
The Rise and Rise of Television Torture - aychedee
http://www.interpretthis.org/2014/01/05/the-rise-and-rise-of-television-torture
======
sentenza
There 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.

~~~
copx
I grew up watching Star Trek: TNG and that episode is something to remember
indeed. It makes a strong rational and moral case against torture. While
modern American TV shows do indeed do the opposite.

I think I know the reason for this. Gene Roddenberry was a WW2 veteran i.e.
the Geneva Conventions had a personal relevance to him. In the wars of the
past you had to assume that many of your own guys would be captured by the
enemy.. and that you might end up being one of them. In that scenario a strong
international condemnation of torture suddenly looks way more appealing. In
contrast, America's modern "wars" (I do not think these one-sided affairs
deserve that name) do not lead to a noticeable number of American POWs. And
you no longer have to worry about being drafted yourself either.

I think the foundation of the acceptance of torture in contemporary America is
the firm conviction of the supporters that they will never be at the receiving
end.

This type of thinking is unfortunately widespread among humans everywhere. It
is never moral and often unwise to support a system you would not support if
you did not have a favorable position within it.

~~~
salient
> In contrast, America's modern "wars" (I do not think these one-sided affairs
> deserve that name)

That's a great point. America doesn't do wars anymore. They do conquests. And
the American public at large seems perfectly fine with it (or they wouldn't
allow it).

~~~
DougWebb
I wouldn't say that _the American public at large seems perfectly fine with it
(or they wouldn 't allow it.)_ That's a very broad brush you're painting with.
A large proportion, probably a majority, don't like what's being done with our
military. We tried to get Bush Jr out of office after his first term, and that
was a very close election with just as much evidence of vote tampering as the
his first election. Obama was overwhelmingly elected because everything
thought he would do things differently and restore our standing in the world,
but that's turned out not to be the case. His reelection was much closer, and
he probably only won because his opponents were so weak.

After all these years, I think the American public has largely given up on
their votes making any difference whatsoever; President, Senate, House of
Representatives, they mostly all do whatever their financiers want once
they're elected, public opinion be damned.

Anyone want to come in and liberate us from our corrupt government? (I was
going to say tyrannical, but I don't want to devalue that word; we're not
there yet.)

~~~
eli_gottlieb
There's been a joke for a few years: the USA needs to invade America, bringing
freedom, providing democracy, constructing infrastructure, and creating jobs.

------
Dove
I 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
Good 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.

~~~
saraid216
Then we should take it off the list.

~~~
shitlord
No, it's incredibly entertaining.

------
rayiner
I 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
I 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?).

------
minikites
A similar issue came up when _24_ was popular:

[http://www.theatlantic.com/daily-
dish/archive/2007/06/scalia...](http://www.theatlantic.com/daily-
dish/archive/2007/06/scalia-and-torture/227548/)

\---

"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.

\---

~~~
Yver
_24_ 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.

~~~
aychedee
I'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.

------
jaimebuelta
An 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)

~~~
humanrebar
Are you saying American fiction overplays how effective violence is compared
to other options?

Because it's clear (and you may be acknowledging) that violence is the best
option in at least some circumstances. Otherwise, prisons, soldiers, and
police officers wouldn't be necessary.

~~~
jaimebuelta
Yes, my perception is that, in general, in American fiction, the way to go is
with a violent solution! (Again, that's makes great spectacular movies, don't
get me wrong, and it's a general thing compared with movies from elsewhere,
not something that happens all the time)

For example, if you want to stop a meteorite hitting Earth, do not use rockets
attached to its surface, explode a huge nuclear bomb!

If you have to start the nucleus rotation, do not make any chemical reaction
or engineering project, just explode a huge nuclear bomb!

If you are a multibillionaire that wants to solve crime, just personally punch
criminals in the face!

And we're talking about fiction, not real life. I'm ok with spectacular, but I
can't help noticing it :-P

~~~
zeidrich
Violence is harming a person or living thing.

Blowing inanimate things up is just physics.

~~~
andrewflnr
Eh, true. But on a basic level, with empathy turned down (and it is, after all
it's just a show and no one is _really_ getting hurt), it's basically the same
thing. "Other people" can just be meat that's in the way.

------
zhaphod
People 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
Sometimes 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.

~~~
wmeredith
This is a popular fallacy for supporting torture, but there are a couple
things wrong with it.

Firstly, the most likely outcome of torture is false information and multiple
sources from the CIA to the FBI and various levels of rank[1] have said that
one of the most problematic issues with torture based intel is the extreme
amount of time it takes to verify anything because most of it is made up. So
in a ticking time bomb scenario, torturing someone you think has information
may make you FEEL better, but it is a waste of time (which, by default, is in
short supply).

Secondly, and perhaps more importantly amongst this crowd, the logic doesn't
work. Statistically speaking, ticking time bomb situations do not actually
occur in real life and basing institutionalized acceptance of torture on a
fantasy what if scenario is intellectual fraud. Georgetown law's David Luban
has an excellent 2005 essay "Liberalism Torture and the Ticking Bomb"[2] that
takes a deep dive into the psychology behind this argument as well as the
real-world applications. It's linked further down in these comments by
@elipsey[3].

[1] [http://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/4498/does-
tortur...](http://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/4498/does-torture-work-
well-as-an-interrogation-technique)

[2]
[http://scholarship.law.georgetown.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?ar...](http://scholarship.law.georgetown.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1163&context=facpub)

[3]
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7017729](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7017729)

~~~
yen223
To be honest, I'm not comfortable with the 'torture is bad because it is
ineffective' argument, because it sidesteps the larger moral issue.

