Abstract
The representation of torture, particularly since 2001, has raised a series of ethical questions for those who would critique this practice. This anthology, Screening Torture: Media Representations of State Terror and Political Domination, attempts to grapple with some of those questions and, for the most part, does so in a thoughtful, insightful and compelling manner. In the introduction, the editors make the point that popular culture is just one way that many have attempted to ‘make sense of the practice’ of torture, adding that, for many, ‘torture has exerted a “dark fascination” ’ (p. 8). To write about torture invites controversy, but as the editors note, ‘to invite neutrality is to court indifference’ (p. 12).
The anthology is divided into four parts, and 13 chapters. Beginning with Part I, ‘Torture and Implications of Masculinity’, David Danzig’s ‘Countering the Jack Bauer effect: An examination of how to limit the influence of TV’s most popular, and most brutal hero’, recounts his journey in the coproduction of an anti-torture documentary film entitled Primetime Torture. Danzig argues that the techniques of torture illustrated regularly on the US television drama 24 were making their way into interrogation rooms as interrogators copied Jack Bauer’s brutal, but always effective, methods. This despite the constant refrain from experienced interrogators that torture never produces actionable intelligence. Ultimately, however, Danzig places too much responsibility on the entertainment industry at the expense of eliding structural and policy formations that make possible (even banal) the unthinkable. Lee Quinby’s chapter, ‘Mel Gibson’s tortured heroes: From the symbolic function of blood to spectacles of pain’, argues that the pervasive perception of Mel Gibson’s films (Braveheart, The Passion of the Christ,and Apocalypto) as glamorizing torture derives, in part, from the films morphing with the publicity of Gibson’s own well-publicized racist and sexist behaviour. Quinby’s argument is that Gibson’s films indict state-sponsored torture, while simultaneously and problematically suggesting a man is made a hero through the endurance of extreme pain and suffering. In an excellent companion chapter to Quinby’s, ‘It’s a perfect world: Torture, confession, and sacrifice’, Michael Flynn and Fabiola F Salek examine the use of torture by heroic protagonists in the films Man on Fire, Taken and Unthinkable. One of the central arguments is that torture in these films serves a restorative function for their broken heroes. The ‘ “heroes” in these films have transformed themselves into bloodthirsty predators and have little patience for weak punishments; they want their enemies to suffer and die’ (p. 63). The implication, then, is that violence in general, and torture specifically, makes the man.
Part II, ‘Torture and the Sadomasochistic Impulse’, offers a mix of historical review and films to examine the erotic impulses in some representations of torture. The section opens with what is, arguably, not the strongest chapter. In ‘Lust, Caution: Torture, sex, and passion in Chinese cinema’, Chris Berry examines Ang Lee’s 2007 film, which portrays a torturer but no torture. Berry argues that a German shepherd dog, shown only in the opening credits and in a quick cut away shot during an extended sex scene between the two main characters, embodies torture. From there, the author takes the reader on a long detour to make a laborious (though rather uncontroversial) argument for why the popularity of the film in China divides along generational lines. Still, after reading the chapter several times, I was left with the question: And the dog is relevant how …? This questionable opening chapter, however, is followed by three very strong chapters. In ‘The art of photogenic torture’, Phil Carney focuses primarily on the 1960 cult classic Peeping Tom. This film tells the tale of psychotic filmmaker, Mark, who films his murders, stabbing his victims with a specially designed leg of his tripod, and equips his camera with a mirror so that the victim can watch herself die. Carney critiques a psychoanalytic approach to the film arguing that it ‘universalizes when it should be much more specific and situated’ (p. 102). Instead, Carney urges a sociohistorical approach to ‘photogenic torture’ that acknowledges that film speaks to the anxieties of the time and place, and thus operates within a specific sociocultural matrix that makes possible the ‘rituals of torture’ (p. 105).
In ‘Beyond Susan Sontag: The seduction of psychological torture’, Alfred W McCoy offers a historical survey of the ‘erotic dimensions in a distinctively American form of psychological torture that has been recently refined, under the exigencies of the war on terror, to exploit cultural and, above all, sexual sensitivities’ (p. 111). Of interest to readers will be McCoy’s persuasive analysis of the homoerotic imagery suggested in particular torture scenes in the popular series 24, as well as in the film Casino Royale of the James Bond franchise. In ‘Stanley Kubrick’s A Clockwork Orange as art against torture’, Carolyn Strange considers the divergent reception of Kubrick’s classic film, namely, that it both glorifies torture and serves as an indictment of state-sponsored torture. When it comes to popular culture representations of torturers, Strange asks an important question: ‘Do sympathetic depictions of tortured perpetrators endorse their actions?’ (p. 154). For some, particularly with the initial release of the film, the crimes of Alex and the ‘droogs’ are themselves torture for the viewer to witness. But, Strange argues, that new viewers, with the re-release of A Clockwork Orange in 1999, see a different film where Alex’s incarceration and torture by the state represent the most disturbing elements of the narrative. Ultimately, Strange notes, film texts work alongside journalism and human rights discourses ‘in questioning the conduct of coalition partners in the war on terror [and] they do not need to be new films or remakes to do so’ (p. 159).
