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The Rise and Rise of Television Torture
- minikites 13y agoA similar issue came up when 24 was popular: http://www.theatlantic.com/daily-dish/archive/2007/06/scalia-and-torture/227548/ http://www.theatlantic.com/daily-dish/archive/2007/06/scalia... --- "Are you going to convict Jack Bauer?" Judge Scalia challenged his fellow judges. "Say that criminal law is against him? 'You have the right to a jury trial?' Is any jury going to convict Jack Bauer? I don't think so. ---
- yummyfajitas 13y agoInterestingly, the creator of 24 (Joel Surnow) gave a much more nuanced treatment of torture in his earlier "La Femme Nikita". The protagonist agency regularly used torture to hunt down terrorists, but the people practicing it are portrayed as far less sympathetic than Jack Bauer.
- Jare 13y agoIn 24 at first they tried to attach consequences in the form of the physical and emotional degradation of Jack Bauer, but after a few seasons of successes and redemption, it made no impact anymore. I can't recall instances of the good guys in Fringe using torture directly. I'm sure they are there, and I've just become numb to them.
- mavhc 13y agoBy season 6 of 24 they nuked a city in USA just to get Bauer to go back to work.
- moron4hire 13y agoThat's not even the most unbelievable thing in the show. I mean, an entire season is supposed to take place over a 24 hour period, making each episode a running hour of time. You expect us to believe that Jack Bauer can drive across LA 3 times an hour!? BULLSHIT!
- philwelch 13y agoI was mostly disappointed he never got hungry. You'd think he'd at least be eating a clif bar or a sandwich every few episodes.
- shitlord 13y agoI think he ate once when he was getting debriefed
- moron4hire 13y agoyeah, you gotta figure superAgentJackBauer has a caloric burn rate of at least 5000 calories.
- alan_cx 13y agoYeah, but by then, 24 had become a cartoon. I watched it as though it was a slapstick comedy. As a big dumb cartoon, 24 made sense to me. If I took it seriously, it just made me angry. I came to absolutely love it as an outrageous joke.
- bluedino 13y agoDidn't pressure make Keifer do little PSA's during the commercials of the last season or two of 24, saying that 'this is just a TV show torture shouldn't really ever be used'?
- jasonlotito 13y agoIn the 5th season, Peter tortures an observer. But this is displayed in a dark light, and the torture fails. It's not glorified. It's in fact the dark side, a counter-balance to Olivia's mourning. Basically, it's portrayed as a horrific, shocking action, made all the more horrible because of who's doing it. It's the first steps down a darker road for Peter. So, yeah, not at all propaganda supporting torture.
- Yver 13y ago24 is a much better example than Fringe. If Fringe depicts torture as a tool, it also depicts time travel as a tool and wacky science as a tool, but I don't see the author taking umbrage. Fringe, like 24, is a work of fiction. The problem is not the series' content. The real problem is letting politicians and media use a work of fiction as an actual situation. Using "Jack Bauer" in the debate about torture is like using Planet of the Apes in the debate about space exploration.
- gaius 13y agoSure but it happens: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CSI_effect http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CSI_effect
- moron4hire 13y agoBut unlike time travel and alternate dimensions, torture is a thing we have in our world of real things. But the rest of your comment is completely correct.
- aychedee 13y agoI'm the author... I pretty much figured that 24 was generally acknowledged to be torture full. I wrote that piece after spending the holidays binge watching X-Files and Fringe. Such similar subject matter but such hugely different treatments.
- vacri 13y agoThe problem with your hand-waving away of the issue is that torture is something that we as humans have a long, close history of, and time-travel is just a fantasy. To represent these as being essentially the same level of concept is utterly disingenuous.
- mseebach 13y agoJack Bauer has the luxury of being right or mostly right when he tortures people. In the movies, the good guys know with near-perfect certainty that the bad guy knows where the bomb is, and there is only just enough time to get the information - thus, torture. If real-world torture worked under similar certainty, few people would be against it. If one person tortures one other person and as a result found the bomb, he probably wouldn't get a very hard sentence. But in reality (as I understand it, I'm not exactly a subject matter expert), you'd be trying a guy who tortured 50 guys, 49 of which didn't know anything (or didn't break) or fed you disinformation, and then one guy who told you something actionable, that you plausibly could (but perhaps not) have learnt through other channels.
- rst 13y agoYou could say the same about "The Blacklist" right now; the FBI in that show uses violence at the drop of a hat. (And they're portrayed as the heroes even though it doesn't work for them at all --- the whole premise of the show is that it's brought them so little that they don't even know the identities of the Kingpins of Evil on the titular list.)
- sentenza 13y agoThere are four lights! It is a long time since I saw that TNG episode, but I remember it as a respectful treatment of the subject. Any television series in a modern setting in which characters that are portrayed as "good guys" use torture to achieve their goals is despicable propaganda. There has been more of that lately.
