How much torture is enough? TV time!
Like probably a quarter of the rest of Adelaide I've been hit by a winter cold and was bedridden for most of a week. Very boring, but the good news is that one does get better from a cold. (Most of the time.)
My dear wife brought me some fresh reading material from the local library, and one gem was a copy of The New Yorker magazine (19 & 26 February - 'The Anniversary Issue'). I read 'The New Yorker' about once a year and used to puzzle about the cartoons - they were too esoteric for my simple tastes!
This issue is excellent!
Jane Mayer writes in her 'Letter from Hollywood' column this issue about the television show '24' in her article 'Whatever it Takes' , how the number of acts of fictionalised torture on TV has increased hugely; how these acts no longer show 'the bad guys' torturing 'the good guys' but more often than not it is the other way around; and how these TV shows influence the people who are in contact with people who could actually be tortured.
Beth and I used to be addicted to watching '24' and we bought several of the series on DVD to watch it. We've given-up watching it though - stupid local programming has it airing way too late for us to watch, but more importantly how many times can we watch Jack Bauer save the US of A from (yet another) nuclear or bio weapons attack, killing nearly all the bad guys he comes in contact with then walking away with nary a scratch to show for it. Perhaps, I don't know, a bit 'repetitive'?
Back to the real world. Torture is illegal. The United States Senate ratified The United Nations Convention Against Torture, declaring it illegal, specifically with 'no exceptional circumstances, whatsoever, whether a state of war or a threat of war, internal political instability or any other public emergency, may be invoked as a justification of torture.'
Mayer writes that the dean of the US Military Academy at West Point, Army Brigadier General Patrick Finnegan, and three of the most experienced interrogators from the US military and FBI, flew to California to meet with the '24' creative team. Mayer wrote that they were concerned by the growing number of West Point cadets who would say to General Finnegan in his West Point 'laws of war' course, 'If torture is wrong, what about '24'?' The General continues, 'The disturbing thing is that although torture may cause Jack Bauer some angst, it is always the patriotic thing to do.'
From what we see on '24' if you are running out of time and need some intel then it's alright to do a little torturing in the name of the bigger issue. But in the real world, apparently, physical torture doesn't actually work - one of the three experts at the meeting with the '24' team was a guy who had been an Army interrogator in Iraq. He said that people watched episodes of '24' then went on duty in the interrogation booth and did the same things that they had seen on '24'.
This former interrogator said that 'in Iraq, I never saw pain produce intelligence...' Some people, he said, 'gave confessions' but what they told was what was already known. It never opened up a stream of new information.'
Not surprisingly, the horrible attacks of 9/11 seemed to be a catalyst for the loosening of morals and legal compliance regarding the laws barring torture, as depicted on TV. Before 9/11, Mayer writes, 'fewer than four acts of torture appeared on prime-time television each year... [while] now there are more than a hundred' according to Human Rights First.
I like a good TV show. '24' has been hugely successful and it is very entertaining. But the problem is that people are confusing TV with reality. It won't change - next year there will be something even more graphic and violent. It's a tough and competitive business and people seem to expect more and more each year. My parents used to talk of a much simpler, naive world when they were growing-up. I think my childhood was pretty simple compared to what my children deal with now. What will our society be like for their kids?
People might say 'what do you expect from a bleeding heart liberal magazine like The New Yorker saying that torture isn't acceptable!' My feeling is that sometimes the government and its servants gets things wrong, and if I am somehow on the receiving end of whatever it is then I want those laws to exist and be enforced.
And if, somehow, they end-up wanting to torture me for some information vital to national security, hey, save the time, I'll tell them anything!
Rick Clise
My dear wife brought me some fresh reading material from the local library, and one gem was a copy of The New Yorker magazine (19 & 26 February - 'The Anniversary Issue'). I read 'The New Yorker' about once a year and used to puzzle about the cartoons - they were too esoteric for my simple tastes!
This issue is excellent!
Jane Mayer writes in her 'Letter from Hollywood' column this issue about the television show '24' in her article 'Whatever it Takes' , how the number of acts of fictionalised torture on TV has increased hugely; how these acts no longer show 'the bad guys' torturing 'the good guys' but more often than not it is the other way around; and how these TV shows influence the people who are in contact with people who could actually be tortured.
Beth and I used to be addicted to watching '24' and we bought several of the series on DVD to watch it. We've given-up watching it though - stupid local programming has it airing way too late for us to watch, but more importantly how many times can we watch Jack Bauer save the US of A from (yet another) nuclear or bio weapons attack, killing nearly all the bad guys he comes in contact with then walking away with nary a scratch to show for it. Perhaps, I don't know, a bit 'repetitive'?
Back to the real world. Torture is illegal. The United States Senate ratified The United Nations Convention Against Torture, declaring it illegal, specifically with 'no exceptional circumstances, whatsoever, whether a state of war or a threat of war, internal political instability or any other public emergency, may be invoked as a justification of torture.'
Mayer writes that the dean of the US Military Academy at West Point, Army Brigadier General Patrick Finnegan, and three of the most experienced interrogators from the US military and FBI, flew to California to meet with the '24' creative team. Mayer wrote that they were concerned by the growing number of West Point cadets who would say to General Finnegan in his West Point 'laws of war' course, 'If torture is wrong, what about '24'?' The General continues, 'The disturbing thing is that although torture may cause Jack Bauer some angst, it is always the patriotic thing to do.'
From what we see on '24' if you are running out of time and need some intel then it's alright to do a little torturing in the name of the bigger issue. But in the real world, apparently, physical torture doesn't actually work - one of the three experts at the meeting with the '24' team was a guy who had been an Army interrogator in Iraq. He said that people watched episodes of '24' then went on duty in the interrogation booth and did the same things that they had seen on '24'.
This former interrogator said that 'in Iraq, I never saw pain produce intelligence...' Some people, he said, 'gave confessions' but what they told was what was already known. It never opened up a stream of new information.'
Not surprisingly, the horrible attacks of 9/11 seemed to be a catalyst for the loosening of morals and legal compliance regarding the laws barring torture, as depicted on TV. Before 9/11, Mayer writes, 'fewer than four acts of torture appeared on prime-time television each year... [while] now there are more than a hundred' according to Human Rights First.
I like a good TV show. '24' has been hugely successful and it is very entertaining. But the problem is that people are confusing TV with reality. It won't change - next year there will be something even more graphic and violent. It's a tough and competitive business and people seem to expect more and more each year. My parents used to talk of a much simpler, naive world when they were growing-up. I think my childhood was pretty simple compared to what my children deal with now. What will our society be like for their kids?
People might say 'what do you expect from a bleeding heart liberal magazine like The New Yorker saying that torture isn't acceptable!' My feeling is that sometimes the government and its servants gets things wrong, and if I am somehow on the receiving end of whatever it is then I want those laws to exist and be enforced.
And if, somehow, they end-up wanting to torture me for some information vital to national security, hey, save the time, I'll tell them anything!
Rick Clise
posted by Rick's Rambles at 7:57 PM
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