Prompt #4: Torture Brings Out The Best In Us

Keep in mind that this post has a lot of spoilers.

Torture is an effective way to get someone's attention in media; it is cruel, emotionally triggering, and  inhumane. The media often portrays the hero or an innocent person as the victim of torture so that the torturers can be dismissed as the "bad guys" with little to no contest. However, what if the tables were turned? What if the "good guys" tortured the "bad guys" for the sake of entertainment? What if justice did not just stop at turning over the criminal to the police? When does torture become entertainment? These are the questions that come up when watching Quentin Tarantino's 2007 film, Death Proof. 

The "tortured hero" plot device is often the most simple way to show how evil the antagonist is, as they are willing to put someone through a cruel process for their selfish and villainous desires. This story arc goes back to the most holy and evil characters of the Western world: Jesus and Satan. Jesus was willingly tortured by Satan as Satan "brings evil and temptation". On the other hand, Jesus was the martyr for everyone's sins, essentially being the "ultimate hero" after suffering through the torture that he endured. From this dynamic, we can see that there is a clear divide between good and evil, tortured and torturer.

When torture is used by the good guys, however, it is not seen as a mechanism for evil. Rather, it is seen as a mechanism for justice. Some may ask, "But isn't torture inherently evil in the first place?" To which I respond: yes. Yes because the very nature of torture itself is evil in that it is inhumane and selfish.

The final scene shows the main female protagonists, Zoe, Abernathy, and Kim, driving in a Dodge Challenger, rear end Mike, the antagonist, in his car, pull him out, and beat him up until he lays unconscious and is, presumably, dead. 

Not knowing anything else about the movie, except for the final scene, may lead you to write off Zoe, Abernathy, and Kim as cruel. However, knowing the context of the movie and that Mike is a sadistic, perverted, and diabolical ex-stuntman who has killed and tried to kill many women including our three main female protagonists makes the final scene feel like a sigh of relief. 

So why is it that a protagonist can use something that only the antagonist should be using? To have a protagonist have both good and evil tendencies makes him or her all the more relatable because no one is perfectly good OR bad; instead, we are a mixture of both. Torturing the "bad guy", like Mike in Death Proof, speaks to our inherent nature that justice must be served, the ultimate form of "torture-tainment". So not only does the final scene feel like the denouement of the film, but it also reveals humanity's need for "eye for an eye" justice. 

To this day, Death Proof remains one of my favorite movies because despite the problematic morality, I know it is just a movie, set in an entirely different universe other than my own. So if killing a man by beating him up with high heeled boots and drop kicks means that justice was served in the Death Proof universe, then I'm fine with it. In fact, I find it totally awesome.  

Prompt #3: Response to Torture

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The op-ed piece, by Anne Applebaum, titled "The Torture Myth"  summarizes the pros and cons (but mainly the cons) about the use of torture and its effectiveness in recent wars. This article has shown me that although torture has been a widely used method of obtaining information, it has not necessarily been effective and that not using torture has actually been more effective than using it. It has also pointed out to me that torture only leads to reciprocation from the other warring party. The op-ed piece in itself is convincing by showing the ineffectiveness of torture from the direct experiences of veterans from modern wars. But it does not answer the question: Is torture right or wrong? The piece as a whole suggests that torture wrong from an objective point of view, but does not mention the morality of it. The purpose of this piece has been well fulfilled: it successfully debunked the myth that torture is an effective method of obtaining information. However, for the piece to be well rounded and be more useful to a clueless person such as myself, a section about the morality of torture would improve the piece as a whole.

As someone who did not get into much politics until this year, I do not have a personal, concrete opinion on torture. However, reading pieces from people who have such certain opinions regarding politics made me notice things about torture that I have not noticed before. Reading the pieces by Dershowitz and Scarry has made me realize two things: 1. Torture is immoral but neither is war; and 2. Torture can be justified in the eyes of the American judicial system. Though my personal studies on torture are not as diverse and in depth as Dershowitz and Scarry, I would have to agree with Scarry more as I believe that Dershowitz believes that the safety of innocent people is more important than the safety of guilty people, which takes away from the main fact that we are all, in the end, just people.