- glogla 13y agoOn the other hand Burn Notice is pretty good with torture.
- TheCoelacanth 13y agoI think Burn Notice's treatment of the subject is good precisely because it doesn't glorify torture. An interrogation on Burn Notice is more likely to involve psychological manipulation instead of torture.
- angersock 13y agoThey continually point out that trickery gets you farther than torture.
- yodsanklai 13y ago"Any television series in a modern setting in which characters that are portrayed as "good guys" use torture to achieve their goals is despicable propaganda." I'm stunned by how torture has became common in TV shows, at least since "24". But is it propaganda? to me, it was more a way to please the audience.
- exarch 13y ago"But is it propaganda? to me, it was more a way to please the audience." That, or it's purely coincidental that "24" debuted following disclosure of Bush's torture programs, and "Person of Interest" debuted ahead of common knowledge of the extent of mass surveillance. It may not be propaganda officially ordered and authored by some Ministry of Information, but it's the same thing no matter how many layers of abstraction it goes through: a way to shape the narrative and facts that inform the common person and allow them to form an understanding of an issue.
- zhaphod 13y agoPeople who coined the term enhanced interrogation should be subjected to the said interrogation. Joking aside, I agree with the overall point the author is making. There is a torture creep in the culture and people are getting insensitive to what it means. Because it feels good to catch the bad guy and do unspeakable things unto him and get the location of the ticking time bomb. What most people don't realize is that torture doesn't work. The person being tortured will give what ever information the torturer is looking for to stop the pain. However, that is an inconvenient fact that people tend to ignore.
- ctdonath 13y agoSometimes the subject does have the sought-after information, and the interrogator knows the subject has it, and people will die if that information is not extracted. Sometimes asking nicely doesn't work, and neither does saying "Tell me! or I'll say 'Tell me!' again!" Another inconvenient fact is sometimes it does work, and is an alternative to actual harm. ETA: I'm surprised at how many here adhere to the notion "you can't ever know if the subject knows". We justifiably incarcerate people in peacetime, and kill people in war, on less information. As another poster noted: if the subject possesses a computer clearly connected with the issue, admits it's his, admits he knows the password, refuses to give the password, reveals the password under enhanced interrogation (with no physical harm done), and the password decrypts life-saving information, far better that than letting innocents die (or killing him putatively after the fact) because "torture isn't nice". Unwavering equalization of torture with crime (and invariant punishment thereof) is just as absurd as invariably criminalizing use of deadly force in defense of self or others. I get that sometimes/often/usually it doesn't work, but this broad insistence it is always criminal is absurd.
- eseehausen 13y agoRather than legalizing torture as a result of these sorts of fantasies, one might argue that in such extraordinary cases, the interrogator should be willing to suffer the consequences of committing the crime of torture.
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- Touche 13y agoVery interesting! I would look at the depiction of torture in Fringe in another light though. X-Files was a cult show that ran on Friday nights (first few seasons) with low expectations. Fringe had high-expectations from the start, had J.J Abrams named attached and (this part is a guess) a more expensive cast. It never did very well in the ratings and was on cancellation watch for most of its existence. It actually did follow the "Monster of the Week" formula more often the first couple of seasons but then started emphasizing the overarching plot more often in the later seasons. The threat of cancellation, I think, explains the use of eye-catching tactics like torture, and how they seemed to retcon the previous season, each season and start an entirely different plot. They never expected to keep going and didn't plan very far in advance. X-Files had very different constraints which were only relaxed as the years went on and their budget increased. You can actually see the point in season 2 where the show is beginning to become popular enough that they start having better make-up and effects.
- VLM 13y ago"It never did very well in the ratings and was on cancellation watch for most of its existence." I did some research and "Fringe" pulled 3 million viewers. Awful. "xfiles" pulled 10-30 million viewers. Not 1.0 to 3.0, 10 to 30. Never quite hit 30 but got close, like 27 million. "Survivor" used to pull nearly as many as xfiles but now only pulls about ten million viewers in the USA (out of 314 million total population, according to google, so about 30 out of every 31 people do not watch Survivor) The premise of the article is normalization of torture is a great way to become a blinding success like the x-files, because it mentioned the xfiles and that was a highly successful show. However, comparison of the numbers shows normalization of torture is a great way to repel around 97% of the viewers of a successful show, not to become successful.
- MartinCron 13y agoYou can't really compare viewership numbers between the X-Files era and the Finge era. The media landscape is totally different now. 3 million viewers isn't necessarily "awful" when you're competing against just about everything.
