This is the accusation from Naomi Wolf, in an open letter to Zero Dark Thirty‘s director, Kathryn Bigelow:
Your film Zero Dark Thirty is a huge hit here. But in falsely justifying, in scene after scene, the torture of detainees in “the global war on terror”, Zero Dark Thirty is a gorgeously-shot, two-hour ad for keeping intelligence agents who committed crimes against Guantánamo prisoners out of jail. It makes heroes and heroines out of people who committed violent crimes against other people based on their race – something that has historical precedent.
Your film claims, in many scenes, that CIA torture was redeemed by the “information” it “secured”, information that, according to your script, led to Bin Laden’s capture. This narrative is a form of manufacture of innocence to mask a great crime: what your script blithely calls “the detainee program”.
What led to this amoral compromising of your film-making?
This is Bigelow’s defence:
I support every American’s 1st Amendment right to create works of art and speak their conscience without government interference or harassment. As a lifelong pacifist, I support all protests against the use of torture, and, quite simply, inhumane treatment of any kind.
But I do wonder if some of the sentiments alternately expressed about the film might be more appropriately directed at those who instituted and ordered these U.S. policies, as opposed to a motion picture that brings the story to the screen.
Those of us who work in the arts know that depiction is not endorsement. If it was, no artist would be able to paint inhumane practices, no author could write about them, and no filmmaker could delve into the thorny subjects of our time.
This is an important principle to stand up for, and it bears repeating. For confusing depiction with endorsement is the first step toward chilling any American artist’s ability and right to shine a light on dark deeds, especially when those deeds are cloaked in layers of secrecy and government obfuscation.
And this is Slavoj Žižek’s response to Bigelow’s response:
One doesn’t need to be a moralist, or naive about the urgencies of fighting terrorist attacks, to think that torturing a human being is in itself something so profoundly shattering that to depict it neutrally – ie to neutralise this shattering dimension – is already a kind of endorsement.
Imagine a documentary that depicted the Holocaust in a cool, disinterested way as a big industrial-logistic operation, focusing on the technical problems involved (transport, disposal of the bodies, preventing panic among the prisoners to be gassed). Such a film would either embody a deeply immoral fascination with its topic, or it would count on the obscene neutrality of its style to engender dismay and horror in spectators. Where is Bigelow here?
Without a shadow of a doubt, she is on the side of the normalisation of torture.
I saw the film at the weekend, and I think Wolf is right.
It’s not, as Žižek argues, the supposed neutrality of the depiction; some of the most powerful indictments of evil have come about through stark, cool-eyed, non-judgmental descriptions of the reality of what has taken place – bringing the horror into the moral daylight, even without explicit moral comment.
Nor is it, as Wolf herself writes, the factual question about whether torture was or was not effective in helping the US to locate Bin Laden.
It’s much simpler, and it’s to do with the nature of film and not with arguments about historical truth. It’s the fact that in the dramatic arc of the film, torture is justified; whatever ethical unease we may have as thinkers and moralists, in cinematic terms, we identify emotionally with the protagonist, the heroine, so that the plot device (in this case torture) becomes – whether we like it or not – emotionally justified.
The plot is very simple: men are captured; men are tortured; some of them give information; Maya, the intrepid CIA agent, won’t give up on her hunt for Bin Laden; some of this information, combined with other information, leads Maya to discover the whereabouts of Bin Laden; Bin Laden is killed. Even if your conscience says that torture is always wrong, even if the horrific portrayal of torture in this film actually makes you firmer in your opposition to torture, at an emotional level you can’t help wanting Maya to find him (this is what we do in films, we root for the protagonist, we long to find the ‘MacGuffin‘), and as a viewer caught up in the chase, you can’t help being grateful that the information was finally found – whatever the means.
As a film, it’s gripping and beautifully produced, but still slightly disappointing. There is very little context or background; we never really understand what makes Maya tick; it’s two-dimensional.
Another moral issue, equally important, gets completely ignored in the film: whether it is right to assassinate someone in these circumstances. Everyone in the film, on Maya’s side, wants to find Bin Laden and kill him; no-one asks whether this is justified, morally or legally. I’m surprised and even worried that reviewers don’t seem to have commented on this (but let me know if you have seen a review that has).
“Any act of torture or other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment is an offence to human dignity and shall be condemned as a denial of the purposes of the Charter of the United Nations and as a violation of the human rights and fundamental freedoms proclaimed in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.” UN Declaration on Torture, 1975.
The people who were involved in the operation to kill Bin Laden and their superiors would, I am sure, argue that the end justified the means regarding the use of torture and the killing(s). My concern is that such arguments have been used by so many over the centuries to justify a variety of actions.
Thank you njs44 for pointing out the UN Declaration on Torture. The only problem with this is that the super powers seem to use the UN as a sounding board when it suits them and to accept or ignore UN Declarations as best suits their purposes.
Not in reference to this film. . . but this week I saw for the first time the staggeringly brilliant performance of Vanessa Redgrave’s in the film ‘Playing for Time’ (1981). It apparently generated immense controversy too when Redgrave won an Emmy for her portrayal of Jewish Fana Fenlon, a famous musician interned in a Nazi death camp, who is ordered to help serenade people on their way to the gas chambers. The blurb said . . ‘Due to her anti-Zionist stand, many, including Fana Fenelon, the real-life violinist whom Redgrave was portraying, objected to her playing a Jewish woman.’ I however thought it was brilliant. One of the best performances I have ever seen in my entire life.
That is why art is so important. The controversies we confront in all art forms allow us to question our own truth in relation to the absolute Truth in relation to the ‘arts’ on a multi-dimensional pivot. In every ‘way’ . . . there is a learning curve, we and art are not static, Truth must not be bound to the culture that portrays it, but is intrinsic from beyond our own being. We only come to realise it through our own experiences.
I keep returning to that brilliant piece of writing shared with us by Max I think, a few blogs back by C. K Chesterton about the different perspectives of looking and seeing ‘the tree’ The only trouble with that piece of writing was it left each of the poets in a static place. Give them another tree at a latter time and I bet the poets perspectives and truths would have shifted.
Thats why God is Love. To torture, and irradicate someone else, by stripping them of their dignity and life is not of God but of man gone wrong.
eradicate! :O/
I was tortured for almost 3 years by the FBI and their friends only
because 85 years old man, Roland H Sibens(chicago), NOW HE IS 88, convinced them that I
am a terrorist. I was tortured for working on my prosthetic legs in
the basement. I done absolutely nothing illegal or wrong. They thought
that in theory it is possible to hide bomb in them. They saw an
opportunity to get famous, so they were trying to torture me till I
sign their insane story. They tortured me using more than 100
different torturing methods and trust to me waterboarding is not how
they torture nowadays. I dont know where to find justice.
I think that after 9/11 things got out of control. Freedom fighters
became tyrants. In 1945, most Germans had an opportunity to learn about Nazis death
camps. I hope that one day American citizens will get chance to learn about people
like me, who were tortured with no reason for years.
Jacob Gabel God bless you, and heal you, and grace you with forgiveness. †
thank you!
http://www.freedomfromtorture.org might be a good place for you to turn to jacob.