The Shadow Knows: Or, We The Consenters
May. 8th, 2004 11:33 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
selenakAriel Dorfman wrote a play called Death and the Maiden which brings together a woman tortured under the Pinochet regime, the man who may or may not have been her torture (it's important in the play that the audience doesn't get told for sure from the start), and her husband. It was filmed a couple of years ago, with Sigourney Weaver as Paulina and Ben Kingsley as Roberto. During the course of play and film, Paulina doesn't just tie Roberto up; she uses every bit of psychological torture she can think of, including sexual humiliation (stuffing her pants in the mouth of the man). She wants a confession; wants to hear him say he was the one who had tortured her. The husband is an emotional stand-in for the audience; he knows she was tortured, he wants to believe her that this was the man, but he can't be sure, not just because Paulina never saw her torturer (she was blindfolded the entire time), but because Roberto is not like the monster he imagined at all - he comes across as a nice fellow, if immensely scared. And even if this is the brutal torturer in question, is turning the tables on him the way Paulina does justified?
In today's Guardian, Mr. Dorfman uses the recent revelations for penetrating questions, which aim at the conditio humana, at all of us, not just at one particular nation. He brings up The Brothers Karamazov and the question posed there by Ivan K.: Let us suppose that in order to bring men eternal happiness, it was essential and inevitable to torture to death one tiny creature, only one small child. Would you consent? After examining that one, Dorfman correctly points out that the even tougher question would be this: What if the person endlessly tortured for our wellbeing is guilty?
What if we could erect a future of love and harmony on the everlasting pain of someone who had himself committed mass murder, who had tortured those children? (...) And more urgently: what if the person whose genitals are crushed and skin is being burnt knows the whereabouts of a bomb that is about to explode and kill millions? Would we answer: yes, I do consent? That under certain very limited circumstances, torture is acceptable?
And I don't think there is an easy reply for this. Obviously, we're all, independent of nationality, horrified and shocked when being confronted with the photos that have been making the news. But I think many of us, including myself, have given their consent in a couple of fictional situations. Yes, there is a difference between fiction and reality, but I'm still wondering. Some months ago,![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
altariel1 posted a DS9 WIP in which Garak, with Sisko's consent, torturers someone for crucial information. Which is absolutely plausible in canon at the point where it is set (season 6). The canonical fact that Garak used to torture for a living pre-show is not something that stops me, and many other fans, of loving the character and seeing it as part of his fascinating moral ambiguity. Most of us probably think he has a point when he's making his final statement to Sisko in In the Pale Moonlight, and in a story like Una's, one might shiver but still think Garak (and Sisko) are justified in those particular circumstances.
Moving on to other fandoms: when Angel, in late season 3, sets up Linwood for torture in his quest to find out whether there is a way he can get his son back, the audience (including myself) isn't appalled. We might be if it had been Lilah, but Linwood is a not even that interesting W&H functionary, and hey, Angel venting his dark side is always interesting. Also, saving your son from a hellish dimension certainly counts as a ends-justifies-the-means goal.
Or let's take L.A. Confidential, the film. Very stylish, very well acted, full of complexities, but when Exley and White unite to intimidate, bully and beat the crap out the cowardly whatever-his-name was near the climax of the movie, the audience isn't meant to think "okay, now they've given in to the system" but "Go, boys!"
It's a rare drama that presents a victim of torture who isn't innocent, or particularily likeable, and a pressing need to find out information but still manages to get the audience to root for the hero NOT to have a go at this person.
