{"id":19880,"date":"2015-05-18T12:58:57","date_gmt":"2015-05-18T19:58:57","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/?p=19880"},"modified":"2015-05-18T16:44:22","modified_gmt":"2015-05-18T23:44:22","slug":"enough-with-the-torture-scenes-please","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/?p=19880","title":{"rendered":"Enough with the torture scenes, please"},"content":{"rendered":"

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A scene from “Captain America: The Winter Soldier,” in which Captain America and Black Widow are trying to get information from a bad guy:<\/p>\n

Jasper Sitwell: Is this little display meant to insinuate that you’re gonna throw me off the roof? Because it’s really not your style, Rogers.<\/p>\n

Steve Rogers: You’re right. It’s not. It’s hers.<\/p>\n

[Natasha kicks Sitwell off the roof]<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

In context, it’s a really funny scene. Don’t worry, they didn’t really kill Sitwell. ((Later on Sitwell does get murdered by a villain – but the villain in question is VERY good-looking and on a redemption narrative arc, so that’s okay too, I guess.)) Cap’s pal The Falcon was below, waiting to fly up and catch Sitwell and throw him back down onto the roof. Then Sitwell talks, because in the superhero genre torture always works<\/a> (at least, it does when the good guys torture). ((Honorable exception: The Dark Knight<\/em>, a movie in which Batman tortures two bad guys, and it doesn’t work either time. Unlike Frank Miller’s Dark Knight<\/em> graphic novel, in which torture works. ))<\/p>\n

Colin Smith, in an excellent post about a torture scene in a Spider-Man comic<\/a>, describes the elements of a typical superhero torture scene:<\/p>\n

6.) A situation in which the torture’s been designed to be gruesomely compelling for the reader, because torture is, as [the writer] amongst many others obviously believes, an entertainment in itself.<\/p>\n

7.) The clear suggestion that the heroic torturers are never sadists, incompetent or misguided, let alone evil.<\/p>\n

8.) Information gained from the torture leads to decisive action which saves the day, because the torture, of course, always works and always works in an entirely productive fashion which allows the sins involved to be entirely eclipsed by the thought of all the children and puppies who’ve been protected.<\/p>\n

9.) An outcome which either ignores any suggestion that the victim of the torture will suffer any lasting ill-effects or which actively implies that they won’t.<\/p>\n

10.) The sense that the hero or heroes who sanction and commit the torture will themselves suffer no lasting, dehumanising effects from their behaviour beyond a noble air of angst earned through the suffering which they – and not their victims – underwent as a result of the cutting and poking and burning and so on.<\/p>\n

11.) The clear sense that torture is something which real heroes rise to, and which marks the truly super-heroic superhero as a figure willing and able to do anything in order to save the world once again.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Torture has been routinely used by “dark” superhero characters like Batman and Daredevil for so long – I’m really enjoying the Netflix Daredevil series, but I think this show uses torture even more than “24” did – it’s become normalized. By now, “light” superhero characters like Spider-Man and Captain America both use torture, and it’s seldom questioned. (Although it’s odd that in both those examples, the actual physical torturing was done by a “dark” female friend of the male hero, rather than by the male hero himself.)<\/p>\n

I accept that in some genres, heroic characters do things that would be horrible in real life (like, you know, being a vigilante), and often that’s part of the fun. But the routine, fruitful use of torture by good guys in pop media – and not only in superhero films – worries me, because the typical American voter mainly learns about torture from pop culture, and the view of torture pop culture pushes is horrifying. If pop culture wasn’t so relentlessly pro-torture, would the American public be so quick to accept it when our government tortures?<\/p>\n

\"wonderella-torture\"<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A scene from “Captain America: The Winter Soldier,” in which Captain America and Black Widow are trying to get information from a bad guy: Jasper Sitwell: Is this little display meant to insinuate that you’re gonna throw me off the … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[62],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-19880","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-popular-and-unpopular-culture"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19880","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=19880"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19880\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":19888,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19880\/revisions\/19888"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=19880"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=19880"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=19880"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}