Rosen

In “The Naked Crowd”, Jeffrey Rosen begins with talking about 9/11 and all of the devastating pictures that have been posted across the nation. He makes a claim that these Portraits of Grief homogenize people into one genre. It brings a sort of emotional connection. He later explains, “people try to prove trustworthiness by revealing details of their personal lives to prove that they have nothing to hide before a crowd whose gaze is turned increasingly on all individuals that compose it”(415). This leads to how people believe they should be honest and open, but that would require letting down their guard and sometimes people need that guard for their private life. Rosen talks about sincerity and authenticity, which is virtually the same thing despite authenticity, is allowing you to be completely exposed emotionally to others. Sometimes this may lead to people appearing like they’re expressing everything even though they are not, which is sometimes necessary. He then brings up “personal branding” and explains that you are the one that does the branding of yourself, but you do not put on a false front. Towards the end Rosen brings all of this together while talking about “the comfort of strangers”. He states, “The personal branding movements is based on the same fantasy that underlay the Portraits of Grief, which is the fantasy that people can achieve emotional intimacy with strangers”(420). All of the country understood and expressed emotions after seeing these photos and realizing the extremity of what has happened, and they choose to share the families pains together in unity.