TV Torture's Toxic Toll

[demobabe]

A BUZZFLASH GUEST CONTRIBUTION
by Peter Michaelson

Public exposure to scenes of torture on TV is the psychological equivalent of smoking cigarettes or eating mercury-tainted fish. Whether it's intentional or not, TV torture serves as a method of indoctrination. It disguises an especially degenerate form of brutality as a necessary evil to protect national security. In the process, our collective mental health is undergoing shock treatment.

American "hero" Jack Bauer's momentary reluctance to torture the alleged terrorists on Fox's hit TV show "24" is touching. Obviously, the good guy can't be as bad as the bad guy who inflicts pain unhesitatingly. The show's breathless viewers patiently endure Bauer's fleeting scruples to get to the good part-the sado-masochistic thrill of peeping at talented actors who make torture seem very realistic.

Viewers have a great cover-up for getting their jollies in such a degenerate way: A suitcase nuke will detonate in Los Angeles if Jack doesn't place a clear plastic baggie over the terrorist's head and start to suffocate him. If viewers were honest with themselves, they would say after the show: "I don't know why I watch this stuff, but those torture scenes are sure the best parts." We can anticipate more "best parts" because TV torture's contamination of the airwaves is up 600 percent since 9/11, according to the Parents Television Council.

Hollywood denies it, of course, saying that TV torture is a harmless dramatic device. But when Rush Limbaugh rushes to Hollywood's defense, proclaiming, "It's just a TV show - Get a grip," we know it's time for a full investigation. Of course, the right wing has for decades been critical of Hollywood movies that have featured the dramatic devices of sex, profanity, and violence. But innocently torturing evil people is apparently family entertainment. According to conservative talk show host Laura Ingraham, it's also a patriotic way to participate in the war effort. As she told Bill O'Reilly: "The average American out there loves the show '24.' OK? They love Jack Bauer. They love '24.' In my mind ,that's close to a national referendum that it's OK to use tough tactics against high-level Al Qaeda operatives as we're going to get."

More here: http://www.buzzflash.com/articles/contributors/866

[ChicagoRonin]

1. Why is this new?

Macho sadism has long been part of Hollywood:
1) Clint Eastwood stepping on the wounded leg of the serial killer to extract information in the original "Dirty Harry".
2) In "Robocop", the title character repeatedly throws a felon through a series of glass windows in anger.
3) Harrison Ford deliberately shooting an IRA terrorist in the knee sympathizer in "Patriot Games" and then threatening to shoot the other one.

etc. etc.

[derby378]

2. It's called "frog-boiling"

The device has been used by Al Gore and fundamentalist preachers alike. You take a frog and put him in a pot filled with boiling water, he'll jump out of the pot right away. Put that frog in a pot of lukewarm water, and he's fine and comfy. But set the pot on the stove, turn on the burner, and raise the heat in small increments, and the frog will just sit there, his body acclamating to the rising temperature even when it reaches the danger zone. But the frog will just sit there in the soon-to-be boiling water until...

Until...

Until he's rescued from the pot and set down on a cool and comfy lily pad.

Which is more or less what the American TV viewer needs right now - an escape from the increasingly boiling waters of mind-numbing TV programming.

[pscot]

3. Utterly fucking depraved

The banality of evil woven into our daily entertainment by the "family values" folks at Faux.

[Jonathan50]

4. Even West Point senior cadets are being effected by torture on the screen

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2007/2/13/134646/556

Finnegan, who is a lawyer, has for a number of years taught a course on the laws of war to West Point seniors—cadets who would soon be commanders in the battlefields of Iraq and Afghanistan. He always tries, he said, to get his students to sort out not just what is legal but what is right. However, it had become increasingly hard to convince some cadets that America had to respect the rule of law and human rights, even when terrorists did not. One reason for the growing resistance, he suggested, was misperceptions spread by "24," which was exceptionally popular with his students. As he told me, "The kids see it, and say, ‘If torture is wrong, what about "24"?’

[demobabe]

5. Thanks for posting that article.

Great analysis... thank you.

[demobabe]

6. kick

:kick:

[fishwax]

7. a buzzflash article citing the Parents Television Council

That's ironic.

If viewers were honest with themselves, they would say after the show: "I don't know why I watch this stuff, but those torture scenes are sure the best parts."
That, on the other hand, is just BS.

[demobabe]

8. Did you read the article?

Otherwise, I'm not sure I understand what you're saying...

[fishwax]

9. Sure I read the article. I'm simply saying that

first: it's ironic that a Buzzflash article would cite the right-wing Parents Television Council.

second: the particular quote I highlighted, implying that those who watch 24 do so primarily because they get off on the torture scenes, was BS.

I'm not sure what to clarify, but I can try :)

[demobabe]

11. I see what you're saying.

But isn't it more ironic that a right-wing group would engage in a campaign against 24, a show with ideals that might support the right wing? ;)

Honestly, I have no idea why people watch 24. I don't... haven't ever. So it might be a great show I'm missing. But it IS true that people are essentially "getting off" - or deriving some pleasure from the torture scenes, otherwise, they'd turn it off. Whether or not it's anybody's prime reason for watching, promoting violence on TV does indeed send a message into the culture that violent behavior is okay. That's just the way it works. It really doesn't matter WHY people are watching 24. This is what is being installed into our culture.

I worked for newspapers for a long time, and they had a policy not to publish any news about bomb threats. Reason? It promoted more bomb threats.

Strangely, media act as a "validity system" - because if it's good enough to be on TV, radio, or in the newspaper, then it's been judged as being okay by somebody. When I drew cartoons, sometimes I'd come up with a SUPER GREAT idea, and then it would occur to me that I'd seen it somewhere else before and I'd throw it out. It wasn't that my ideas weren't as good, it was just that the GREAT idea stuck in my mind because it had already been validated. I've had plenty great ideas and people have come back and told me my own jokes (unknowing I wrote them) because they too had been validated in print.

The real main point of the article was about this torture mindset seeping into the culture and how we're vulnerable because we're not in touch with our own humanity:

"Our intrigue with the evil of torture exposes a great moral and psychological weakness of ours. This weakness consists of us not quite knowing who we are. We haven't fully embraced our humanity. This is remedied when each of us, one by one, does our part to become fully human."

[fishwax]

12. yeah, that's ironic too

:rofl:

Of course, I'm not convinced the show is as right-wing as some people say it is, so who knows.

But it IS true that people are essentially "getting off" - or deriving some pleasure from the torture scenes, otherwise, they'd turn it off.
Or, perhaps, the inverse of Peter Michaelson's claim is true, and many viewers put up with the torture scenes to get to other parts of the show :shrug:

Anyway, the BS assertions about the psychology of viewers in the first half of the article (and the specific bit that I quoted was but one example) frankly poisoned much of his analysis for me. And I understand the concerns about violence on TV and in our culture, but it certainly need not be the case that all violent texts embrace or reinforce the violence in the culture, and I think the installation of these values in our culture is much less simple in real life than it is in his analysis. I think it's much more of a negotiation, both at the individual and cultural level.

[ripken08]

10. Im guilty

the only person that can torture anybody in the entire world is Jack Bauer.