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The acceptable face of torture?
The case for classification
What’s at stake when 12A Hollywood blockbusters and popular peak-time BBC drama series show explicit scenes of torture? How far should children be exposed to images of violent interrogation, waterboarding or persecution? Media teacher and parent Vanessa Raison argues that we should perhaps be thinking of new forms of classifying violent on-screen content.
Guantanamo Bay was
allowed to exist outside UN Human Rights regulations for seven years; Obama has had the moral sense to begin the process of closing it down. In the meantime, TV and film have spawned torture sequences and made torture as a visual image acceptable. In Spooks in 2008 Richard Armitage was subjected to waterboarding. Jo Portman begged Adam Carter to kill her and was left for dead after her horrific torture by mercenaries who kidnapped her for onward sale to al Qaeda. ‘Not torturing people is the closest to a moral absolute
there is,’ she wistfully observed. Danny Boyle’s Slumdog Millionaire, hailed by critics as the ‘Feel-good Movie of the Decade’ in its promotional sales pitch, opens with the protagonist hanging from a rope and being electrocuted from the feet to ascertain how he cheated in Who Wants to Be a Millionaire. At least that film is a 15; but how much ‘harm’ is caused by the representations of torture in 12A films such as Casino Royale and The Dark Knight? The need to protect children from particularly disturbing images is high on the BBFC’s stated agenda, yet a child of any age can see those movies, provided they are accompanied by an adult. During the Spooks shoot,
Armitage was actually waterboarded to ensure authenticity. The actor, 37,
said he had agreed to do the scene because he was told by experts that it was a ‘humane way of extracting information without hurting people’. However, he said his view changed after his experience: I was strapped to a pallet and laid at an angle with a cloth placed over my mouth. My arms and legs were tied, and we had agreed a signal that when it became too much I would bang my arms on my legs. You start to breathe in and out, but when the water fills everywhere up it just hits you. It changed my opinion completely. I realised that it really is a form of torture that shouldn’t be used. I only lasted five to ten seconds, and the sound of my voice crying out
to stop isn’t me acting. The psychological damage of doing that to someone for even a minute would be indescribable. The Times 27.10.08
Obama has published
the Bush administration’s justification for waterboarding. CIA sources have previously claimed that waterboarding and other forms of torture have saved lives because vital information about terror plots has been discovered. Obama, on the other hand, argues that CIA
interrogation measures ‘reflected, in my view, us losing our moral bearings’. Casino Royale (12A)
shows James Bond being literally bollocked in a torture cell; sitting on a chair naked, he is flagellated from below. The BBFC justify the 12A rating because the blows are off-screen; only the sound effects suggest the violence; and Bond’s flippantly ironic remarks reduce the impact of the violence. Writer and broadcaster John McCarthy, who was held hostage in Lebanon
english and media centre | December 2009 | MediaMagazine 65
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