This isn't normal, either

[selenak]

I had a couple of stressful weeks - not in a bad way, I hasten to add, but there was a lot of work to be done - so now and then, I dipped into popcorn tv, so to speak, which in my case was the first season of The Flash. (Having encountered the titular character in the Supergirl crossover episodes.) And by and large, it fulfilled its purpose of giving me some charming distraction. But one aspect, which isn't particular to The Flash, kept nagging at me, precisely because the more I think about it, there more it seems to be everywhere, and it's this: when exactly did it become normal that the heroes of the show - and not grimdark type of antiheroes,mind - keep various foes with supernatural abilities in tiny, tiny prison cells without any visible hygeniec facilities, and of course wiithout any preceding trial or any kind of legal justification?

I mean, there's always been Arkham Asylum (usually for villains to break out of), I know, but as far as I recall Gotham - which is meant to be a dark city - does go through the bother of legalities before sending people there. But when, on the Marvel side of the force, both in the comics and the film version of Civil War there were (still government run) prison sites for the meta humans off shore, this was meant to come across as disturbing. Otoh,Agents of SHIELDS is cool with its main characters keeping prisoners this way. (Not just if they have supernatural powers.) In Supergirl, our heroine works with a black ops organisation that imprisons various of her defeated foes this way, and in The Flash (first season), our hero puts his in the basement of his billionaire sponsor, essentially. Moving out of the franchise, the series Sanctuary has our heroine and her team offer both protection and imprisonment (depending on the supernatural being in question), and while that's at first done with some loose government connection, and later not so much, in neither case did I spot someone's lawyer ever visiting the facilities in question.

I mean, I get some of the Doylist logistics here: the creative team doesn't want to kill off every single villain (especially in canons where the main characters are supposed to be optimistic, humane heroes), and they've established that the villains in question have abilities that would allow them to break out of normal prisons easily. But even the X-Men movieverse, which isn't supposed to present a mutant-friendly environment, lets the government solve this in the case of a captured Magneto in both the original movies and the prequels by locking him up in a specially adjusted facility after a trial. (And everyone knows where he is.) Since the first round of X-Men movies predate 9/11 and the prequels are set earlier than them, I'm now wondering whether this current tendency to just accept that good guys have the right to deprive bad guys of any civil rights whatsoever - without this meaning to characterise the good guys in question as morally ambiguous, mind - is a by product of the post 9/11 development. Not that black ops sites weren't run before, in both pop culture and reality, but the people running them were usually not depicted as a bright and cheerful lot.

Yes, no one expects much realism from superhero shows. But. In season 2 of Babylon 5, one of my favourite episodes, In the Shadow of Zh'adum, has Garibaldi - who definitely sees himself as a law and order man and also is pro death penalty - quitting his job when Captain Sheridan insists on first arresting Morden and then keeping him locked up without being able to charge him with anything. Now, the audience knows that Sheridan's suspicions are indeed correct, Mr. Morden is Up To No Good, and does have information on what happened to Sheridan's wife (which is why Sheridan does this to begin with). How Sheridan acts in this episode is still depicted as wrong by the narrative, one of the few times the show does this to its leading man, and Garibaldi's reaction - the refusal to keep following an order he perceives as unlawful and unethical - as right. (That his aide Zack Allen then complies with Sheridan's order fits with Zack's development at this point of the show.) What I'm getting at here: it's entirely possible to make a sci fi show (or fantasy) and still recall, if said show isn't given an historical setting, that human rights aren't a privilege revoked when you're a villain. At least not if you simultanously want your heroes to come across as defenders of justice.

Comments

[yhlee]

i remember complaining that Arrow (much as i enjoyed the early seaosns) was basically a series about a serial killer and someone told me that Flash despite being sunnier on the surface had its own problems and the lack of due process for imprisoned criminals was exactly what they cited. :(

[selenak]

A huge plot point in the s1 finale is that isn't willing to let the villains die as casualties of the main antagonist's evil plan, and looks for a solution that allows him to defeat the Big Bad while saving the Little Bads. Which is all very commendable, except that at no point it seems to have occured to anyone either within the show or behind the Scenes that flinging them into these mini cells without any contact to the outside world except, presumably, when they get fed, qualifies as torture, and even if the cells were larger and more comfortable, it still would be trampling on the very idea of due process, what with our hero being Judge and Jury (and just not executioner because he's supposed to be the nice one).

