Torture should be depicted for the pure atrocity that it is, not as an entertaining plot piece to imagine doing nasty things to a Russian/Middle eastern person.
Interestingly, cops shooting at fleeing suspects is very common in TV shows and movies, but generally considered unacceptable in real life.
I've sometimes wondered if the cops who grew up watching these scenes over and over again as children, might be inadvertently bringing that same behavior into their real life jobs.
Of course the challenge of proving this, is well stated in this quote:
"Does TV viewing really contribute to all those reactions? ...At the heart of the debate is the difficulty of proving that one thing causes another...Similarly, it has been difficult to prove that the violence shown on television causes crime and antisocial behavior...A Canadian psychologist wrote: “The scientific evidence simply does not show that watching violence either produces violence in people or desensitizes them to it.” However, the American Psychological Association Committee on Media and Society said: “There is absolutely no doubt that higher levels of viewing violence on television are correlated with increased acceptance of aggressive attitudes and increased aggressive behavior.”"
Taken from: https://wol.jw.org/en/wol/d/r1/lp-e/102006362#h=13
However, among past social circles of mine, I can definitely say TV helped normalize behaviors that at one time weren't as common.
For example, I saw gangster rap, and all of the forms of entertainment that accompanied it's rise in the 90's, dramatically normalize arrogant and aggressive behavior among my peers in suburbia.
So to me, it's logical that TV and movies are one part of the cultural fabric that can indoctrinate new behaviors in the real world. Some of them really unfortunate.
I can't think of a single one off the top of my head.
https://youtu.be/6SLDMMGzkyI?t=61
But regarding torture, in the 70's Christian/Roman era themed movie were commonly shown on TV. As a child I concluded that every man eventually gets tortured. While we were watching a particularly brutal scene I asked my dad if he was ever tortured and didn't believe him when he said "no". But if TV weren't enough, we had a crucifix in every room and I found the normalization and ubiquity of depictions of torture depressing and confusing, leaving me convinced I was born on the wrong planet.
Supposedly the patron saint of the tortured is Epipodius (just looked it up), but in my faith I actually believe there is no patron saint of the tortured. If you're tortured that's a cut above every other predicament and the only saint for you is the patron saint of all patron saints, Jesus, because he was the original Christian to get tortured for his faith.
In other words, I think there might be a causality chain, but one that can be easily broken.
I think series like 24 were no accident. They pushed the limit farther. Today even kid movies like Pets is more than slapstick comedy. Even there you see torture as valid means.
Don't violence rates vary quite a bit from country to country?
For example, parts of Central America are terribly violent.
I'm also not saying that TV is the sole contributing cause.
But that, I just wonder if cops are inadvertently affected by growing up watching how cops in TV shows routinely handle cases.
For example, a few months ago in Florida, cops got in a shoot out on a busy freeway and used bystander vehicles for cover.
Many were horrified, suggesting the cops should have let the criminals flee, rather than engaging in a shootout using civilian vehicles as cover.
But, how many TV shows and movies show cops ignoring bystanders.
Could it be that some inexperienced cops inadvertently slip into doing what they've grown up seeing in movies and TV shows?
I can't prove it, but I've just wondered if that's what's happening.
Recently, cops have been getting in trouble for shooting suspects as they run "away" from the police.
TV/film was always ludicrously loose on use of deadly force by police. Even Bert the cop shot at an unarmed, fleeing George Bailey in "It's a Wonderful Life"!
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fleeing_felon_rule
So at least some of those movies may have just been accurately portraying the practices of the time.
Saw is a horror movie. Horror movies are a way to experience scary things without putting you in actual danger. And they are not going to achieve that by just showing kittens playing, getting you to be scared/horrified/disgusted/... when you know you are perfectly safe and that the story is fiction is hard enough. So they use an arsenal of techniques, from jump scares to phobias and gruesome deaths. And torture is great for this. We can imagine what it feels like, we get to see the blood and gore, we know it something that happens in the real world,... Well made, torture scenes are very effective at creating tension when it is called for.
And I don't think we should not use them just because torture is atrocious in real life. When we go see a horror movie or thriller, we know the game, we don't want it to go easy on us. Deep inside, we know we are safe, that's what allows us to have fun playing with our limits.
Is it healthy? I think so, most kids love getting scared at some point, and they don't become psychopaths as a result. And horror stories, even the most tasteless ones definitely don't glorify what they are showing.
I wouldn't stop anyone else from watching them, and those movies aren't shit or trashy either (like some commenter has said). But I know my reasons for not enjoying them, and preferring horror that is more subtle, psychological, and rooted in realistic trauma that I've experienced myself.
Torture is out of the picture because it's too often depicted as something the torturer can't wait to do, they're just held back by a system and they want to go rogue. You know, the trope of the torturer unfolding a cloth or a leather pouch to joyously reveal a bunch of surgical instruments. Or punching a guy in the face so hard it knocks their chair over; which in real life would probably put them in a coma.
The difference being that you are used to one of these and unused to the other?
Jack Bauer teaches us that torturing people is an effective way to make them tell us (true) information.
Alternatively, John Wick, and almost every other action movie, show us that violence - and killing people - is an effective and morally acceprable way of solving problems. The distinction between violence and torture depictions is not as obvious as you want it to be.
