Both Jelinek's and Haneke's works focus on the media's detrimental effect on relationships. Debord's The Society of the Spectacle and Baudrillard's The Vital Illusion serve as the basis for a discussion of Jelinek's Vienna, which consists of a society of voyeurs in which spectatorship replaces intimate engagement. The author draws upon media and film studies that link an increase in violent images with increased aggression in her analysis of Haneke's films that depict the role the media plays in violent behavior. The article concludes with a discussion of the ways in which both artists provoke the readers/viewers into an awareness of their own voyeuristic roles as passive bystanders and the responsibility that entails.