Going back from fiction to reality: it's a cliché that bears repeating that no one is ever the villain inside of his, or her, own head. It is the cause, my soul, it is the cause. Today's Washington Post carries a a story about one of the MPs involved in the current scandal, one Sabrina D. Harman. She clearly doesn't see what happened as some bizarre thing she and others did in their spare time. It was part of the job, of the mission. "The job of the MP was to keep them awake, make it hell so they would talk." She also, according to the article, collected the photos "as evidence of the improper conditions"; her sworn statement is in the Taguba Report. Quoth the article: In his investigation, Taguba used a portion of Harman's sworn statement to conclude that prisoners had been abused. Harman "stated . . . regarding the incident where a detainee was placed on box with wires attached to his fingers, toes, and penis, 'that her job was to keep detainees awake.' "
So, Ms. Harman, with "this . . . attitude that she is going to save the world", according to her mother, for a while believed this would be accomplished by following orders of the sort detailed above. Then she began to doubt. If this were a film, she would undoubtedly either be one of the villains, dumb and sadistic, or the heroine who for while got entangled in the mess but not really, not emotionally. Now if this were a movie a la A Few Good Men, what she did while posing for the photo showing a pile of bodies would be presented as unquestioningly wrong in either case. But if it were an action movie, we might well find the prisoners in question presented as some hissworthy bastards with information on which the lives of a dozen cherubic children depended. In which case the audience while disagreeing rationally would emotionally consent, more likely than not.
We delude ourselves when we give permission to commit evil acts to what we tell ourselves is a limited group of specialists, Theresa Nielsen Hayden writes in a thoughtful examination of this issue, and I appreciate the "we", because this is true for humans in general, not just members of one nation. She ends her entry with this:
And now, a list: The Nine Ways of Being an Accessory to Another’s Sin.
1. By counsel.
2. By command.
3. By consent.
4. By provocation.
5. By praise or flattery.
6. By concealment.
7. By partaking.
8. By silence.
9. By defense of the ill done.
And I wonder. How many of us can claim to be exempt from all of this?
In today's Guardian, Mr. Dorfman uses the recent revelations for penetrating questions, which aim at the conditio humana, at all of us, not just at one particular nation. He brings up The Brothers Karamazov and the question posed there by Ivan K.: Let us suppose that in order to bring men eternal happiness, it was essential and inevitable to torture to death one tiny creature, only one small child. Would you consent? After examining that one, Dorfman correctly points out that the even tougher question would be this: What if the person endlessly tortured for our wellbeing is guilty?
What if we could erect a future of love and harmony on the everlasting pain of someone who had himself committed mass murder, who had tortured those children? (...) And more urgently: what if the person whose genitals are crushed and skin is being burnt knows the whereabouts of a bomb that is about to explode and kill millions? Would we answer: yes, I do consent? That under certain very limited circumstances, torture is acceptable?
And I don't think there is an easy reply for this. Obviously, we're all, independent of nationality, horrified and shocked when being confronted with the photos that have been making the news. But I think many of us, including myself, have given their consent in a couple of fictional situations. Yes, there is a difference between fiction and reality, but I'm still wondering. Some months ago,
altariel1 posted a DS9 WIP in which Garak, with Sisko's consent, torturers someone for crucial information. Which is absolutely plausible in canon at the point where it is set (season 6). The canonical fact that Garak used to torture for a living pre-show is not something that stops me, and many other fans, of loving the character and seeing it as part of his fascinating moral ambiguity. Most of us probably think he has a point when he's making his final statement to Sisko in In the Pale Moonlight, and in a story like Una's, one might shiver but still think Garak (and Sisko) are justified in those particular circumstances. Moving on to other fandoms: when Angel, in late season 3, sets up Linwood for torture in his quest to find out whether there is a way he can get his son back, the audience (including myself) isn't appalled. We might be if it had been Lilah, but Linwood is a not even that interesting W&H functionary, and hey, Angel venting his dark side is always interesting. Also, saving your son from a hellish dimension certainly counts as a ends-justifies-the-means goal.
Or let's take L.A. Confidential, the film. Very stylish, very well acted, full of complexities, but when Exley and White unite to intimidate, bully and beat the crap out the cowardly whatever-his-name was near the climax of the movie, the audience isn't meant to think "okay, now they've given in to the system" but "Go, boys!"
It's a rare drama that presents a victim of torture who isn't innocent, or particularily likeable, and a pressing need to find out information but still manages to get the audience to root for the hero NOT to have a go at this person.