[yhlee]

my cynical observation is that american tv/movies are extremely cavalier about torture in general, not just torture in an imprisonment context. i remember being horrified when i watched an episode of The Clone Wars (Star Wars) that had jedi masters torturing a "bad guy" on screen to get information, and this is a kids' show! but americans are so desensitized to torture, and are generally on board for "well, they're evil, this is okay if they're evil and we need their information / they need to be put away." :/ i agree with trobadora that this tendency got a lot worse post-9/11.

[watervole]

And of course, TV shows using torture to gain information increase public beliefs that torture always gets correct information (which it doesn't, as the number of false confessions given by prisoners to police forces clearly shows), which increases the risk of torture being used in real life.

[yhlee]

Yes, this. I remember reading a critical essay in media studies that quoted an actualfax US interrogator who instructed new interrogators who said that he had to UNteach all the terrible ideas people came in with from watching 24. :/

[dalmeny]

I have stopped watching some shows because of this. It's both pernicious and common.

[lilacsigil]

Agents of SHIELD did complicate this in earlier seasons, by having some good guys locked up and the prisons infiltrated by HYDRA, and the lock-down program shown as wrong and inhumane for several characters. But they quickly threw that out the window!

Weirdly, DC Comics has a ton of supervillain prisons which definitely have due process for getting put in there - Belle Reve from the Suicide Squad being the most well-known - and only secretly get weird, whereas Marvel Comics has things like Ant-Man shrinking down supervillains and imprisoning them in a tiny prison, or Reed Richards running an inescapable prison in the Negative Zone, as well as some more normal supervillain prisons like the Raft (part of a regular prison). But the TV shows and movies reverse this!

[selenak]

It does make me wonder whether the scriptwriters are counting on a sizable part of the audience just not wondering anymore whether the heroes have the right to imprison the villains any way they please…

[musesfool]

There was a lot of talk about Barry's supersekrit basement prison in the AV Club comments while the first season was airing, so you're not alone in finding it highly questionable. There is some ancillary material that apparently at least shows Cisco feeding them, so they're not being starved in the dark, but yeah. That, along with Joe and Barry keeping the secret identity from Iris, are big flies in the ointment of an otherwise really enjoyable first season!

[selenak]

Oh, the keeping the secret identity from Iris drove me mad, too, but there I didn't have the Impression that I was supposed to find it cool. I did like the first season, by and large! But that just stuck in my throat.

[trobadora]

Yes, 100% agreed on all of that. I want this to stop, soonest.

tiny, tiny prison cells without any visible hygeniec facilities

I think part of that is that once you consider facilities, things start becoming real, and they don't want their viewers to think in that direction. I do think it's at least due ot post-9/11 ... stuff. (Ugh.)

[labingi]

Very good points. I will own I didn't register this particularly. Maybe it's because I'm an American, or--more likely--because I don't really watch these shows or expect anything of them and just come across them in passing when my son has them on. But yeah, very disturbing, not least because my son has them on! Is this related to his wanting to torture goblins for information in D&D...?

[beatrice_otter]

I KNOW. aaaaaaaaa

[lizvogel]

I think in Sanctuary, at least, it was presented as morally ambiguous -- the organization's whole purpose is to keep supernatural beings out of the ken of mainstream society, so running supernatural baddies through the court system obviously isn't an option, but killing them just for being what they are is right out, so the private prison was the best of a set of bad choices. I always felt that Magnus, at least, was well aware that in other circumstances, she could have ended up in one of those cells herself.

It does present an interesting question: How do you maintain some kind of due process, when everything from the existence of the accused on down has to remain a secret?

[schneefink]

Yeah, it's a bad trend :(

[watervole]

I've always noticed the complete lack of toilet facilities...

The example of Sheridan and Garibaldi is an excellent one. B5 handled all kinds of issues with higher levels of political and social complexity.

I'm not quite sure why superhero shows don't, unless it's a desire to focus entirely on action, or a worldview (with occasional exceptions) that people are either good or evil with no middle ground.