The Play's The Thing

"This is choreography par excellence. They are stage-managing our reaction, they are controlling the timing of our reaction."
"They are setting the agenda with these videos. They know we are obsessed with them and know we can't resist poring over the videos and we can't resist buying into the theatre of  them."
Professor John Horgan, psychologist, University of Massachussetts, director, Center for Terrorism & Security Studies

A still from the Islamic State video of James Foley’s killing. The man in the video of Steve Sotloff’s beheading was wearing similar clothing. Photograph: The Guardian

"The production values are definitely different in these videos and going for the largest possible consumption of the image."
"[They are] totally staged, from the angle of the camera ... to the quality of the image. They want to instill fear and they are succeeding. Governments are reacting. It has gotten the attention of the West."
Steve Stalinsky, executive director, Middle East Media Research Institute, Washington 

  The family of James Foley faced the harsh reality of ransom inflation before his death. Photograph: Nicole Tung/EPA/GlobalPost

"[There is] a straightforward purpose from an analytical standpoint: intimidation. Beyond the surface level, however, there is an equally alarming element to this video: recruitment to jihad."
"While anyone with a sliver of morality and a functioning stomach couldn't possibly register any such appeal, a dangerous community with a dark view of the world have interpreted the video in a celebratory and empowering vein."
"Foley's beheading video was tactically edited to intimidate Americans and Westerners, while also appealing to prospective recruits. By not showing the actual beheading, [ISIS] is making a safe play to terrorize the Western community while making the video a blockbuster within the jihadi community."
Rita Katz, director, SITE Intelligence Group

American journalist Steven Sotloff talks to Libyan rebels in 2011. Photograph: Getty Images

That the men chosen for gruesomely dreadful public execution are garbed in orange, is symbolic of the contempt that the Islamist jihadis nurse for the United States. Reflecting the like uniforms worn by Guantanamo Bay military prisoners. "That's not a coincidence" states Thomas Juneau, international affairs professor, University of Ottawa, specializing in the Middle East. "Guantanamo is a hated symbol of America. By using that symbol, [ISIS] positions itself as the main source of resistance against the United States", aiding it in its recruitment of new ISIS fanatics for the universal Islamist cause of triumph over the unbelievers.

Professor Horgan may speak for some, riveted by the atrocious spectacle that Islamist jihadis present as they deliberately take steps to horrify and terrify their audience, but most normal people would not really want to view such videos repeatedly. Repeated viewing grabs the enthusiasm of those psychopaths in society who enjoy witnessing, even at such a remove, the dreadful suffering and fear experienced by others. And it is from among those societal outcasts that new recruits stream to Syria, Iran, Somalia and Libya to take part in the theatre of remorseless brutality that Islamic State exemplifies.

Both of the staged executions by beheading were meant to extract maximum loathing from the wider audience, and admiration from the narrower one. That they succeeded in eliciting horror in the one instance and resolve to become a part of the wretched assaults against basic human values on the other is abundantly clear by the news media's focus on publishing one account after another, squeezing all the 'news' value possible out of the two events that took the lives of two American journalists. On the one hand, it is the media in a feeding frenzy of media cannibalisation when their own have been victims.

On the other hand, the events also have the awakening effect of alerting Western intelligence agencies to an accelerated rate of Western-domiciled Muslims leaving to join jihadists where the action is, irresistibly drawn by the fantasy of violence that has been sanctioned by Islam, the religion they worship and submit to. And if Islam entrances them through the theatrical production of wildly merciless life-taking of infidels to the extent that they wish to be part of their particular history-in-the-making, the fear is their return, to preach 'at home' what they practised abroad.

They can fantasize that they're the one facing the camera with such sinister and dramatic effect, dourly, with deliberate emphasis and with the strength of the one holding the knife, threatening the Western powers, a traumatized victim at their feet, awaiting the inevitable. The sheer euphoria of all that power in their hands draws jihadis irresistibly to the geography that birthed Islam and that has now incited it to kill without the nuisance of any restraints, since it has been ordained by god that it should and must be done to prove allegiance to the divine.

Tremble before us, all you kuffars, Jews, Christians, Crusaders and false Muslims, betrayers of Islam ... for the fate of each of the journalists will be your fate. Relying on the shock value of having two helpless American men facing death, chronicled on social media; far more effective in its value for repulsion and attraction from the two sources than the ordinary slaughter of thousands of helpless minority men, women and children.