TV torture: My column for New York magazine
New York magazine just published a column I wrote about the omnipresence of torture in today's hit spy shows -- and how it eerily mirrors the real-life debate over the US's use of torture. Here are the first two paragraphs:
In the season opener of the spy show Alias, the heroine, Sydney Bristow, was captured and, in the delicate argot of espionage, “interrogated.” The villain shackled her to a chair, strapped a gas mask on her face, and hooked it up to a hose. Then he filled the mask with water—drowning her on dry land as she writhed helplessly.
It was a chilling scene, and not simply because of the violence itself. I realized I was watching a variant of “waterboarding,” the near-drowning torture the CIA has reportedly used on suspected terrorist detainees. I’d read about it in coverage of the Guantánamo hearings that very same morning. And that was hardly the first time a spy show had mimicked a real-life scandal. For the past three years, shows like Alias, 24, and MI-5 have provided a perverse mirror of the real-life response to terror: They’ve reflected, and sometimes eerily predicted, the rise of torture as a government policy.
You can read the rest of the piece online here! Or, bien sur, if you live in New York, you can rush right now to the newsstands and get a copy. Heh.
Posted by Clive Thompson at January 31, 2005 12:15 PM
Trackback Pings
TrackBack URL for this entry: http://www.collisiondetection.net/mt3/mt-tb.cgi/1085
Clive, You may not see this comment because it is at the bottom of your current post pile home page. But, I was wondering what your thinking was on this replay of disturbing reality on TV does, or what entertainting purpose it serves.
I can't say I am entirely against it, but do you think that by replaying something so shocking or extreme, we are trying to normalize it?
I have been disturbed not necessarily by depictions of torture, but I have been seeing a lot of high drama shows depicting or getting really close to depicting pedophilia. This would seem to be in light of various scandals around the US.
It seems that whatever is popular (or sells a lot?) in the news media is carbon copied in drama entertainment. Are there diminishing returns in the economy of shock? I believe there may be some built-in human decency clauses, but because we are so flexible, these foundational mores are subject to change.
On another type of re-enactment, does "Hotel Rwanda" (admittedly I haven't seen it) achieve something other than entertainment for us? Does it absolve us virtually by allowing us to participate --in our way--in the sufferings of genocide? Or is the event just an inspirational story, fodder for movie-makers who need to make a movie.
I am confused. I just read Baudrillard's "The Gulf War Did Not Take Place", so you can easily see where I am coming from above. But ever since I saw the crappy Bruce Willis movie "Tears of the Sun", I have been thinking about what the depiction of and fictionalizing of atrocities (usually a "happy" or cathartic ending) does to us or does for us. As if Bruce Willis has absolved us of our crimes in Africa by being a badass.
Posted by: Alfred O. Cloutier at February 21, 2005 12:23 PM
Posted by: cctv switcher at March 12, 2005 5:45 PM
Post a comment
Clive, You may not see this comment because it is at the bottom of your current post pile home page. But, I was wondering what your thinking was on this replay of disturbing reality on TV does, or what entertainting purpose it serves.
I can't say I am entirely against it, but do you think that by replaying something so shocking or extreme, we are trying to normalize it?
I have been disturbed not necessarily by depictions of torture, but I have been seeing a lot of high drama shows depicting or getting really close to depicting pedophilia. This would seem to be in light of various scandals around the US.
It seems that whatever is popular (or sells a lot?) in the news media is carbon copied in drama entertainment. Are there diminishing returns in the economy of shock? I believe there may be some built-in human decency clauses, but because we are so flexible, these foundational mores are subject to change.
On another type of re-enactment, does "Hotel Rwanda" (admittedly I haven't seen it) achieve something other than entertainment for us? Does it absolve us virtually by allowing us to participate --in our way--in the sufferings of genocide? Or is the event just an inspirational story, fodder for movie-makers who need to make a movie.
I am confused. I just read Baudrillard's "The Gulf War Did Not Take Place", so you can easily see where I am coming from above. But ever since I saw the crappy Bruce Willis movie "Tears of the Sun", I have been thinking about what the depiction of and fictionalizing of atrocities (usually a "happy" or cathartic ending) does to us or does for us. As if Bruce Willis has absolved us of our crimes in Africa by being a badass.
Posted by: Alfred O. Cloutier at February 21, 2005 12:23 PM
cctv supplier croydon cctv distributor egypt live cctv cctv training vicon cctv cctv 4 cctv video camera cctv supplier digital cctv vicon cctv cctv installation varifocal cctv lens cctv tutorial cctv lens cctv dvr extreme cctv cctv surveillance system uk cctv digital recorder cctv cctv installation
Posted by: cctv switcher at March 12, 2005 5:45 PM