What seemed to offend visitors to Ogrish most was the sensationalist context and pornographic links rather than the actual content of the videos indeed some media commentators felt unease that ‘reputable’ online news websites such as the BBC’s and the Sunday Times Online, to name but two, had gone public with statements after the Kenneth Bigley beheading announcing they would not link to the murder video on the grounds of taste and that it was gratuitous. This led to attempts to censor the site in countries such as Germany and Spain and arguably precipitated Ogrish’s efforts to reinvent itself. Sex and death side by side in this snapshot of the Ogrish homepage sometime 2005.Īside from its hosting of insurgent videos, the website also drew fierce criticism in the wake of the 9/11 bombings and natural disasters such as the Asian Tsunami (December 2004) and Hurricane Katrina (August 2005) after graphic pictures and clips of victims were posted without consent from relatives. Admittedly, all news agencies will edit terrorist press releases but Ogrish’s tendency to segregate the ‘money shot’ was undeniably exploitative. However, Ogrish would often merely isolate the violence, completely transforming the original meaning and context of the death media, effectively reducing the body from cultural artefact to site of spectacle. ![]() The beheading videos that were issued by insurgents were often quite sophisticated, with intricate opening and end credit sequences, ‘confessions’ from those about to die and lengthy valedictions from the executioners. Typically, the clips would be posted on a main menu sub-generically once the sub-genre required was clicked on the user would be redirected to another menu offering a specialised assortment. For every beheading there would be a hostage appeal with no grisly payoff, clips of mujahedeen playing with guns and rockets devoid of body horror and violence, and scenes of abstract destruction where bombs exploded and smoke billowed but no human forms were in plain sight. The media conflict in Iraq escalated after the 2003 invasion, generating a huge volume of visual imagery from both the insurgents and the coalition forces themselves, and one result was that Ogrish redefined its boundaries in terms of both the security and banality of clips hosted on the sites. * Afghan Warlord Escapes Suicide Bomb Attack – Higher Quality (Taken from menu on homepage at accessed 6 th March 2005) * 2 Iraqi Workers Beheaded on the Streets – Full Version * Feast Of Sacrifice – Asian Continent 1-21-2005 – Higher Resolution Version * Full Version Of Ansar Al Sunnah Army Executing General ![]() * Goats Throat is Slit in Sacrifice Feast on Asian Continent – Higher Quality Before its attempted public image overhaul in 2006, visitors to the homepage would be presented with a menu of newsworthy events and unrelated marginalia, linked only by the fact that the visual media was of a violent, sensational or bizarre nature and usually centred on the ruined human body: The clips were labelled and their context explained by genuine and faux news reports, unlike other shock sites of the time such as Consumption Junction that presented clips in a for a lulz manner to diffidently shrug ‘nothing’s shocking’. Yet, despite this ethos, there was a reverence for death and violence that meant the portentous demeanour of the site was ultimately affirmative instead of post-punk nihilism, at Ogrish death mattered. Here, the transgressive imagery was placed in a context where it supposedly opened peoples’ eyes to the brutal and arbitrary nature of the everyday. The original look of the Ogrish site was dark and baroque, with its rationale epitomised by its catch line ‘Can you handle life’ with the violent and upsetting materials showcased as a means of challenging the viewer. ![]() In this 3 rd instalment of a 4 part Ogrish retrospective, we take a closer look at the form and content of the shock site and how it repackaged itself as an alternative form of news service for the digital age.
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