- Shivetya 13y agoI seem to recall in X-Files people just disappeared. The same occurs in many police dramas and even movies with similar settings. Whats worse, showing torture or off screen killing people? These are not shows about bunnies and unicorns, they are about dangerous, exaggerated or fictional at best, subjects, and will not necessarily portray characters in the best of light.
- Crito 13y agoI don't recall Mulder and Scully "disappearing" very many people. That tended to be the doing of other people in government. Other people in government acting nefariously was something of a common theme in that show.
- securingsincity 13y agoI think part of this is certainly the mystique of the cowboy cop trope [0]. They'll do anything to get their man, even if the man in the next room thinks they've gone to far. and they get results. And your rogue cop has to be bigger and badder than Harry Callahan and whomever came after. And then a little of art imitating life, "real people are doing water boarding, the audience needs to see something worse than that" [0] http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/CowboyCop http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/CowboyCop
- nnethercote 13y agoYeah. When a good guy tortures, it shows he's how far he's willing to go to save the day. And when a good guy is tortured, it shows how tough he is when he resists (and he almost always resists).
- rayiner 13y agoI think the article gets the causality backwards in saying that shows like this "are re-educating and changing attitudes towards this act." Major-network televisions shows are reactive. They're the product of focus groups and market surveys. They are much more likely to reflect trends in culture than to create those trends. They opportunistically take advantage of social trends that already exist. This is clear if you look at how television lags society as a whole when it comes to other social trends. By the time CBS aired a show with two major gay characters (Will & Grace in 1998), more than a third of Americans already supported gay marriage. This year, "Modern Family" will feature a gay marriage proposal, now that 55% of Americans support marriage equality. Going back further, the networks didn't air an interracial kiss until Star Trek in 1968, a year after the Supreme Court (itself an extremely reactive institution), struck down bans on interracial marriage. As of 2010, more than 1 in 6 new marriages was interracial, but you'd hardly perceive that watching network TV, where interracial relationships are still highly unusual. The Brady Bunch, which ran from 1969-1974, pioneered portraying a blended family on TV, with two previously-divorced parents, but by 1969 divorce was already mainstream and divorce rates were comparable to what they are today (they peaked ~1980). In 1960, when TV was still idealizing stay-at-home mom June Cleaver on Leave it to Beaver, a third of the labor force was women. Given the track-record of television when it comes to other social trends, I think it's incorrect to say that television is "changing attitudes" towards torture. More likely is that it's reflecting attitudes in society more condoning of torture than they have been in the past.
- maxerickson 13y agoI think you are right about television being largely reactive, but I do wonder about feedback loops. CSI is set in Las Vegas. They show multiple murders on a typical night shift, yet in reality there is "only" a murder every 2 or 3 days. Of course it makes sense that they would actually show things happening, but I wonder how that feeds into people's perceptions of the world (The "CSI effect" is apparently a real thing, so people have taken some lessons from it, right?).
- Touche 13y agoIt's reflective of a culture of cynicism. The hero cannot win without compromising his/her own morality and so must chose to sacrifice it to defeat the antagonist. The is perceived to be more "modern" and "realistic" way of story-telling. See Man of Steel as one of the prime examples of a cynical culture destroying one of our most optimistic characters.
- elipsey 13y agoThis recapitulates many arguments made by Georgetown law's David Luban in the excellent 2005 essay "Liberalism Torture and the Ticking Bomb" which we should all go read right now :) http://scholarship.law.georgetown.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1163&context=facpub http://scholarship.law.georgetown.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?ar...
- zhaphod 13y agoI initially thought that this essay is taking on the advocacy of torture by liberals as in progressives. But then I did a quick read and found that the author uses liberal as in freely. I will be going through this in detail. I think you may also like the essay {PDF warning} http://www.cgu.edu/pdffiles/sbos/costanzo_effects_of_interrogation.pdf http://www.cgu.edu/pdffiles/sbos/costanzo_effects_of_interro....
- elipsey 13y agoThank you. It's nice to see an empirical discussion of this subject. I'll have a look at some of the cited sources too.
- zhaphod 13y agoEmpirical information is sorely missing from our discourse to the point that the general public doesn't question any more the pontifications of pundits. Case in point is the recent claim made by Stuart Varney on Fox that since two ships are stuck in sea ice in Antartic means there is no Global Warming. There is that another misnomer. I wish people start referring to GW as Climate change. Any way I am going off on a tangent here.
- valarauca1 13y agoThe article is interesting, but what caught my eye more is the possibly spoofed DNSSEC cert.
- atmosx 13y agoOh, so I am not the only one :-)
- atmosx 13y agoIt's not just torture that's taking place on TV, it's violence in many forms. When my sister asked me to described breaking bad series, knowing her so well, the first word that came out of my mind without seven thinking was: Violent.
- mavhc 13y agoA man picks the side of violence, and is destroyed by it. Works better if you assume the final episode was a dream
- scotty79 13y agoI think Rambo was more violent.