Going back from fiction to reality: it's a cliché that bears repeating that no one is ever the villain inside of his, or her, own head. It is the cause, my soul, it is the cause. Today's Washington Post carries a a story about one of the MPs involved in the current scandal, one Sabrina D. Harman. She clearly doesn't see what happened as some bizarre thing she and others did in their spare time. It was part of the job, of the mission. "The job of the MP was to keep them awake, make it hell so they would talk." She also, according to the article, collected the photos "as evidence of the improper conditions"; her sworn statement is in the Taguba Report. Quoth the article: In his investigation, Taguba used a portion of Harman's sworn statement to conclude that prisoners had been abused. Harman "stated . . . regarding the incident where a detainee was placed on box with wires attached to his fingers, toes, and penis, 'that her job was to keep detainees awake.' "
So, Ms. Harman, with "this . . . attitude that she is going to save the world", according to her mother, for a while believed this would be accomplished by following orders of the sort detailed above. Then she began to doubt. If this were a film, she would undoubtedly either be one of the villains, dumb and sadistic, or the heroine who for while got entangled in the mess but not really, not emotionally. Now if this were a movie a la A Few Good Men, what she did while posing for the photo showing a pile of bodies would be presented as unquestioningly wrong in either case. But if it were an action movie, we might well find the prisoners in question presented as some hissworthy bastards with information on which the lives of a dozen cherubic children depended. In which case the audience while disagreeing rationally would emotionally consent, more likely than not.
We delude ourselves when we give permission to commit evil acts to what we tell ourselves is a limited group of specialists, Theresa Nielsen Hayden writes in a thoughtful examination of this issue, and I appreciate the "we", because this is true for humans in general, not just members of one nation. She ends her entry with this:
And now, a list: The Nine Ways of Being an Accessory to Another’s Sin.
1. By counsel.
2. By command.
3. By consent.
4. By provocation.
5. By praise or flattery.
6. By concealment.
7. By partaking.
8. By silence.
9. By defense of the ill done.
And I wonder. How many of us can claim to be exempt from all of this?
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no subject
Date: 2004-05-08 02:59 am (UTC)Reminds me of LeGuin's "The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas".
It's a rare drama that presents a victim of torture who isn't innocent, or particularily likeable, and a pressing need to find out information but still manages to get the audience to root for the hero NOT to have a go at this person.
Hell, yeah.
No matter what side of the conflict you're on, you'll find people dehumanizing the enemy, one way or another. And it shows up in fiction/drama all the time.
***
"No Colonel. I remember Okita. I can understand a man being a killer, I think. But a bored killer?"
"Okita is only a tool. The surgeon's knife."
"Then your service has turned a man into a thing." An old quote drifted through Ethan's memory: By their fruits you shall know them....
Dr. Urquhart and Colonel Millisor discuss ethics
(Lois McMaster Bujold, Ethan of Athos)
no subject
Date: 2004-05-10 12:39 am (UTC)No matter what side of the conflict you're on, you'll find people dehumanizing the enemy, one way or another. And it shows up in fiction/drama all the time.
True, and I find that in fiction at least, I'm not immune to this effect, which makes me worried. By the way,
no subject
Date: 2004-05-08 04:28 am (UTC)1)
In the third season of Enterprise, captain Archer is presented as a person proclaiming the "the situation justifies all" principle and he acts according to it.
He does everything to win a war. He tortures, steals from the innocent and not involved, sacrifices lives. He delivers heroic statements afterwards and the show is by no means critical about this.
A formerly liberally based TV series is turned into mere conservative (or so called conservative) propaganda.
2)
War. Torture. Rape. People dying.
If a government accepts war as a means to accomplish their ideas it accepts the above.
No, I am not forgetting the Geneva Convention. No, I am not saying that torture is “OK” or inevitable.
But the dramatic apologizing speeches by Bush and other high ranking Government members are ridiculous. How can people apologize that by waging war caused and accept violence and "inhumane" deeds?
Do they want us to believe that they really wanted to make war without all this? That they are now sorry?
3)
Years and years ago, In the movie Thelma & Louise", I have heard people cheer when a rapist gets killed. In every performance I have seen (that is about three). The very thought makes me shudder.
***
I do not really know if these loosely connected observations make sense at all, but here they are.
PS.: I am very curios (without wanting to rush you or s.th.) how you like my "proclamation" idea ;-))
just an aside (re: Enterprise)
Date: 2004-05-09 04:13 am (UTC)In the third season of Enterprise, captain Archer is presented as a person proclaiming the "the situation justifies all" principle and he acts according to it.