Part III, ‘Confronting the Legacies of Torture and State Terror’, represents a departure from the rest of the anthology in shifting attention from the western war on terror to other conflicts. In ‘Accorded a place in the design: Torture in postapartheid cinema’, Elizabeth Swanson Goldberg juxtaposes US filmic versions of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC), with South African films. Goldberg’s critique of the US films is that they ‘consistently focus on the TRC as a spectacular … vehicle for redemption, forgiveness, and (re)conciliation’ (p. 168). The South African films, on the other hand, redirect attention from the state-sponsored TRC, and focus instead on ‘other individual or communal spaces: the home, the workplace, schools, and burial grounds and other sacred memorial spaces’ (p. 168). The US films’ focus upon and valorization of the TRC ‘as a model vehicle for addressing a violently racist past’, Goldberg suggests, ‘may reveal more about the avoidance in the U.S. social imaginary of its own history’ (p. 171), where past collective racist crimes are redeemed, reconciled and forgiven ‘even as they remain largely unconfessed’ (p. 171). In ‘Confessing without regret: An Israeli film genre’, Livia Alexander examines the genre of Israeli confessional films clustering around the first and second intifadas. Alexander’s analysis suggests that these filmic depictions of the Israeli torturers’ anguish do little to disturb the Zionist ideologies that make oppression of the Palestinians possible in the first place. With few exceptions, Alexander notes that the confessional genre’s ‘discourse is internal, aimed in most instances … at healing and restoring to Israeli society its moral image of itself, but also international, as Israel seeks to maintain its image as “the only democracy in the Middle East” in the face of growing international criticism’ (p. 212).
Part IV, ‘Torture and the Shortcomings of Film’, brings the anthology to a close. In ‘Movies of modern torture as convenient truths’, Darius Rejali argues that certain filmic representations of torture perpetuate the ‘convenient truths’ that modern torture is effective, and that its source is state-sponsored evil. He also contradicts the common view that torture is the product of organized, scientific method as opposed to disorganized, low-tech, undisciplined behaviour. Faisal Devji’s theoretically dense chapter, ‘Torture at the limit of politics’, argues that the representation of torture, such as the highly circulated Abu Ghraib photographs, disturbs the logic and rationality of the state, thus requiring its denial and invisibility. In ‘Doing torture in film: Confronting ambiguity and ambivalence’, Marnia Lazreg’s central focus is three films that bring into relief the problem of how filmmakers should represent torture. Lazreg’s central critique of the 1965 film The Battle of Algiers and the 2008 documentary Standard Operating Procedure is that they erase the victims of torture and elide the effects of torture on entire communities. Lazreg prefers the 2007 documentary Taxi to the Darkside for ‘portray[ing] the effects of torture on its victims … delineat[ing] the process by which torture evolves … [and] shed[ding] light on the constellation of antecedents that give torture its ultimately unreliable as well as arbitrary character’ (p. 266).
Finally, in ‘Documenting the documentaries on Abu Ghraib: Facts versus distortion’, Stjepan G Mestrovic takes issue with the representations of the convicted soldiers at Abu Ghraib in the documentaries Standard Operating Procedure and Ghosts of Abu Ghraib. Mestrovic frames his contribution to this volume in a way that may detract from the usefulness of his arguments. As an expert witness for the defence of several of the soldiers charged with abuse at Abu Ghraib, Mestrovic takes a rather defensive position at the outset claiming that ‘a reader may suspect that my advocacy for some of the soldiers may cloud my judgment or introduce bias into this discussion’ (p. 274). He then proceeds with a rather strange, somewhat petulant diatribe against those whom he labels as ‘captains of the culture industry’ (in this case the filmmakers Errol Morris and Rory Kennedy), for their failure to include him in their respective films. Most disturbing for me when reading this chapter is Mestrovic’s conviction of his own possession of the ‘truth’ about the events of Abu Ghraib that he obtained through his interactions with the accused soldiers, and which, he argues, the filmmakers were not privy to. But equally disturbing to some readers will be Mestrovic’s erasure of the victims of the abuses of Abu Ghraib and his tendency to mitigate the actions of the abusers through appeals to their PTSD. Nonetheless, this strange and rather weak conclusion to the volume should not dissuade interested readers. Flynn and Salek have gathered together a collection of essays that will have wide appeal to communication scholars, film scholars and graduate students, particularly those who see academia and political practice as concomitant.