping a bit more in talking about his examples. He organically meanders (which has its own merits), and sometimes it's a bit hard to follow if you're trying to map trends in your head.
November 7, 2021
This one is ghastly. It would certainly need an iron gut to listen to it, but it sheds light on the atrocities that we as humans have committed on our own people in the name of justice and protection of society. Very interesting listen.
February 7, 2018
Probably my least favorite of all the HH's.
February 15, 2018
This Hardcore History is just as well done as the rest, it's just not as enjoyable turn the subject matter.
February 24, 2018
Disturbingly interesting.
March 12, 2018
I can’t get enough of this guy.
July 9, 2018
Very well presented and researched as ever, but I didn't find the topic quite as interesting as some of Dan's other blitz episodes.
July 18, 2018
excellent
April 5, 2019
This was my first episode of Hardcore History and boy, what a wild ride
June 14, 2019
Entertaining and informative as usual.
June 20, 2019
People are enormously interesting human beings. Also supremely terrifying. Dan really published something wonderfully with this piece.
October 29, 2019
Fascinating and insightful.
February 24, 2021
Excellent. Just too hard for me.
August 29, 2022
Dan Carlin always does a masterful and thorough job exploring his topics. This is one I have often thought about; Why were public executions so popular.
October 31, 2023
interesting as always, but not as impactful as his more historical works.
January 18, 2024
Not for the faint of heart..
Although on second go-through, it didn’t come as a surprise..
Although on second go-through, it didn’t come as a surprise..
June 21, 2024
A very interesting angle to look at history, another solid episode by Dan
March 4, 2018
I am a huge fan of Dan Carlin’s work and eternally grateful for his Hardcore History podcast, but I would not recommend this episode to prospective listeners, as the subject matter is quite unpleasant (if admittedly flagged as such at the beginning of the episode) and the episode is less impactful and insightful than Carlin’s other largely fantastic efforts.
January 14, 2020
unreasonably long.
Displaying 1 - 30 of 33 reviews