- Ygg2 13y agoMore violent than Saw, Dexter or Hannibal? I'd say not.
- scotty79 13y agoYeah. Probably not. I haven't even watched Saw. I'm too emotional. As for Dexter I don't think it's violent. It would be family comedy-drama about slightly maladjusted individual if not for all the killings. On the other hand I have friends who coldn't suffer through first episode. At the same time they happily watch something as nasty as Das Experiment. I guess there is some variation in perception of violence.
- radley 13y agoThe previous articles are about 'Scandal', '24' and 'Homeland' which are torture-filled entertainment. Quite a (linkbait-ish) leap to focus vaguely and exclusively on Fringe.
- aychedee 13y agoI binge watched Fringe and the X-Files over the holidays. The most stark difference to me was the torture. Fringe in some ways is delightful and gentle. Especially in the portrayal of Walter's mental illness. It's very much like the X-Files in that regards. But even in a show like that they still packed in the torture. What blog post SHOULD I have written? I know Scandal is full of torture. Does our Sci-fi need to be as well? Why is that? What changed since the X-Files were released? That's the point I was trying to make anyway.
- radley 13y agoThe difference for me was I turned off 24 & Homeland because it seemed to be nothing but torture over and over. Fringe - I really have to think about it because I don't recall any. I kind of recall weird bits of mad scientist-ish torture, but not long-extended anger scenes.
- michaelochurch 13y agoHere's why, in the real world, the "good guys" almost never use torture. At least, it's so rare that the likelihood of torture having a good use in one's lifetime can be rounded down to zero. Torture isn't (despite what many say, wanting to believe that evil never works) completely ineffective at getting information. It gets some signal (and lots of noise) but it's inferior to, and also antagonistic to, more effective forms of interrogation. The world is morally murky, and it's rarely clear who the good and bad guys are, and it's a lot more effective to get someone to warm up to you and your cause. If you cause so much pain to inflict PTSD, you're never going to get someone on your side. The "ticking time bomb" scenario is laughable when applied to real life. But it also makes one completely wrong assumption: that the torturer often wants the truth. Most who have used torture, throughout history, wanted the opposite. Torture is very effective at "extracting" a completely distorted or just wrong account (false confessions and accusations) that can be used for political purposes, none good. If you want an exponential growth in the number of convicted witches, torture can do that, as world history has proven.
- RankingMember 13y agoThe GTA5 torture scene with Trevor and the car battery, pliers, etc. was difficult to participate in. If I recall correctly, he at least didn't get anything useful out of him, which would've implied that the ends justified the means.
- was_hellbanned 13y agoI came here to mention that Grand Theft Auto did a fantastic job satirizing (if you can call it that) the theme of torture and assassination. In the game, you are forced to participate in torture of a guy for absolutely no reason. You have to select torture methods, then manipulate the controls to adequately complete the mission. In another mission, as another character, you're forced to perform an assassination for a government organization. As the scene unfolds, it becomes clear that they have no idea what they're doing, and they're just reacting immediately to low-quality intel.
- Dove 13y agoI don't think it's propaganda. It's a result of the same feedback loop that gives you the morality of soap operas, the absurdity of reality television, the voyeurism of talk shows, historically the extremity of circuses and freak shows: the need to be more attention-grabbing, more extreme, more must-see shocking than the next guy. It's hardly news that watching that kind of stuff gives you opinions that make you a worse person. The way I see it, fiction has a dark side and a light side. The dark side normalizes and revels in darkness, to shock and allure the audience. The light side is shocked at the darkness and stands against it, to educate and enlighten the audience.
- humanrebar 13y agoGood point, but I'd like to add some more context. The average American male has access to all the porn he wants, UFC fights, FPSs, and so on. How is a network broadcaster going to shock and allure him in a way that will clear the censors? The list of options is short and torture is on it.
- prawn 13y agoI agree that it's not really intentional propaganda but more so a case of need to stimulate more than that which has come before. And maybe it's a short-cut for writers. We see it so frequently because it's a cheap way to build drama or disgust or reasons for revenge or suspense, etc. Doesn't require a difficult set (almost always happens in a simple room), easy to simulate and probably not especially hard to act (writhe around, please).
- mcantelon 13y ago
- jaimebuelta 13y agoAn interesting point in American fiction in particular, is that, generally it always has the lesson: "violence works" or "violence is the solution". Applying violence to a problem is a pretty common way of solving it. And, of course, a big enough nuclear bomb will fix any problem... A line like Doctor Who's "everyone lives!" is very difficult to find in an american show. (It's not that I have a problem with american fiction, I just find it curious)
- MartinCron 13y agoMaybe Doctor Who's explosive popularity in the States will have a moderating effect? I mean, my 11-year-old son is part of a generation whose favorite fictional character uses a screwdriver and has two hearts.
