Let's be honest: We are a society of voyeurs. We seek the sordid, the scandalous, the private viewings that happen behind closed doors. We get a vicarious thrill out of participating in someone else's "backstage" life.

Here the secret and forbidden are made manifest; layers of social pretense and public decorum are stripped bare. If you've ever listened in on your roommate's phone conversation, paused while walking past a brightly lit window, or watched "Melrose Place," you know what I'm talking about.

Until very recently, our collective voyeurism had limits. Viewing certain actions or events was considered taboo; watching them was a sure sign of deviance.

Approximately 10 or 12 years ago, society strongly condemned the "real life" footage of death and carnage depicted in the film series entitled Faces of Death.

Those quasi-documentary films recorded real people dying before the camera's invasive gaze. Viewers saw a parachutist's unlucky descent into a alligator-infested swamp; they witnessed a grizzly bear dismember a clueless camper; they perused the charred flesh and ravaged body parts following a commercial airplane crash; and they observed a ritual slaying practiced by a satanic cult.

But that was just the beginning: Macabre and morose types had two other volumes (a fourth was recently released) of cinematic treats to choose from.

Renting the videos was akin to an illegal alcohol purchase. All eye contact with the cashier was carefully avoided; feet were shuffled nervously; and hands were jammed into pockets.

But unlike the alcohol purchase, the brief glance received on the way out of the video store was one of curiosity and disdain: "So you're the sicko who's going to carve up his girlfriend, mutilate his parents, and scavenge the flesh of two-day-old road kill."

Faces of Death represented the moral equivalent of a snuff film --and society was neither tolerant nor amused.

Now, fast forward to 1995. If we were able to leap magically from 1983 to the present, we might be stunned by what we see. That most revered television institution known as "hard news" bears remarkable likenesses to the once ostracized Faces of Death.

It's not the maimed cadavers from Bosnia, Rwanda or Grozny that elicit our shock; we've grown accustomed to them ever since American GI blood flowed into our living rooms during the Vietnam War.

What's shocking are the videotaped deaths of "unimportant" people who frequent our newscasts. From overseas we watch a dark, grainy videotape of a circus elephant stomping its panicked trainer into tightly compressed pulp. The trainer's name is never mentioned; his importance to the "story" is incidental to his tragic death. Faces of Death couldn't have captured it any better.

A few days later, the "news" takes us to that hotbed of intrigue: Anchorage, Ala. From the lenses of a wobbly camcorder we watch college students pelt a wayward and frightened moose with snowballs. We then watch in horror as a man -- again, nameless -- walks by the moose only to be mauled, gored, and trampled to death by it. Faces of Death strikes again.

Since when has bizarre video footage in which anonymous people meet with gruesome deaths (and near deaths) become newsworthy -- especially at a national level? Keep in mind we're not talking about presidential assassinations (John F. Kennedy) or institutionally condoned racism (Rodney King).

Are we really so starved for "news" that videotaped deaths of anonymous, unsuspecting people constitute a newsworthy event? I doubt it.

Why are these images being beamed into our homes? What's behind the journalistic maxim: "If it bleeds it leads?"

Despite what conspiracy-minded Marxists might tell you, the matter involves much more than institutional domination and control. There is always a symbiotic relationship between the media and the public -- at least in a democratic society. Media supply and public demand shape the final news product.

It's the public demand side of the ledger that is both perplexing and troublesome: How does a society go from condemning the act of watching people die to airing it on the nightly news, all in the span of a few years?

The theories are numerous. Increasingly realistic television programs blur the lines between fact and fiction; repeated viewings of violence desensitize us to its harsh realities; electronic technology, such as the camcorder, has invaded areas once acknowledged as private space; or, in an age when the visual medium dominates, voyeuristic impulses are sated only by increasingly shocking fare.

Whichever explanation you subscribe to, there's no denying that Faces of Death has gone mainstream. Yet seldom is anything permanent. It's up to us as media consumers to decide whether to pause and stare into that brightly lit window or to keep on walking.