Comment by anigbrowl | Hacker News Reader

Comment by anigbrowl | Hacker News Reader

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Not sure who said, maybe it was Slavoj Zizek, about how if we are even debating "is torture right or what advantages it might have" we have already lost.

It was, and I think his point is borne out in the fact that numerous films and TV shows have depicted torture that would formerly have been the preserve of pure villains to tools available to heroic protagonists in sufficiently urgent circumstances. Never do you see the efficacy of it questioned, or the deleterious effects on the administrator explored, or the scenario where it is erroneously applied to an innocent or where an intelligence asset is lost as a result. Deliberately or not, the fictional depiction of torture over the last decade or so has been almust uniformly ideological.

Fox and the like will also be debating its "benefits and how it saved Americans' lives"

the top headline on Fox news this morning was quoting some blowhard politician calling the release of the report 'unconscionable.' strange moral calculus in which the publication of a document is considered a more egregious offense than torturing people.

I have a family member who was hooked on the TV show "24" which featured torture.

I think that it is quite possible that there is some purposeful desensitization going on.

I've heard this theory. It's not really consistent with the fact that "24" was a torture-fest from the first season, aired before the enhanced interrogation stuff really got going. I was in college at the time, and we loved the show. You don't need much "purposeful desensitizing" to convince a bunch of 20-something guys it's okay to torture terrorists.

As far as 24 goes, it didn't air until after the Sept 11 attacks, but it went into production 6 months before, and was first conceived of sometime in 2000. While a few 9-11 truther types would have it that this was part of a long-planned propaganda campaign, I don't believe that - 'two-fisted cop who doesn't go by the book' is a decades-old trope. I do think that the experience of terrorism helped to build the audience for the show and make it a huge hit, though, when it might have seemed absurdly overblown if it had screened a year earlier.

I was thinking more about how there were a whole stack of movies exploring different aspects of torture in great detail, typically with unpleasant dilemmas, eg the Saw franchise, Hostel etc. etc.. Now I don't think these are exclusively a response to American policy either - the opst-2000 cultural context also included things like Al-Qaeda terrorists decapitating Daniel Pearl and uploading the videos to Youtube and so forth.

I've assumed this theory prima facie for a while. Further examples are movies glorifying war (Homefront, Lone Survivor). As coldtea mentions, it could be considered a form of moving the Overton window.

As 'angibrowl points out, the movie trope of the good guy that isn't constrained by procedural rules is very old.[1] The 1980's action movie catalogue is full of it. Moving the Overton window doesn't even make sense in this context. Moving it from where? We're talking about a country full of people that vociferously supported bombing harmless Vietnamese villages off the map. Aside from maybe the folks who grew up in the 1990's, who weren't exposed to any real global conflict, I'd be surprised if the current generation wasn't the least receptive in American history to questionable methods of warfare.

[1] You see it a lot in crime dramas from the 1980's, where things like the 4th amendment are portrayed as just letting criminals off on "technicalities."

In related news: https://twitter.com/saladinahmed/status/543077220601044992?s...

And, toward the idea of film as propaganda of what are actually terrible behaviors: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/northamerica/11306...

Perhaps it's 'keeping the window propped up' (over to where it was moved long ago). The long history isn't exclusive to the idea that these shows and movies are a form of propaganda, or desensitization.

Moved when? Name one generation that you think was less accepting of questionable conduct in warfare.

The long history suggests that the shows and movies are a symptom of cultural attitudes, rather than a cause. For example, consider all the media in the 1980's portraying criminal procedural protections as "technicalities." I think it was in response to the fact that, after 1960, crime per capita tripled before incarceration per capita started going up. As I said about 24--in the aftermath of 9/11, the torture-fest was just capitalizing on the anger people felt. On my college campus in 2002 there was a lot of talk about nuking the middle east and things like that, which is quite contrary to what the government was saying.

We went to very different colleges, I guess.

The current trend traces at least as far back as DIRTY HARRY (1971). "Dirty Harry" was a common reference to extra-procedural cops for a couple decades.

You've got the tail wagging the dog here. Art is often a reflection of the times.

Do you remember post 9-11 America? People were angry and afraid.

Jack Bauer tortured because America wanted him too.

Q: do you still love the show? After all this, I mean.

You're not the target audience. The point was to make sure that a 48-year old pasty accountant and his kids are de-sensitized.

