Susan Sontag's The Imagination Of Disaster

Susan Sontag’s “The Imagination of Disaster” claims that sci-fi fiction films can give pleasure to the audience. Then, she gives the detail the type of pleasure that comes from sci-fi films can be the complicity with the abhorrence. It seems like the flow of an idea stressed on the ugly things that formed in the society that we can relate to or confront with. Therefore, the second claim is the aesthetic of the destruction; she also says that the disaster presented in the sci-fi film is one of the oldest subject of Art. According to the idea, the dreadfulness in the disastrous situation is observed as a beauty (p.44) which means that the audience finds pleasure in consuming it. She says “the peculiar beauties to be found in wreaking havoc…”

The last claim Sontag providing is about the pleasure from looking at freaks. It might urge the audience to exclude them from “normal people” who appears in the story. For example, the freaks might be the aliens or unidentified beings which, somehow, gives the sense of superiority and provides an urge to eliminate them. Sontag says that “that is the undeniable pleasure we derive from looking at freaks…” (p.45) Thus, it could be the pleasure we get from the abhorrence too because we, somehow, feel an urge for “righteous bellicosity to discharge itself.” (p.45). There is the continuity of the information and also another pleasure from thinking about eliminating the abnormal. As same as the second claim, the last claim is both continued and deflective to the claims mentioned above. In my opinion, these claims are logical and reasonable because Sontag sets the path about exploring the relation of abhorrence and pleasure which is understandable. She stretches the idea what the audience might be thinking about and it is interesting and debatable (if there is someone who does not agree with the pleasure coming form