I don't think that's accurate. More like, John Wick implies that violence and murder of those above the law is an effective and morally acceptable way to solve the injustice they perpetrate. That's a much more reasonable position that will have plenty of people on both sides.
Spoiler warning:
I mean, yeah, there is some more food for thought in there :
-The violence endemic to the conflict between man and the system in which he operates: (Wick and the Continental)
-The face of violence embodied by the struggle between personal/professional loyalty: Wick, and the Manager of the Continental.
-The violent fruits of man's will to free himself of the constraints of a system designed specifically to constrain him: Wick's breaking of the code.
-The tendency of violence to beget and amplify itself in the absence of some braking force.
-That violence exists as a universal tool in the toolset of interpersonal conflict, and a view of the world if it were shaped around an organized deployment thereof outside of our current set of institutions that we entrust with controlling the application of violence.
C'mon though, let's not pretend the movie justifies anything. It's Art. It isn't there to be blamed as a causative factor, it's there to be appreciated and moved by. To make you think, feel, and give you a new perspective. If John Wick can be credibly pointed to as a causative factor of escalating violence, then clearly Andy Warhol caused obesity and consumerism with his soup can, Dali causes people to be tardy, Clive Cussler is a leading cause of totally badass and inexplicably effective oceanographer cum international crisis resolvers, H.G. Wells caused the atomic bomb, Orson Scott Card already laid out how we'll handle first contact, and Oscar Wilde created the surveillance hellscape in which we live.
We may be moved by what we see, but in the end it is we ourselves that are the causative factors. We react, we integrate, we sculpt spots for each other to settle into through what we knowingly and unknowingly do.
Does Art shape culture? Or culture shape Art? Are the Artists warning us of what is to come, or are they tangifying the steps in the direction society is already progressing towards? We can't say for certain, but in the absence of an authoritative answer, I'd wager there us a dynamic equilibrium at work that is starting to be compensated for, depending on where individual decisions of sentiment end up pointing.
The problem isn't portraying torture, but portraying it as something that always gets actionable, accurate information.
Torture is both ineffective and immoral.
Portraying it as effective is a problem.
Portraying it as morally acceptable is a problem.
My only point was that morality isn't necessarily related to effectiveness. But some moral positions could of course depend on effectiveness.
One should not make relativistic moral calculations with fundamentally unacceptable acts.
That doesn't have any bearing on other people's moral frameworks, in which relativistic calculations may be the right thing to do.
It becomes at best a statement of opinion, and at worst it can be taken as dismissive of the values of others.
I don't believe this is a very useful property of a conversation which is about trying to understand how the world squares with opinions that people can hold.
Tony Stark is a stone cold murderer sociopath, he kills a bunch of terrorists and then seconds after almost killing someone in a friendly fire incident, laughs about it with his buddy.
People can encourage filmmakers being responsible while not encouraging turning the government on them.
I can say Mark Boal and Kathryn Bigelow have done immense damage to the world without wanting them imprisoned or forced to stop making movies.
There's nothing wrong with condemning people who are doing bad things: criticism is a necessary part of the equation that allows free speech to work.
Responsible art? Give me a break. Leave art alone. Overly sensitive people have already ruined so much of internet already. I'd hate to see art destroyed as well. If you don't like the art, then don't consume it. Simple as that.
> criticism is a necessary part of the equation that allows free speech to work.
There is a difference between critiquing an art and trying to shame artists from abandoning their art.
Are you going to encourage libraries to be "responsible" and remove huckleberry finn or mein kampf? What I really worry about are the sneaky backhanded method of pushing censorship that I see online now. They are worse than the "won't you think of the children" types.
There is no big conspiracy in entertainment to make torture acceptable. It is primary dumb plot point that is easy to plug in to get cheap thrill. Just like dumb one dimensional characters characterized by one personality trait are not result of some kind of psychological conspiracy.
Acting like this stuff is inappropriate to comment upon is what allows those to stay. Criticizing and commenting on bad cgi and bad acting raised quality of those too.
This meme needs to die.
Really, this idea of shifting personal behavior and hoping the market/economy as a whole will follow is advanced for some many problems, and in general it is a dismal failure. Why would you even expect it to work? Theaters might stop booking movies that are unpopular, but there is zero social penalty for going to see a movie; and in any case, most movies are watched at home, as is porn.
Where is the evidence for this working? Over what timescale? How is it to be measured, especially when streaming video viewership is far less transparent than even old-fashioned box office and movie rental receipts? It's little more than a statement of religious faith in the market, and doesn't even engage with the possibility that vicious as well as virtuous cycles exist and can be manipulated.
Imagine how many people in Guantanamo have been subjected to over a decade of this treatment under the utterly delusional belief that they must have some information to offer and cannot, under any circumstance, be innocent, so therefore they deserve it.
As a counter-example, Antichrist features some scenes that could be seen as torture if the story was reframed. Same with Nymphomania. While that kind of shock value is par for the course for Lars von Trier, it doesn't necessarily celebrate it. I'm sure plenty wanted to ban or censor that; I just wanted to see something genuinely disturbing.