[Alyssa Rosenberg]
So, I went to see Public Enemies last night, and ended up being far more deeply touched by it than I expected. It's certainly the best movie about banks, or bank-related malfeasance I've seen since the financial crisis started (for more details, see this piece just up on The Atlantic's homepage about Hollywood and the financial crisis. Some spoilers if you don't know much about John Dillinger, I guess). But there was one scene in particular that got me thinking in a way I hadn't anticipated.
In that scene, a loutish young F.B.I. agent is beating Billie Frechette (played by Marion Cotillard) to try to get her to give up information about where the Bureau can find Dillinger. Her lip is split, her face is bruised, and the agent won't let her leave to go to the bathroom, and hits her again when she wets herself. It's a horribly uncomfortable scene, relieved only when Melvin Purvis (Christian Bale), the man in charge of the Chicago F.B.I. office returns, other agents stop the young man from hitting Billie, and when she can't stand to walk out of the office, Purvis picks her up and carries her, urine-soaked skirt and all. It's meant to be gentlemanly, except that earlier, Purvis and his agents were beating a man injured in a shootout at a bank, who had a bullet lodged above his eye and was screaming for painkillers, to find out where Dillinger and Machine Gun Kelly were staying. Clearly, Purvis has different standards about torture when it comes to ladies, even if they do have big eyes and questionable tastes in boyfriends.
In pop culture, depictions of torture often seem to focus on the victim's (who are usually men) fortitude, rather than the torturer's depravity. Take Star Trek. When Eric Bana and his henchmen shove a slug down Bruce Greenwood's throat that will manipulate his brain, we already knew Bana's character was a monster, so the takeaway from the scene was Greenwood's bravery. In "War Stories," the episode of Joss Whedon's sci-fi Western in which two of the show's main characters are tortured by a sadistic crime lord, the villian isn't much of a presence: the focus is on how the two men keep each other alive.
Waterboarding someone 183 times in a single month is--and ought to be--horrific no matter their gender. But I do wonder whether the public debate in America over torture would be different if there were prominent female victims who had been identified and were part of the conversation. I'm not sure I think that would be a good thing; relying on women's perceived delicacy to say that torture is wrong, or saying that it's worse for a woman than for a man to be pushed into a wall repeatedly, at minimum relies on faulty logic, and at maximum reinforces dangerous gender stereotypes that could be used to say it's all right to torture men, because they can take it. But I do think that moving the debate over torture away from the fortitude or lack thereof of a person who suffers it, and towards the morality of the person who commits it, is an important shift to make--and more difficult to make permanent than we might think.
The Beautiful Struggle: A Father, Two Sons, and an Unlikely Road to Manhood 
Copyright © 2009 by The Atlantic Monthly Group. All rights reserved.
I'm not a "24" fan, so I don't know if Jack Bauer ever tortures women (although I'm guessing he doesn't, or at least hasn't) but I am a "Lost" fan, and I know that Sayid Jarrah's claim to good guy status rests heavily on the fact that he refused to torture a woman. This despite the fact that we know he tortured many, many people, and we've even seen him do it on the Island. There is something primally repulsive about a man deliberately harming a completely defenseless woman that goes above and beyond. Even if a character just, say, smacks a woman who's being held in custody, that's the flashing "bad guy" sign.
So to answer your question, yes, I absolutely think that this debate would be different if (when?) it came out that women were tortured under this program. And no, I don't think that'd be a good thing from a philosophical standpoint, because torture is torture and no one in real life can stand up to it like they do in movies and on TV, but from a practical standpoint, anything that increases the revulsion that ordinary Americans have to the idea that our country would ever torture someone at least increases the chances that we might not ever have to have this horrible "debate" ever again.
Jack Bauer does torture women, as do other CTU agents. He's also been known to threaten women to get their husbands to talk.
And there was a time that a CTU office worker was tortured by her co-workers, in an attempt to get info about something she'd been framed for. When they realized she was innocent, they said "oh, sorry, now back to work" and she returned to her desk. No big deal. I'm sure she was happy to join them for drinks after their shift.
My takeaways from the torture scene in Star Trek were, in order:
1. That's totally coded waterboarding.
2. That's totally coded rape.
3. Nice shoutout to Wrath of Khan, JJ!
4. There had better be some Pike hurt/comfort slash on LiveJournal when I get home. Which there was.
Wow, I just got quite the geek-crush on you.
Though what I wondered was why the Federation and other assorted empires weren't using these apparently super-useful creatures a lot more.
Yeah, I was pretty much on 1-3. I didn't start looking at LJ for fic til a couple days later though. :D
I agree that we as a country would be morally outraged if we ever get woman to serve as as an iconic victim of torture, especially if there is rape or other sexual abuse involved. Even more if the victim was an American or light skinned or ,god-forbid, blonde and blue eyed. The same, I think, can be said of prison rape and hitting someone in the crotch. Man funny. Woman not funny. I also think parallels can be drawn between what you are talking about and the recent court case involving the young woman who was stripped searched for an ibuprofen. If the defendant were NOT a pretty white honors student I doubt the case would have ever have made it to a trial court.
And its not just torture. The other night I was assaulted by a woman who insisted upon hitting me, tearing at my clothes, and trying to knock me down. I finally got around to pushing her to the ground and running away. Had she been a guy of similar size I would not have hesitated to clean her clock and I certainly would not have turned around to make sure she was okay before running home to call the cops. (She was later arrested at a local convenience store dumping sodas on customer's heads. Someone was of her meds.) I still feel bad I had to do that to her. Were she a guy, I'd regret not hurting him more.