Maybe, but I don't think it was done actively. I remember when I was still at a certain military institution and the Dean was periodically pulling in all of the cadets in small groups during "Dean's hour", a period immediately following lunch, to remind us that torture is something that flies in the face of everything we were about to stand for, especially as we were about to graduate and head off to Iraq/Afghanistan. He even tried to get the folks running 24 to quit showing it so prominently [1]. I think it was really just about making money - torture has shock value just like anything else that pushes the established boundaries of violence for television. So I don't think there's some broader conspiracy, I think the people running Fox are really just assholes and capitalized on people's fears.

There's something to be said for the post-9/11 zeitgeist that it gonna take us a really, really long time to get over. We see it in super hero movies (if I have to watch Manhattan get pulverized one more time...) and in a more evolved and complex form with Homeland. I think it'll be years before we come to terms with how we've responded as a society and with what we've done.

[1] http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=9876686

I know lots of people who love Game of Thrones but it's a bit silly to think that there's a deliberate attempt to normalize incest or feudalism. It's just a TV show people happen to live.

Game of Thrones also has dragons and ice-zombies. 24 purports to be something that - while far-fetched - "could happen". I don't think you can say that about Game of Thrones. Also, in GoT you get a pretty good idea of the downsides of incest and feudalism, on the off chance the viewer wasn't already aware - whereas in 24 torture is presented as a wonderful thing in certain (or all) circumstances.

Huge 24 fan here (watched all seasons), I loved the show but that doesn't mean I support torture. I always found the following things ridiculous (and pretty unrealistic):

1) The ridiculous urgency of it, where they're running against the clock to "stop the bomb" or something like that. These kinds of scenarios are highly unlikely in real life, IMHO.

2) That Jack Bauer always got away with all the things he did. AFAIK, he did not spend even a single second inside a US prison (although he did come pretty close a few times).

I always looked at the show as fiction (like a superhero show), not something to be emulated in real life. I really hope most of its viewers looked at it the same way.

I always watched 24 with the understanding that Jack Bauer is just another villain.

It's a lot like what's called an Overton Window:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Overton_window

I do not believe that it was done on purpose, I think it's in some way a reflection of general morals and ideas of dealing with terrorism floating around in the US society at that time, shortly after 9/11.

Imagine you are the director of such a show that is about some hero that prevents terrorism. What would you make that hero do to prevent a second 9/11 to capture the audience.

Edit: What I can imagine is that 24 inspired some US officials.

My little sister just got into with me on facebook about how it is perfectly ok to torture our enemies.

That's just the last straw for me. I would never have someone in my life, family or not, who would think raping people is acceptable. This is even worse. Even our enemies shouldn't be raped/tortured.

But killing them is ok?

I'm gonna say yes - not killing them in cold blood execution style but in the sense of them being a valid target. If you're in a position to torture/rape someone, you've already neutralized them as a threat by capturing them. Shooting or bombing someone is not necessarily OK, but while the person is at liberty they could in theory be about to shoot your or engineer some other sort of attack - the operation to assassinate Admiral Yamamoto in WW2 being a good example: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Vengeance

On the other hand, torture isn't something that people do because they feel they have to, but rather because they can. Since all the accumulated evidence to points to it being a poor way to to gather intelligence information, it's hard to avoid the conclusion that it's just way of being vindictive or sadistic instead, something that we find deplorable in other contexts. I think it's considered deplorable because such feelings are quite common but the majority of us make the effort not to act upon them.

>But killing them is ok?

the human race so far narrowed it down to 2 possibilities - judicial proceedings or war following the rules of Geneva Conventions. Every other form of violence is a crime, with torture and killings being the crimes against humanity, prosecutable by any government and without statute of limitations.

These torture victims weren't even allowed to kill themselves. At least one tried to gnaw through his own veins just to end it all. Yes, this kind of torture is worse than murder. To the victim, but also for the perpetrator, because it's done in cold blood for a prolonged time. You have to have a truly sick mind to be able to do this and continue doing this. The people doing this do not belong out on the street, and they certainly should not be holding any kind of authority.

A relevant recent article, arguing basically that, from 3AM magazine: Saying no to Jack Bauer mainstreaming torture [1].

Google cache as 3AM magazine seems to have some troubles at the moment[2]

[1] http://www.3ammagazine.com/3am/saying-no-to-jack-bauer-mains...

[2] https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:www.3a...

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