The Dilemma Of Video–Can You/Should You Watch Someone Die?: I ask this question because after watching (with trepidation) the horrific beheading of Nicholas Berg in Iraq this week, I came across a video which records the last–and fatal–dive of freediver Audrey Mestre. TWC wrote about Audrey’s tragic death last year, after she drowned trying to set a new freediving record of 561 feet (she was posthumously awarded the record for a practice dive of 558 feet, and Salma Hayek is now set to play her in a movie directed by Titanic director James Cameron). The dive was supposed to take 3 minutes but equipment malfunctions slowed her descent and then prevented a fast return to the surface. Click here for a story about the accident. Anyhow, a six minute video of the dive has finally hit the internet (sooner or later everything hits the internet, right Paris?), and I struggled over the question of whether to watch it, and whether to post the link. I didn’t want to be gratuitously and morbidly curious, simply clicking on the video in the casual way I click on other internet videos I come across or post. After all, someone is dying. In the end I did watch, and it is both tragic and difficult. It also conveys very dramatically just how courageous Audrey was, and how extreme the sport of freediving really is. So that’s at least one redeeming factor. Also, it’s not up to me to decide what you should or shouldn’t watch, so here’s the link if you choose to click on it.



Audrey In Life, Doing What She Loved Doing