Keifer Sutherland = Dick Cheney?
Is the Fox show 24 promoting torture? Will we soon have soldiers in the middle east trying to imitate the velvety Sutherland voice while breaking the kneecaps of potential suspects?
This New Yorker article seems to think so. They make a good case. Personally, I stopped watching the show around season 3 when the stories started getting repetitive, but it's still a great premise.
This New Yorker article seems to think so. They make a good case. Personally, I stopped watching the show around season 3 when the stories started getting repetitive, but it's still a great premise.
posted by Kelly @ 12:55 AM
2 Comments:
Reading the article, it seems to me that the lead writer is honest:
“Honest to God, I’d call them improvisations in sadism.”
The authorization of torture takes the treatment of prisoners and the gathering of intelligence out of the legal realm and into a highly subjective realm. In this new realm, individual judgment is the only thing that decides how prisoners are to be treated. Which is to say, emotion decides. If a particular MP - or whoever - enjoys inflicting physical pain, it doesn't matter how effective the method is, he or she will inflict physical pain on a prisoner. This is essentially a blank check to authorize sadism.
The most idiotic rationale for relaxed torture laws is the "ticking time bomb" scenario, shown weekly on 24. The premise is simple: unless we torture this person, millions will die, so we need to give interrogators leeway. This assumes that every scenario is a ticking time bomb and, once again, puts this subjective judgment into the hands of the individual, not the law.
It's revealing that most discussions about torture don't actually revolve around the effectiveness of various methods. They revolve around the general feeling that we need to be "tough" to get information. This is what happens when the law is allowed to become vague: subjectivity rules, in this case, the subjective value of "toughness." Torture, then, is a way for people to prove their toughness, effectiveness be damned. Are you tough, or are you a little girl liberal? If you're tough, you'll support breaking this guy's kneecaps!
Inflicting pain on other people then becomes not about obtaining information, but satisfying one's one emotional needs, whether exploring one's own sadism or just feeling that one is 'tough enough' to survive.
Proponents of torture of course think that they're the realists and hard-headed, because they're willing to take us down this road. But what is more soft-headed than deciding policy based on emotion? Than ignoring results in favor of what feels good?
Now what does it say about America that most people don't really care?
It says that unless something touches their lives personally, Americans don't really care about a lot. We're a pretty self-centered bunch, and don't like to be told to think deeply about anything.
However, as a follow-up to the article, 24's exec producer Howard Gordon has told newspapers that the show will be scaling back on their torture scenes. He claims it has nothing to do with the military or the article (I call bullshit). Here's his explanation:
"What was once an extraordinary or exceptional moment is starting to feel a little trite. The idea of physical coercion or torture is no longer a novelty or surprise. It's not something that we, as writers, want to use as a crutch. We'd like to find other ways for Jack to get information out of suspects," says Gordon.
Now what does it say when not only torture is shown as successful, but is seen to be so commonplace on a show to be called boring?
Post a Comment
<< Home