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Author: mdulwich

Sep 11th 2012 at 7:26:54 PM

Aside from the various criticisms noted above, there's also the point that such works won't necessarily claim that "torture never works". They might show that torture sometimes works, but the results are too unreliable: how useful is the information gathered through torture when you don't know whether it's genuine or whether the victim is just saying anything to get the torture to stop? There is I think a distinction between criticism of torture on the basis of morality (i.e. "torture is morally wrong whether it is reliable or not") and of usefulness ("torture isn't necessarily wrong but too unreliable to be a useful method".)

Also: "the victims are not sufficiently capable of logic for it to occur to them that the pain they'll receive when their lie is uncovered will be orders of magnitude worse than the pain they were so desperate to end with their lies." This assumes that a victim will be capable of rational decision-making during torture. I would imagine that in such a situation the need to end the pain would override the capacity to think logically.

You also wrongly assume that any depiction of torture failing to work is inherently an aesop. For example, Darth Vader's attempts to torture Princess Leia for information (the location of the Rebel base) in StarWars fails because it serves both characterisation (showing Leia to be strong-willed) and plot (leading to the destruction of Alderaan, bringing the heroes on board the Death Star and so on). If the torture had succeeded, the plot would pretty much fall apart at this point. Whether George Lucas is "politically correct" for doing this is nether here nor there.

And yes, the tone really is pretty inflammatory.