- cesarbs 13y agoSONIC screwdriver! ;)
- cgore 13y agoAmerica's vices of choice are greed and violence. England's are sex and drugs.
- squozzer 13y agoYou may be a little off. Americans like porn and weed as much as anyone. And who regularly vies with Germany for having the most violent football (soccer) brawlers seemingly as a matter of national pride?
- dragonwriter 13y ago> An interesting point in American fiction in particular, is that, generally it always has the lesson: "violence works" or "violence is the solution". I think that taking that as a "lesson" is a mistake. Its true that American fiction is pretty prone to relying on physical violence as the central form of conflict, but I don't think that's so much a lesson as a lack of creativity.
- carsongross 13y agoYes, but who are we to judge? Who, indeed.
- n2j3 13y agoConsidering the effectiveness of torturing (and whether "they" lie about it) kind of blunts the argument against torture tout court. Other than that, I thoroughly enjoyed the article.
- amagumori 13y agoit's important to realize that our popular TV shows are full of propaganda. it's subtle stuff, not out-and-out endorsements of political or social positions, but more along the lines of assumptions that are reinforced and left unopened. the purpose of the stuff isn't to change people's minds, but to solidify norms. i can't even count how many times i've seen "set 'em up to knock 'em down" characters - usually in the bad guy role. there will be a character, usually a bad guy, with a certain ideology that will be delegitimized (usually some sort of anti-status-quo or anti-power thing). sometimes they will portray the character's ideology as good-intentioned, to give an effect of objectivity in the storytelling. but ultimately this character will be shown to be misguided, emotional, immature, or otherwise ideologically inferior to the "good" character. i see this shit a lot in crime and law enforcement-focused shows. i'm sure some people would argue that i'm being hypersensitive and that there's no ulterior motive behind these portrayals, but i can't remember a single time that i've seen an anti-government or "rebellious" character not delegitimized in one of these shows. yes, it's just a character, but our ideological positions are weighted quite a bit on these "stories" - for many people, more so than facts. many hard-line conservatives would get angry at being called a "liberal", not because of their political differences, but because on some level they embrace a story where liberals are milquetoasty, limp-wristed, privileged turtleneck wearers, and conservatives are hard-working everymen trying to do right by their family. many liberals, for their part, embrace similar but reversed stories about conservatives. sure, maybe if you read hacker news you don't base your political views on stereotypes like this, but these stereotypes do their work by remaining in the back of everyone's mind. for average americans that don't explicitly try to be objective in their political and social positions, these stories actually hold a lot of sway. our TV storytelling enforces and solidifies these sort of stereotypes.
- dragonwriter 13y ago> the purpose of the stuff isn't to change people's minds, but to solidify norms. Well, no. The purpose is usually to resonate with norms that the intended target audience is presumed to already have, so that that target audience will feel comfortable with the show, come back to it, and show good stats so that the network showing the show will be able sell ads targeting that audience, so that they will continue to pay the producers of the show, who will continue to pay the writers of the show. Occasionally shows have propaganda that is inteded to shape opinions, but mostly they are written to make money, which means selling advertising space, which means appealing to the existing views of a target demographic above and beyond all other considerations.
- pasbesoin 13y ago"24" is one of the most brilliant (in its use, if not its composition) and effective pieces of modern/contemporary propaganda that I've seen. I think it played a significant role in U.S. society's development over during the first decade of this century. Hell, I observed this, first hand, in my friends. When your erstwhile quite liberal and at least mildly "flower child" longtime friend -- who "can't" miss an episode of "24" -- starts telling you that maybe torture is necessary... I hope Kiefer Sutherland has sleepless nights...
- gojomo 13y agoI see it as a variant of the 'hedonic treadmill'. So many scenes of extreme behavior, by 'bad guys' and 'good guys', have already been done in filmed/televised entertainment, that audiences are habituated to all the usual situations and nastiness. New works must keep going more extreme, in both what happens and what's shown on-screen (as opposed to suggested), to hold attention.
- thenomad 13y agoI'm not that sure it's a new trope: '70s British cop shows (The Sweeney, et al) tended to show information being extracted by force, too. However, it may say some things about the society where it's popular - '70s Britain wasn't a very happy place in some ways.
- donpdonp 13y agoThe treatment of torture on TV is important for the reasons OP states. I disagree that torture is becoming more prevalent on TV, though perhaps because I watch less of it. Here are the scenes I can remember from childhood onward. 1. Knight Rider - not exactly torture but Michael was in a contest with someone else to tolerate pain, afterwards it was revealed the other person was not connected to the machine. 2. Star Trek - I can remember Kirk in a reclined chair on the Enterprise, looking up at something that was causing great pain. 2. ST:TNG - The Picard scene is memorable because it affected so many people due to the show's popularity. 3. Firefly - This was particularly well done / graphic because I think Nathan Fillion is very good physical actor. One of the ways torture affects the lives of ordinary americans is through the Taser. Youtube has some eye-opening examples of tasers being used for the wrong reasons. Its a near impossible line to walk between non-lethal force and pain as coercion.
