In 1991, audiences thrilled to Anthony Hopkin's performance as Hannibal Lecter in Silence of the Lambs which ended in the now classic line: "I'm having an old friend for dinner".
It's a landmark in the world of film. Five Oscars!
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Only three years later, a photographer named Kevin Carter took this photo of a toddler in Sudan.
It also won an award, the Pulitzer Prize.
It is a landmark in photojournalism. It too tells a story.
The photographer tried to make the vulture out to be the villain but instead became the villain himself.
People wondered at the photographer's lack of humanity - he might as well of eaten the child himself.
Apparently, he chased the vulture away and left the starving child some distance away from help.
I wonder. How many people in his situation would have been afraid to touch the face of death?
If suddenly the cafes of James Street were magically transported to Sudan, to 1994 the moment before Kevin Carter stumbles upon this child, would people even notice the child?
They would be living a drama of their own in their heads.
In fiction writing the best way to design a villain is to let your audience inside his head - that means you have to go their first.
Yesterday I did a TV writing seminar and the question was posed: "Can you identify with the vulture? Can you write from the vulture's perspective"
It's only a one-day seminar so we didn't actually do the exercise but university students do this.
I Googled the photo as I sat down to try this exercise. But I remember the controversy.
In 1994, the aspiring young writers at UQ would have not been much older than this child.
It's not so much the vulture in this photograph that caused such a controversy - it was ethics of the photographer.
No one knows what happened to the child or the vulture but the photographer didn't survive.
What was going on in his head? Now there's a story I'd like to write.