For the sake of argument: if it turns out that slicing off a man's left hand
will always yield 100% verifiable information, should we still be doing it? My
answer to that is still going to be no. The effectiveness of torture is
besides the point.

~~~
dragonwriter
> To be honest, I'm not comfortable with the 'torture is bad because it is
> ineffective' argument, because it sidesteps the larger moral issue.

I, on the other hand, favor it _because_ it sidesteps the moral issue and
presents what is, in fact, a strong and compelling argument against torture
that does not rely on first principles that are demonstrably not held by those
who would advocate for torture in the first place.

The _fact_ that torture is wasteful _even if_ you ignore any moral
considerations is a lot more powerful of an argument against it than one which
requires the audience to accept that "torture is wrong" is true as a matter of
moral first principles, no matter how much one might wish that the rest of the
population would accept that moral principle.

------
securingsincity
I 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
Yeah. 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).

------
memracom
The 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.

------
elipsey
This 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?ar...](http://scholarship.law.georgetown.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1163&context=facpub)

~~~
zhaphod
I 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_interro...](http://www.cgu.edu/pdffiles/sbos/costanzo_effects_of_interrogation.pdf).

~~~
elipsey
Thank 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
Empirical 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.

------
Touche
Very 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
"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
You 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.

~~~
VLM
You'd need to analyze glorification of torture across "everything" then. Also
TV viewership hours, as reported by guys trying to sell commercial airtime,
hasn't collapsed by a factor of 10 yet.

Another point of argument is TV is "free" and "omnipresent" so another way to
phrase it, is in a country of 314 million people an excellent way to repel
over 99% of the population from something widely available and free is to
glorify torture.

Lets try a comparison. To remove financial concerns, as a thought experiment a
nationwide burger chain could hand out free hamburgers to everyone who wants
one. Then you could draw conclusions about levels of vegetarianism/veganism
and such that would be untainted by economic concerns. I think this would be
insanely popular. So here's a real world experiment in the same tradition, in
providing something free to anyone who wants it, and in excess of 99% of the
population rejects it, therefore it must somehow in a twisted logic define the
values of a culture. Huh?

Their moral compass is right and well spoken, their writing style is pretty
good, its just their reasoning and data gathering / reporting is awful. Their
conclusion might even accidentally be correct, although not for the reasons
they propose. As a philosophy paper they'd get an "A", journalism class would
probably give them a "B" or so, but as a hard science lab notebook or paper
they'd be skating along the "F" level.

Infotainment/Propaganda, unfortunately. Its too bad, its an interesting topic,
and their hearts appear to be in the right place.

------
pasbesoin
"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...

------
dobbsbob
Torture 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.

~~~
tzs
The 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.

------
tehwalrus
I 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/B...](http://www.amazon.co.uk/Firefly-The-Complete-Series-
DVD/dp/B0001B3YTM) (check out, in similar items, the film Serenity, which
rounds off the plotlines from the series nicely.)

~~~
maxerickson
Mal throws a henchman through an engine. The next guy talks without much
bother.

~~~
tehwalrus
Killing 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..."

------
gojomo
I 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.

------
zavulon
I 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
I 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.

~~~
mercer
I felt The Shield dealt with it very well though, especially the developments
in the final episodes. We're supposed to hate all the people in the story that
torture, and the 'wrong' of empathizing with them is spelled out in the end
(in a much better way, I feel, than The Sopranos did).

In fact, I remember being somewhat shocked by Ryan's follow-up, "The Unit",
which seemed much more pro-violence and torture (perhaps through some
influence of David Mamet).

------
InclinedPlane
Casual, 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
Ah, 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
No. It has always been plausible.

Just perhaps not a _SWAT_ team, specifically.

------
nickthemagicman
I'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.

~~~
jaimebuelta
The 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_f...](http://comicbookmovie.com/images/users/uploads/27306/JOKER_first_appearance_052111.jpg)

~~~
nickthemagicman
That's interesting. I guess what I'm noticing is not so much the sinister
intentions but the sort of gruesome nature with which it's portrayed these
days. The joker has always been a sinister agent of chaos that kills people
indiscriminately. But the Heath Ledger joker surgically implanted a bomb
inside of a guy. He sliced peoples faces into smiley faces. That's stuff
straight out of the movie Saw. The most the Jack Nicholson joker did was
squirt poison gas out of the flower on his jacket or explode people. They just
die, and that's that, nothing that gruesome.

------
pessimizer
Real 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
> 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
>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.

------
donpdonp
The 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.

~~~
lightbritefight
There 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.

------
Bulkington
Police 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.

------
blah32497
The 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.

------
amagumori
it'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
> 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.

------
RankingMember
The 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
I 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.

------
atmosx
It'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
A man picks the side of violence, and is destroyed by it. Works better if you
assume the final episode was a dream

~~~
scarmig
It's not like picking the side of violence and being destroyed by it is some
weird thing no one could expect...

------
smokey_the_bear
Torture 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?

------
radley
The 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
I 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
The 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.

------
squozzer
The 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.

------
thenomad
I'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.

------
valarauca1
The article is interesting, but what caught my eye more is the possibly
spoofed DNSSEC cert.

~~~
atmosx
Oh, so I am not the only one :-)

------
sigzero
"Are you not entertained!?" \- That is what drives it. People need more and
more.

------
elwell
I think every episode of "24" has at least one instance of torture.

------
n2j3
Considering 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.

------
Grue3
Yeah, and videogames cause people to murder. What a load of bullshit.

------
michaelochurch
Here'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.

------
carsongross
Yes, but who are we to judge?

Who, indeed.

------
Shivetya
I 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
I 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.