- saraid216 13y agoIt's worth noting that the Firefly torture scene was not an information-gathering operation. It was torture for the sake of torture. I haven't watched enough pop culture (basically none of 24, for instance) to know how uncommon that is in comparison with torture for the sake of "Where is the bomb!?", but it is probably significant.
- lightbritefight 13y agoThere are all good classic torture scenes, but realize that in none of them is the interrogator looking for information. Each scene was to break the subject, or to cause pain/death. Those instances of torture have no moral component past sadism. The issue is when you depict torture as a morally good, effective method of protecting people. Thats when people begin to believe that its an agreeable act.
- InclinedPlane 13y agoCasual, unthinking propaganda. And worse, unthinking rationalization for real-world torture. So often you see the "good guys" being badasses by using torture, brutality, or simply ignoring the rights of suspects. And frequently they are rewarded for it, lauded for it, and there aren't any downsides. The good guys never screw up, the suspected bad guys turn out to be the real bad guys, and so on. All of this has become cliche as storytelling elements in police procedurals, but they give people a very dangerous idea about the value of torture and the non-value of the rights of the accused. It's so bad that the vast majority of people doing it don't even realize what they're doing, don't realize how much they are propagandizing torture and police brutality.
- mvaliente2001 13y agoAh, do you remember the old good times when Terry Gilliam's Brazil came out, and the idea of a SWAT team destroying your house, imprisoning and killing your husband, all due to a bureaucratic mistake, was a bizarre fantasy of a dystopian and dictatorial future?
- vezzy-fnord 13y agoNo. It has always been plausible. Just perhaps not a SWAT team, specifically.
- dobbsbob 13y agoTorture is pointless since the counter-interrogation method while being tortured is to never admit to anything. Giving any information just invites more torture because if there is a bit of info then there must be more and they will keep torturing you, at least according to the IRA green book. The French wrote about how useless torture is for intel as well when they decided to use it wholesale in the Algerian war. It produced nothing, yet in 2014 this fallacy is still around and we are still doing it.
- k2enemy 13y agoSee here for a mathematical treatment of this: http://faculty.wcas.northwestern.edu/~jel292/torture.pdf http://faculty.wcas.northwestern.edu/~jel292/torture.pdf
- tzs 13y agoThe IRA green book may not be a reliable source of information on this. Wouldn't it give the same advice even if giving up information in reality usually made the torture stop? The book's goal there is to get prisoners to not talk, not to help prisoners have the least unpleasant experience in captivity. I'd expect that the captor's expectation is that prisoners have a non-zero finite amount of useful information, and that in many cases the captor has some idea of how much and what kind of information the prisoner has. If the prisoner does not give up information, wouldn't the incentive for the captors to be to keep torturing because they are sure that there is something to get? Strategically, it should be best for the prisoner to give up information that matches what the torturers were looking for, so that it is plausible that when the prisoner says he has no more that he is telling the truth.
- elwell 13y agoI think every episode of "24" has at least one instance of torture.
- zavulon 13y agoI wrote a blog post about this back in 2005, when Hostel was coming out. It seems that's right about our fascination with torture on TV has started. While I cringe at my writing from 9 years ago, it seems like things have only gotten worse since then. > With seemingly inevitable theatrical success of 'Hostel' and recent mainstream movies such as 'Passion of the Christ' and 'Sin City' reveling in accurately depicting violence and torture, I started thinking what does that say about our society and what horrors are next in line for the viewers, hungry for more blood and suffering. And then it dawned on me - almost this exact situation was already predicted, in a dystopian 1966 sci-fi story by Robert Silverberg called 'The Pain Peddlers'. > 'The Pain Peddlers' depicts a scary, bleak and sarcastic view of the future - in the early 00's, television is king. And what brings most money to TV networks is live surgery. In the story, the main character is a TV producer who got a very promising prospect - an old man suffering from gangrene and a family, too broke to take care of the hospital bill. The old man needs to have his leg amputated, and the family agreed to do it on live TV. It's the producer's job to convince the family to have the amputation without anesthesia - for more money, of course. Nothing brings in the viewers quite like real human agony. > Remembering this story, which I read long time ago, was a very scary experience for me, because... in 1966, when it was written, it was pure fantasy - the notion of something like that actually happening never occurred to Silverberg or his contemporaries. But does it sound that incredible now? With TV viewers getting tired of same-old reality shows and public's growing hunger for violence, how long until a new reality show depicting real surgery appears on, say, HBO? Probably not right away. But I can definitely see something like that happening, not too far away in the future.
