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Tuesday, March 15th, 2005

Torture Defined

With the revelations last week about still more abuse cases in Iraq and Afghanistan, the punditocracy is all abuzz with philosophical arguments about what does and doesn’t constitute “torture.” How do you know if you’re overreacting when you’re discussing these issues? Maybe it isn’t all that bad, really–maybe it’s more like a fraternity hazing or a college prank than “torture.” Who defines “torture” anyway?

Well, here’s a simple and easy litmus test: If you’ve seen a villain in a movie use a particular “interrogation technique” on the hero, that technique probably counts as torture. If during this “interrogation” the hero swears vengeance on the villain (or actually manages to kill him) for this treatment, then the technique certainly counts as torture.

Lessee how this holds up with some real world examples:
Strapping electrodes to prisoners genitals….First one that comes to mind is “Lethal Weapon (1)”: The Asian guy zapping Riggs with the car battery while Riggs howls and goes berserk. I’m sure there are others, but this one was even mentioned in reviews as “a long graphic torture scene” that some viewers might find disturbing. That should tell you something there. And that wasn’t even Mel’s genitals!

Waterboarding….Watch “The Long Kiss Goodnight”: Bad guy ties Gina Davis to the water wheel and turns her under water (cold water, from the looks of the wet-shirt scene…); he turns her up and quizzes her while she’s gasping and wheezing. Same technique, same effect (except for the see-through cotton dress).

Making the prisoner think he was going to die…Wow. Too numerous to mention. Check out pretty much any movie involving WW2 or Vietnam for this: lots of scenes of guards forcing prisoners to play Russian roulette, pretending to hang them, etc., as part of the “trying to break their spirit”–and even brainwash them.

Sodomizing prisoners with objects….You know, I can’t think of a movie that would get past the censors with even a hint of this kind of thing in it. This would probably fall into the “violent porn” category and never even make it out of a mainstream theater.

Seems like a pretty good benchmark to me.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, March 15th, 2005 at 11:12 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

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