a thinker takes on a torture tale. slavoj zizek on zero dark thirty

This take, on  a film that really needs to be taken on, is by a thinker and a philosopher who points out the problems with it's endorsement of torture. It is an easy read though. A necessary read.

The normalisation of Torture is proceeding apace. Hugely helped by an American Leni Riefenstahl playing the Big Propaganda game for another, increasingly fascist, and frightening, Nation. A nation that seems to be using more than just the Israeli playbook in it's Global War On Terror.  Note the "If you don't talk to us, we will deliver you to Israel" line from the film. It says a lot. 

Zero Dark Thirty: Hollywood's gift to American power

Many have pointed out that Kathryn Bigelow's film endorses torture. But why has such a film been made now?

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. When Maya, the film's heroine, first witnesses waterboarding, she is a little shocked, but she quickly learns the ropes; later in the film she coldly blackmails a high-level Arab prisoner with, 

There is something deeply disturbing in how, later, he changes from a torturer in jeans to a well-dressed Washington bureaucrat. This is normalisation at its purest and most efficient – there is a little unease, more about the hurt sensitivity than about ethics, but the job has to be done. This awareness of the torturer's hurt sensitivity as the (main) human cost of torture ensures that the film is not cheap rightwing propaganda: the psychological complexity is depicted so that liberals can enjoy the film without feeling guilty. This is why Zero Dark Thirty is much worse than 24, where at least Jack Bauer breaks down at the series finale.

The debate about whether waterboarding is torture or not should be dropped as an obvious nonsense: why, if not by causing pain and fear of death, does waterboarding make hardened terrorist-suspects talk? The replacement of the word "torture" with "enhanced interrogation technique" is an extension of politically correct logic: brutal violence practised by the state is made publicly acceptable when language is changed.

So what about the "realist" argument: torture has always existed, so is it not better to at least talk publicly about it? This, exactly, is the problem. If torture was always going on, why are those in power now telling us openly about it? There is only one answer: to normalise it, to lower our ethical standards.

Torture saves lives? Maybe, but for sure it loses souls – and its most obscene justification is to claim that a true hero is ready to forsake his or her soul to save the lives of his or her countrymen. The normalisation of torture in Zero Dark Thirty is a sign of the moral vacuum we are gradually approaching. If there is any doubt about this, try to imagine a major Hollywood film depicting torture in a similar way 20 years ago. It is unthinkable.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2013/jan/25/zero-dark-thirty-normalises-torture-unjustifiable