- mathattack 13y agoI viewed Lethal Weapon as one of the early movies to glorify torture to get what you want out of bad guys. On TV the Shield took it to a much higher level.
- maxerickson 13y agoAt least on the Shield the lead characters are pretty morally ambiguous (at best).
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- nickthemagicman 13y agoI've been noticing television and media getting more and more brutal over the years. Batman and Robin have transformed from tights wearing guy's saying holy rusted metal to driving military hum-Vs with gatling guns. The joker has transformed from a goofy prankster makeup wearing guy to a all out sociopath who slices happy faces into people with knives.
- pirateking 13y agoI am not sure if I would call Jack Nicholson's Joker a goofy prankster. Well he was, but... he was just a different flavor "all out sociopath" than Ledger's Joker. I say this as a huge fan of both Batman (1989) and The Dark Knight (2008). I am assuming you must have been talking about the Adam West TV series Joker. I do observe the same trend as you however in general. I think the rise of of video games has a big role. People can play action movies now. If they are going to be reduced to spectators, the movies need to one up the games on other metrics like storyline and acting (rare), or effects and violence (more common).
- jaimebuelta 13y agoThe first appearance of the Joker (Batman #1 1940) was incredibly scary and grim. He's a murderer, killing 3 or 4 people with poison that make them smile, and the general style is quite dark. [1] Sure, comic books move to a different ground later, and the Joker in particular moved to be more of a harmless clown until the 70s, when "The Joker's five way revenge" (Batman #251 1973) made him back to a scary killer again. It depends on taste, but to me the idea of someone using a joke cigar that explodes blow away a whole floor is quite brutal. It is brutal because it takes something "funny/harmless" and moves it to actually killing someone. In one comic he throws a cartoon 10 tons weight to someone. And you can see the blood of the crushed guy on the floor. I find that pretty dark. And I think that the contrast of bright colours, smiles and silly jokes while being a mass murderer is what makes the Joker an special character... [1] http://comicbookmovie.com/images/users/uploads/27306/JOKER_first_appearance_052111.jpg http://comicbookmovie.com/images/users/uploads/27306/JOKER_f...
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- pessimizer 13y agoReal torture has been policy for over a decade; no one has been prosecuted for it, and the evidence was intentionally and unashamedly destroyed. Why shouldn't television reflect reality? Torture isn't wrong or illegal anymore in the US.
- dded 13y ago> Why shouldn't television reflect reality? Because there's a cycle. TV reflects reality, but it also shapes reality. It shapes us. > the evidence was [...] unashamedly destroyed And without protest. I believe TV has made our society comfortable with torture, and thus we allow it to happen.
- pessimizer 13y ago>Because there's a cycle. TV reflects reality, but it also shapes reality. It shapes us. If you take the cultural studies view that our media is a reflection of our cultural unconscious, rather than a form of corporate speech from power. >And without protest. I believe TV has made our society comfortable with torture, and thus we allow it to happen. There was a ton of protest, and it didn't matter. It was the subject of hundreds of articles, and congressional questioning, and it didn't matter. There's an illusion of control here. If you are arrested, and US intelligence agencies feel that you may be a friend of a friend of a Muslim of interest, you may be tortured - largely dependent on whether anyone knows you were arrested, and on what soil you were arrested on. We allow it to happen because we love it, are indifferent to the suffering of foreigners and minorities, or are afraid of being tortured ourselves. Same reason they allow it to happen in Egypt, Turkmenistan, or anywhere else. Blaming it on TV is like blaming gun violence on video games. That being said, when something purports to be a depiction of a historical reality, such as in Zero Dark Thirty, it is a travesty - but it's always a travesty when history is rewritten to glorify the powerful.
- blah32497 13y agoThe very best torture scene I've read or scene was the one in Day of The Jackal - where they torture the legionnaire to divulge the location of the OAS leadership. Putting myself in his shoes, there is no way - no matter the importance of the information - that I wouldn't break. The main difference between that scene vs. say Babylon 5 or StarTrek is not only the violence (for instance Captain Picard doesn't have electrodes connected to the end of his penis) but the fact the the person being tortured knows for a fact he will be killed after it's all over. There is not psychological game going on: the reason he ultimately divulges information is so that the pain will stop. He wants and begs them to kill him. I've never seen an equally powerful scene in any movie or book.
