Depiction of torture in Netflix’s Daredevil: what’s wrong with this picture?
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“Last Week Tonight”, comedian John Oliver’s TV show, recently discussed how the US does torture and why it doesn’t work.
“Even if torture did work – which it doesn’t – America should not be a country that tortures people.”
— Naureen Shah, ‘“Torture is Not Just Something that Happens to Mel Gibson”: 4 Things You Need to Know about John Oliver’s Takedown of CIA Torture’, June 16, 2015
This is not a new idea. Napoleon denounced the practice over two centuries ago, and noted that torture was not a reliable means of getting information.
L’usage barbare de faire bàtonner les hommes prévenus d’avoir des secrets importants à révéler doit être aboli. Il a été reconnu de tout temps que cette manière d’interroger les hommes, en les mettant à la torture, ne produit aucun bien. Les malheureux disent tout ce qui leur vient à la tête et tout ce qu’ils voient qu’on désire savoir. En conséquence, le général en chef défend d’employer un moyen que réprouvent la raison et l’humanité.
— Napoleon Bonaparte, November 11, 1798
https://archive.org/stream/correspondancede05naporich#page/128/mode/2up
https://books.google.com/books?id=YIDRAAAAMAAJ&pg=PA128
The barbarous custom of whipping men suspected of having important secrets to reveal must be abolished. It has always been recognized that this method of interrogation, by putting men to the torture, is useless. The wretches say whatever comes into their heads and whatever they think one wants to believe. Consequently, the Commander-in-Chief forbids the use of a method which is contrary to reason and humanity.
— translator John Eldred Howard, “Letters and Documents of Napoleon: The rise to power”, published 1961
https://books.google.com/books?id=dfYpAAAAYAAJ
https://archive.org/stream/lettersofdocumen006632mbp#page/n315/mode/2up
So why don’t writers of fiction use the idea that torture is unreliable? To be specific, why don’t the writers of Netflix’s Daredevil series use it?
I love the characters and cinematography of this show, but it bothers me how much the series relies on the idea that torture works.
The flunky saves himself from being hurled off the roof by shouting “Body armor! Yeah! I can tell you about that!”
Now, this would have been the perfect time to have Murdock learn a lesson about the unreliability of information gained under duress. I would have forgiven much of the earlier-season ugliness had the show taken this tack, sending Murdock on a fruitless hunt based on the desperate ramblings of the rooftop guy, who, like literally every torture victim ever in the real world, just said whatever he thought his torturer wanted to hear in order to save himself from more pain. Instead, one scene later, Murdock immediately finds the guy responsible for Fisk’s armor, and beats him until he agrees to make a suit of armor for Murdock as well. And I found that quite a let-down.
— Jason McIntosh, ‘“Daredevil” owns its violence, but not its torture’, April 16, 2015
http://blog.jmac.org/2015-04-16-8220daredevil8221-owns-its-violence-but-not-its-torture.html
One of Matt Murdock’s abilities is enhanced hearing, allowing him to detect changes in heart beat or breathing that reveal a lie. Unfortunately, polygraphs (“lie detectors”) that work on this principle are not reliable either, even when using machines without human biases.
The accuracy (i.e., validity) of polygraph testing has long been controversial. An underlying problem is theoretical: There is no evidence that any pattern of physiological reactions is unique to deception. An honest person may be nervous when answering truthfully and a dishonest person may be non-anxious. Also, there are few good studies that validate the ability of polygraph procedures to detect deception. As Dr. Saxe and Israeli psychologist Gershon Ben-Shahar (1999) note, “it may, in fact, be impossible to conduct a proper validity study.” In real-world situations, it’s very difficult to know what the truth is.
— American Psychological Association, “The Truth About Lie Detectors (aka Polygraph Tests)”, August 5, 2004
http://www.apa.org/research/action/polygraph.aspx
But assume for sake of argument that Daredevil’s lie-detector is perfectly accurate. Torture still wouldn’t work.
“psychologists and others who write about physical or psychological duress frequently object that under sufficient pressure subjects usually yield but that their ability to recall and communicate information accurately is as impaired as the will to resist”
— David R. Witzling, “Torture’s inefficiency long established”, December 4, 2015
http://science.sciencemag.org/content/350/6265/1176.2.full
https://doi.org/10.1126/science.350.6265.1176-b
Not only does torture not prevent people from lying, but a person being tortured may think they are telling the truth but still give up inaccurate or misleading information because, well, they aren’t thinking clearly.
Say Daredevil is trying to get an address. The torture victim may easily give what he thinks is the correct address, but misremember part of the address when reciting it. Daredevil’s lie-detecting powers work against him and innocent people die as a direct result.
It would be easy to mix up the numbers in a house number or mix up a street and an avenue. In Chicago, for example, “Kedzie” sounds a lot like “Kinzie” to the casual ear, as do names like “Hermitage” and “Armitage”, “Touhy” and “Dewey”, or “North Avenue West” and “Northwest Avenue”.
(I have personally drove about a mile out of my way because I entered a house number as 1408 instead of 1048 when I was using a GPS navigator.)
This is not to say that torture is peculiar to the Daredevil TV series; Daredevil also tortured people in the comic books, and Batman did the same thing.
None of this is to say that the very idea of Daredevil torturing a criminal is beyond consideration. It has roots in some of the best source material available from writers and artists like Frank Miller and Brian Michael Bendis. The significant question to consider is context; to ask how Daredevil presents torture.
[ … ]
It is the classic “ticking time bomb” scenario presented in courtrooms in order to justify the use of torture, when no other options could potentially protect human lives in a timely manner. Whether or not you personally agree with the argument, it is one with some merit.
— Chase Magnett, “Daredevil, Torture, and the Importance of Context”, April 13, 2015
http://comicbook.com/2015/04/13/daredevil-torture-and-the-importance-of-context/
But does the “ticking time bomb” argument have merit?
Along came Jack Bauer and the repeating “ticking time bomb” scenario that made torture not only necessary, but justified.
— Adam Richter, “‘Daredevil’ continues a sad tradition of endorsing torture”, April 14, 2015
Consider a time pressure situation where the information is only available in the mind of the subject of interrogation.
What fool would intentionally impair that mind with physical violence?
When time is of the essence, we should use interrogation, not torture.
Rather, the purpose of torture is to make the people trying to get the information feel more in control and more powerful and afterwards to justify the idea that they did their best under the circumstances.
“We did all we could do and then some. The gloves came off. We even had to torture them to make them talk.”
This is frequently accompanied by a charade of self-righteous “noble sacrifice” in which the people doing the torture must give up some of their humanity for the sake of protecting innocents, a kind of patriarchal “this hurts me more than it hurts you”.
But do not be deceived.
Ending the practice of torture would seem to involve more than a new, convincing demonstration of its inutility as a means of obtaining information. In this light, then, perhaps the more important assumption to reexamine relates to the disturbing notion that torture has any purpose beyond the exacting of pain, control, and domination.
— David R. Witzling, “Torture’s inefficiency long established”, December 4, 2015