4 ms·
I think this study is misleading. They are classifying a huge variety of situations as "torture". From their paper, they describe one example in Zootopia: Off
by lacker 7y ago
I think this study is misleading. They are classifying a huge variety of situations as "torture".
From their paper, they describe one example in Zootopia:
Officer Hopps needs to find the drop-off location for "night howler" flowers (a poisonous flower
that has been weaponized to turn animals "feral"). She turns to an organized crime boss to extract
information from a lackey of the antagonists. The crime boss's polar bear enforcers hold the lackey
over a hole in iced-over water, threatening to throw him in (and ostensibly kill him) if he doesn't
give up the location. "Ice him," says the crime boss. The lackey quickly gives up the desired information and our heroes go on to (spoiler alert) save the day.
Cartoon animals were threatening to throw someone into the water. Is that really "torture"?
Later in the paper, they describe that they include any "threat of pain" to be torture, as long as it isn't self-defense. So a schoolyard bully saying "I'll punch you unless you give me your lunch money" is considered to be torture.
Naturally, with this sort of definition of torture, they discover that most movies contain torture.
- jessriedel 7y agoYea, under this definition, every time someone points a gun at someone it's torture. This sort of re-definition of terms reduces the public's trust in academics on an important topic.
- throwaway4220 7y agoFrom article: “As citizens of a democracy, our suggestion here is certainly not to constrain how media depict interrogations and torture .... Rather, our aim is to draw attention to the prevalence of this trope and hope that screenwriters will exercise more caution in using torture as a plot device.” IMO this is not different from shocking a flatlining patient; it does not work, and {may be a missed public education opportunity, may lose some credibility points} http://www.aed.com/blog/tv-myth-shocking-a-flatline-heart-rhythm-will-revive-patient/ http://www.aed.com/blog/tv-myth-shocking-a-flatline-heart-rh... https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4258134/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4258134/
- jobigoud 7y agoIt's not a redefinition, a "mock execution" is classified as psychological torture.
- jhpriestley 7y agosimulated execution is absolutely torture, yes.