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| Shucks |
But, like everyone else, I would like to talk about the depiction of torture in the film. Some say it endorses torture, some who haven't even seen the film, actually. Before I saw the movie, I blew those people off. Judging a film's ethics based on what you know is in it before you've seen the movie is silly and childish, so I ignored those criticisms, figuring the goal of them was just to be politicizing and not really about the film at all. (Politics, y'all!) After having seen the film though, I do think I've found some justification for these critics' critiques (they're still wrong, but I'll get to that). Why this film of all films is being considered pro-torture while the Saw series (which, yeah, glorifies it [they don't call it torture porn for nothing]) isn't. Why this film has caused an uproar.
And it's not based in ignorance. Neither do I think it's about politics. I think it's all based in fear. Fear of what they, as individuals, are capable of.
And so let my personal experience speak for all people (just a theory I'm having).
The film begins with torture. The torture involves sleep deprivation, pouring water over a rag on someone's face, humiliation, solitary (and extremely, claustrophobically cramped) confinement. The CIA is looking for names, and they get one, Abdul Achmed. They get it several times with multiple people. So many times that they believe he is one of the more important figures they need to find Osama Bin Laden.
And it turns out Abdul Achmed is the key they needed to finding him.
The film doesn't take a stance on this torture. It depicts it. That's it. There's no speech denouncing it or propagating it. It just is. It's nasty, icky, and not pleasant at all. But as the hunt for Bin Laden comes to a close, I realized that the torture worked. They might have gotten to Abdul as some point in time (much, much later most likely) without the torture, yes, but that is not the point. The point is that it worked. I realized that while I find torture to be morally abhorrent, it is effective. It works. Because of course it does. It's torture.
And that's fucking scary as shit to think about. It's even scarier knowing this (I should clarify here: the use of torture) is coming from real events.
I start to think "What if I was put in a similar position? What if someone killed a loved one, and ran away, promising to kill more of them? Would I resort to torture to find this man?" Frankly, after the film, I found the answer to be much harder to find than I anticipated. I'm still thinking about it, actually.
Which brings me back to those critiques of the film. Are these people really angry at the film, or are they angry at themselves? Are they afraid of what they see in themselves? Is this anger a way to distract themselves from the true horror that they see in themselves? A type of projection?
Zero Dark Thirty does not tell us how we should feel about torture. It leaves it entirely up to us. That's the genius of the film. We have to come to this conclusion ourselves.
We get what we want in the end, but we are forced to ask ourselves "are we okay with how we got there?" And some people, including me, might be surprised at how hard of a question this is.