There is just something ingrained in us to be more adverse and even outraged about violence against women than the same act upon men. But its more complicated than that isn't it? Somewhere in there has to be room for our blind-eye-turning to domestic violence.
Now I am just aimlessly musing out loud. I'll stop.
This reminds me of the reaction to Jessica Lynch's capture in 2003 in Iraq, and her subsequent rescue and return home. I thought she had been tortured or sexually abused in captivity, but apparently she hadn't been.
I never thought of this, but it's clear the conversation would be different if a woman was the victim of torture. Torture would probably be seen more along the lines of domestic violence. But also, I think we presume that women don't operate with the same impulses that lead men to commit terrorist acts - or extremely violent acts. I mean, for the one Thelma and Louise movie there are how many Clint Eastwoods and Billie the Kids?
And yet Lynndie England became the face of torture at Abu Ghraib.
I can't be the first person to ask this, but here it anyway. Alyssa (if I may), why don't you have your own pop culture blog? That would be an awesome blog!
Thanks, Scott! I've actually been working on getting a pop blog up and running, so stay tuned: if I'm feeling brave, I'll give y'all the URL where I've been playing around at the end of the week.
There was a scene in the movie Taken starring Liam Neeson where he shoots a woman, a completely innocent woman, specifically aiming to wound her, in order to elicit information from her husband. The scene was somewhat shocking to me but the audience actually seemed to find it mostly amusing. By that moment in the film, I think enough had been done to get the audience to identify with the anger and desperation of the protagonist that people weren't especially offended by his more extreme measures.
Obviously that doesn't prove anything in and of itself but it does offer some small confirmation of what I suspect: If we felt the need to torture women and the information got out, the administration responsible would do enough propagandizing to dehumanize the women all the same. The initial societal reaction might be different but in the end, people would fall in line with the necessary fear and loathing.
I really doubt even Bush's America would ever torture a woman. And, somehow, that's a little bit terrible.
I have a comment in moderation (too many links I think). Bush's America damn well did torture women at Abu Ghraib, in their own homes in Iraqi cities and in the military and contractor barracks.
I don't know ... doesn't seem to me like there's a dearth of violence against women in this world.
What if the torturers are women, as well as the victim? Does that change the perception? I'm thinking of female Nazi prison guards here. Does the power/brutality dynamic work the same way in an all-female situation that it does in an all-male one? What would have happened if the famed Zimbardo experiment had used college women rather than college men?
Anyone remember Jessica Lynch's rescue?
I felt really uncomfortable watching the torture scenes in Public Enemies, specifically Billie Frechette's. I know Michael Mann was trying to create a kind of hyper-realistic violence, but the whole scene just felt incredibly misogynistic; from Frechette wetting herself to Purvis carrying her out in his arms, it just seemed like a way of reducing her character to a helpless little girl.
SPOILER ALERT!!!!!!!!!
*****************************************************************************
I saw the movie last night with my son,( who should be a film critic because he's "Mikey"--seldom moved cinematically),and we both enjoyed it. I thought the scene was intrinsic to the plot, as well as overall character development, and, yes, it is intended to make you uncomfortable.
My dad had barely moved to the south side of Chicago from Philly, and he said the cops were ruthless, despite being easily bought off. Plus, there was a pervasive and harsh double standard for women. Either one was virginal and marriage material whom one could bring home to Mama, or was relegated to whore status. Purvis saw himself as a knight in shining armor and hitting women bucked that coda which put women on pedestals. (Of course, this same creed was misused to prop up theories justifying racism against black men for centuries, especially in the south, but, oh, it works so perfectly in hero-based plots of movies and TV!)
Pops also saw Dillinger's body, and I could have sworn he said it was on the bank steps, in the afternoon, not in a dark alley at night. (I don't think even they would have fired in a crowd like that), and he came out of a matinee walking toward the bank, presumably to heist it. He said that the cops wanted Dillinger's body there for the world to see--a cautionary tale in the (rotting) flesh--and Chicago citizenry celebrated it.
The script was outstanding, the dialog and editing perfect, and the shoot out in Wisconsin was the sest shootout as a filmgoer thatI think I have ever experienced from a cinematographic POV since "Straw Dogs."
Alyssa -- per your comment "But I do wonder whether the public debate in America over torture would be different if there were prominent female victims who had been identified and were part of the conversation."
I think you have a valid point, but at the risk of reopening the whole "24" debate, I would suggest that maybe, just maybe, the public debate in America over torture would be different if the media didn't portray torture as a public good.
I saw a preview the other night for the new Quentin T movie starring Brad Pitt as a ww2 commander, American, who leads a platoon, or whatever the hell a bunch of soldiers is, on this sort of sadistic Nazi hunting spree, and my "torture glorification" sensors started beeping. I don't remember exactly what I saw, because I'm senile, and I'm too lazy to try and find it on the web.
There. I hope that was all useful and insightful.
Ah, Inglourious Basterds. I hadn't thought of that, but I can easily see it. Revenge plots often portray torture as a justifiable response to an earlier crime. Speaking of Tarantino, I wonder if that scene in Reservoir Dogs didn't have a big effect on how we understand torture.