He does everything to win a war. He tortures, steals from the innocent and not involved, sacrifices lives. He delivers heroic statements afterwards and the show is by no means critical about this.
A formerly liberally based TV series is turned into mere conservative (or so called conservative) propaganda.
Actually, they are critical about it -- you can see it in the reactions of many of the crew, and you can see it in Archer's face when he has to make those awful decisions. It just isn't stated blatantly as some kind of stupid 'the moral of the story is' message at the end of an episode. Enterprise may have a lot of problems, but ignoring the cost on both the crew and on Archer's character is not one of them.
Archer is very obviously a man who took that first step, and now finds himself unable to stop his descent down that path...
Re: just an aside (re: Enterprise)
Date: 2004-05-10 11:32 am (UTC)I have my doubts there. It surely is not bluntly put, but is there not an underlying tenor of : "We need to do this. We have no choice"?
It also struck me odd that when T'Paul critizied Archer she was clearly presented as being under the influence of drugs.
F.
Re: just an aside (re: Enterprise)
Date: 2004-05-10 07:04 pm (UTC)Obviously, Tucker isn't, since his sister was one of the people killed in the first attack, and T'Pol isn't a reliable character since she's the T&A quotient for the series.
Re: just an aside (re: Enterprise)
Date: 2004-05-10 09:32 pm (UTC)Anyhow: I do not think the point is that there are no characters in the series that are no characters placed in the series that are critical.
Point is, imho, that what Archer does (for example torturing prisoners) is eventually been shown as successful and thus justified.
And honestly speaking I do not think it is, and the show is making a debatable point there.
no subject
Date: 2004-05-08 04:31 am (UTC)I find it disturbing that since we live in systems in which this sort of crap happens, there is a *very* limited amount of research into those societies that were, in fact, egalitarian and peaceful. Which in turn keeps people ignorant and doesn't make them question any popular psychologists who go on about "human nature" being violent. Any study that shows that human beings need caring and affection and can actually get along is dismissed as wishy-washy wimpiness or just total nonsense. Far too many people accept the worst without questioning, and that makes my hair stand on end.
no subject
Date: 2004-05-09 12:54 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-05-09 05:28 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-05-10 09:17 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-05-10 12:55 am (UTC)I don't want to be too cynical about the human race in general, either. We're capable of horrible things, yes, but I also am stunned by the amount of self-sacrifice which, say, people whom I know in India, who live for the poor 24 hours a day, are capable of. Or some women in my more immediate neighbourhood, who take care of abused children, and that's not a job you get any vacation from. One of them has been doing it since decades.
The sad though, though, is that the capability of dehumanization is more widespread, and at any rate gets more press...
no subject
Date: 2004-05-10 04:53 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-05-08 08:46 am (UTC)Your noting of that Brothers K passage gets me, too. I was fascinated with that whole chapter (The Grand Inquisitor) and extremely disturbed by it as well. Should we be willing to torture and kill one innocent for the harmony and happiness of many? And even if so, would I personally be willing to torture and kill an innocent for the harmony and happiness of many?
This all makes me think of the Jasmine arc in AtS season 4. "She consumed . . . what? A dozen souls a day?" Is that worth the happiness of billions? Angel and Co clearly think it isn't, but I wonder if that isn't exactly what we're doing in this world all the time. Is our "homeland security" worth torturing anyone?
But then, in my own thoughts, I entertain fantasies almost daily about torturing a certain woman who was the leader of a cult that has done unbelievable amounts of psychological damage to myself and others. And I think that if I had the chance, I would actually commit my fantasied atrocities. What does that make me? Am I even worse than one of those American soldiers because my vengeance would be for so few? Would I smile like the soldiers smile?
So, yeah, thinking about lots. Thanks again for an excellent post.
no subject
Date: 2004-05-08 12:29 pm (UTC)I think this is a terrible thing to say. You might as well go up to someone in the street and shoot them, and then say 'who knows, he might have been a rapist or murderer.' You can't just hurt people and say 'oh they might have been bad'.
And even if they were evil serial killers (which hasn't been suggested by anyone, even the torturers), you can't just torture people. Do you think Americans who are murderers should be tortured?