- tehwalrus 13y agoI can't help recalling Firefly, where (spoilers) only the worst, most sadistic bad guy (Adelai Niska) tortures people[1]. He does so using any method he can, not to get information but just because he loves to do it. It is obviously also a warning to other people not to annoy him, but this is almost a secondary purpose, at best equal with causing immense pain to his enemies. This is a reasonably accurate depiction of torture, as far as I understand the science of it, and it's one of the few reasons torture might actually be used (i.e. at the orders of a complete psychopath.) - although Mal Reynolds seems unfeasibly good at resisting it (any evidence that this occasionally happens? I'd be interested to hear.) [1] You can read about the character here: http://firefly.wikia.com/wiki/Adelai_Niska http://firefly.wikia.com/wiki/Adelai_Niska and you can buy the DVD of the original series here: http://www.amazon.co.uk/Firefly-The-Complete-Series-DVD/dp/B0001B3YTM http://www.amazon.co.uk/Firefly-The-Complete-Series-DVD/dp/B... (check out, in similar items, the film Serenity, which rounds off the plotlines from the series nicely.)
- maxerickson 13y agoMal throws a henchman through an engine. The next guy talks without much bother.
- aidenn0 13y agoHe was going for compliance to orders, not for information though.
- tehwalrus 13y agoKilling people is not the same as torture, and is not serving the same purpose. The Firefly gang fight and kill all the time, the first episode forces a pacifist (Book) to confront his objections to violence in a nontrivial moral situation. What they don't do routinely as a tactic is torture people. A better counterexample would be Jayne and the fed: "Damn, and I was gonna get me a ear, too..."
- eli_gottlieb 13y agoMind, the protagonists kill plenty and kill violently in that series, but they're outlaws. Literary convention allows them to do something morally ambiguous.
- squozzer 13y agoThe big lie about torture is that it's actually relevant to the matter under pursuit. The government really doesn't care that much about guilt or innocence, once it decides someone needs removing they go about doing it in the most politically expedient manner available.
- memracom 13y agoThe TV channels really should buy more Russian TV series and overdub them. The Russians have made tons of movies about the war with fascist Germany (and its aftermath because it did not really end on VE day) and there was a lot of torture used by both the Soviets and the Nazis. But it was often ineffective in that the victims either died without saying anything or they misled their torturers resulting in serious loss to the enemy who believed the info received from torture. And the folks who had real good info knew that they would be tortured, and when they realized that they were about to be captured, they either committed suicide or shouted to their friends to be shot to death. In other words, anyone who follows the truth of torture use during a historical conflict will realize that it does not work well. In fact, what worked better was to trick the person into revealing info. These were often set up as complex double and triple bluffs because the folks in charge knew that their prisoner would try to trick them back and therefore they had to outsmart the prisoner. In one case, the Nazis did a complex bluff where they booked up all the port time at three French ports, and all the rail shipping slots between France and Germany. They had two goals. To get a Soviet spy ring to report back with encoded messages containing the names of the three ports so that they could get a foothold in cracking their cipher, and convincing the English (and Soviets) that an invasion was imminent so that they would waste efforts. In fact the plan was to move additional forces to the Eastern front. In that case the Soviet spies outfoxed the Germans when they learned that all the trains were empty and therefore did not report the port names in code. And this warned the Soviets of a German push coming up in the next few weeks so they were better prepared. There are a lot of fascinating stories from the Eastern Front waiting for someone to take the trouble to overdub them in English.
- sigzero 13y ago"Are you not entertained!?" - That is what drives it. People need more and more.
- tphyahoo 13y agoWaterboarding is easy (though not completely safe) to try out for yourself with a friend in a controlled environment. People that watch these shows, that live in countries where governments practice water boarding, and who enjoy tv shows that portray water boarding as a necessary tool, should try it out themselves. I think also people that make these shows should try it out. For arts sake.
- Bulkington 13y agoPolice beatings have long been a staple of movies, theatre, literature. In reality, police beatings have been a staple of the exercise of authority since Kubrick's representative ape picked up that bone. Selection bias: There's always been a generational slant, depending on whether revolutionaries or reactionaries were the more popolarly romantic at the time. Truth: beatings hurt, and lead to more beatings. Pacificism always fails, except in art/fantasy. Too lazy, depressed to cite the obvious. Wikipedia search quietly on your own. (To those disappointed in the moral failings, hypocrisy of US, compared to grade-school patriotic version: Like Babe Ruth's boozing, FDR's disability, JFK's infidelity, polite media just didn't discuss certain unpleasantness. Guess what: it still doesn't. That's what worries me. And I'm the least conspiracy-minded malcontent I know.
- smokey_the_bear 13y agoTorture has become so common in tv shows it has become difficult for my husband and I to find anything to watch together anymore. The genres we used to both enjoy are so filled with torture that I can't stand to watch them. He is willing to, but doesn't enjoy those scenes. Are there really a lot of people who want to watch prolonged, gritty torture?
- Grue3 13y agoYeah, and videogames cause people to murder. What a load of bullshit.