You think about why these men are being tortured? Well, keep thinking about that, because it's a very important question. If someone has told you there is a good reason then I think you should think very hard about the moral standards of such a person.
no subject
Date: 2004-05-08 07:15 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-05-09 03:43 am (UTC)What they might have done? But you have no reason to think that they have done anything bad at all.
Asked about claims by many prisoners after their release that they were picked up by mistake Colonel Foster Payne, head of military intelligence at Abu Ghraib, admitted that "some people were in the wrong place at the wrong time", but added: "Clearly everyone [here] is not a farmer."
OK, the guy in charge of the torture says 'they aren't all farmers'. But do you realise what that means? Most of them are just famers who were 'in the wrong place at the wrong time'. They're just regular people like your family, but Moslem and with brown skin. Do you feel any more sorry for them now?
Read this article about Abu Ghraib prison and the type of people who have been arrested. Seriously, it will take you about a minute to read it.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/Iraq/Story/0,2763,1210545,00.html
no subject
Date: 2004-05-08 05:40 pm (UTC)Blaming the victim rarely makes things better.
no subject
Date: 2004-05-08 07:17 pm (UTC)Juicy stuff.
Date: 2004-05-08 11:05 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-05-08 12:16 pm (UTC)And I don't think there is an easy reply for this.
I appreciate your posting this long discussion of important issues. However, I think there is a very easy reply for this. It is that we don't live in a universe where torture has or could have any of these effects. Torture does not give us access to the truth - the history of witch hunting tells us that much. Torture could not deliver utopia.
It is a false moral dilemma to imagine that we could achieve worthwile ends by committing torture, and it is self indulgent (in my opinion) to imagine that only our high moral standards restrain us. In fact torture is a dead end, in every sense of the world.
no subject
Date: 2004-05-08 02:01 pm (UTC)I think that in some way, I can relate it with some thoughts, I have had about real-politics. That the idea about supporting dictators, because it’s strengthening vital interested of ones country, is a shortsighted politic. If one believe in the strength of democracy, one should never give the imprecision that democracy and human right is only for some people ( read rich people ), because it hollows out our own values, and makes them a commodity, that for price can be bought and sold. Altruistic behaviour is not is only god thing in moral sense, but Game theory and computer simulation seems to suggest, that altruism a superior strategy for a society compared to selfish behaviour.
no subject
Date: 2004-05-08 02:22 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-05-10 12:59 am (UTC)South Africa during the apartheid was in part a paradise - for the while people. So, to accept the suffering of others as a part of your own well-being - there are a lot of examples for that.
In any case, I didn't want to make things too easy for myself. So far, in real life there hasn't been a case of torture I've not been indignant about but in fiction I found I showed other standards, and that in turn indicates to me one can be manipulated in a state of mind that lessens the horror of the thing...
no subject
Date: 2004-05-10 01:32 am (UTC)Of course there are, but in that case you lose the whole 'this is a difficult question to answer' thing. It's not difficult to know what you should do, it's just difficult to do it sometimes.
in fiction I found I showed other standards
Hey, I wouldn't want an alien to jump out of anyone's tummy in real life, but I don't mind seeing it in a film.
no subject
Date: 2004-05-09 03:14 am (UTC)It's a rare drama that presents a victim of torture who isn't innocent, or particularily likeable, and a pressing need to find out information but still manages to get the audience to root for the hero NOT to have a go at this person.
Does "In the Shadow of Z'ha'dum" count? It's not exactly torture in the whole "needles under the fingernails" sense, but I know I spent the episode desperately hoping that Sheridan wouldn't give in to his anger, and harm Morden. Not because Morden was a nice guy, because he isn't, but because of what it would do to Sheridan personally, and perhaps also to the Army of Light...
Actually, I think B5 is probably quite good at that whole thing - though Lyta et al use unscrupulous methods to extract information, they are usually unhappy about doing so. (Although not Season 5 Lyta, who is considerably more ruthless - and not exactly respected for it). The most ambivalent torture scenes I can think of on B5 are those in "Comes the Inquisitor"...
Did that make any sense?
no subject
Date: 2004-05-10 01:00 am (UTC)