Well, you should. The first series has its own share of cliches (like the “oh no we’re going to die but at the last minute a miracle happens” device) and is slightly on the dumb side, but at least it’s not too stupid. But the later ones, from what I understand, seem to have totally jumped the shark.

Surely that would mean you could disprove the anecdote ‘black guys never get to live in horror movies’ by listing a lot of horror movies in which there were no black guys in the movie at all?

It’s not mandatory for a rom com to feature a gay best friend, does that mean you can say nothing about a ‘gay best friend’ stereotype in rom coms?

Ted Cofell

Hey, an actual example. Pity I haven’t seen that episode to have any idea whether it counts or not.

And in the genre of “contemporary action/thriller movies”, torture “sometimes” comes up. That is, it sometimes doesn’t come up. Which means it’s not a genre convention.

Not that 24 even fits neatly into the “action/thriller” genre, at least if you consider that to be distinct from the “police procedural”. 24 is a sort of weird cross between the lone superhero movie and a procedural. In superhero movies you won’t find stuff like the President of the United States engaging in a long discussion with his cabinet on the pros and cons of arbitrary internment, or long digressions into office politics.

= = =

Also, in the first 24 series, Ted Cofell decided to let himself die rather than surrendering information to Jack Bauer. I don’t think that’s supposed to show the efficacy of torture.

I could pretty easily list 30 examples of scenes from such movies which were clearly scripted with the intent of conveying the ideas ‘torture is cool’, ‘torture works’, ‘heroes torture, fools complain’.

I haven’t seen every single such american film and TV show, so it is possible there is one or two out there that break the convention. Hence the question, whilch I’ll rephrase for clarity:

Can anyone point to a US-made contemporary thriller or action movie in the last 30 years in which torture or potential torture by a protagonist is presented as both morally and pragmatically wrong, as evil-stupid, not evil-cool?

Some genres, like rom coms, torture never comes up (feel free to correct me on that one). In other genres, say war movies (e.g. Battle of Algiers), superhero comics, spy movies, horror movies, sometimes it does. When it does, in each of those it is treated differently.

It’s probably a structural issue, if you have a protagonist who is fundamentally on the same side as both the LAPD and the USMC, you need some plot contrivance to explain why your lone rogue hero can solve a problem that they can’t – willingness to break the rules is one such. There’s also the issue of wanting to signify a difference from other genres, such as children’s programs like the A Team which have a completely different (and equally unrealistic) approach to violence in general.

When you talk about “genre conventions”, you need to say which genre specifically you are talking about. Is it the genre of action movies? Or crime movies? Or what?

Then, you need to look at the entire genre to see if such and such really is a “genre convention”. Not just a subset of the genre which you define arbitrarily.

Again, stop being stupid.

I couldn’t have made myself clearer:

“if your very definitions of specific ‘genres’ include such things as ‘actually dealt with torture’ [...] then your idea of what a ‘genre’ is is a pretty wacked one.”

I’d go so far to say that the term “Warporn” has much greater claim to being a genre descriptor than “Films Which Touch On Torture”. Because “Warporn”, much like “Romantic Comedy”, “Horror”, etc. is a description of the work as a whole. While “Films Which Touch On Torture” is at best a description of a small portion of the main plot.

Stop being stupid. Please.

In my understanding of the world, cause and effect tends to move in a forwards direction in time. An explanation of events that doesn’t involve a time machine is that movies influence voters, who influence politicians, who influence the military.

‘Goalpost moving at work. First you said that the protagonist should be “confronted with the option of torturing someone”, now you say that “torture” should be “actually dealt with”.’

I would have thought the word ‘confronted’ implied the issue was dealt with, or at least mentioned? You can hardly use Friends as an example of protagonists confronting the torture issue.

I can actually think of one recent example of what I would like to see, an episode of the excellent UK ‘Life on Mars’ (series 2 starts tonight…). Maybe if the rumoured US version of that is made, my question will become answerable.

‘In short, 24 is a series for stupid people.’

Just to be clear:

stupid events in a film -> whatever.

stupid genre conventions -> worth pointing out

One black guy dies first in a horror movie: shrug

Noone can think of an example of a black guy making it out alive: hmmm…

Goalpost moving at work. First you said that the protagonist should be “confronted with the option of torturing someone”, now you say that “torture” should be “actually dealt with”.

And besides, if your very definitions of specific “genres” include such things as “actually dealt with torture” or “perpetrate false racist or homophobic sterotypes”, then your idea of what a “genre” is is a pretty wacked one. I mean, can anyone imagine an entry on IMDb that goes like this?

Genre: Drama / Deals With Torture

= = =

Again, 24 apparently tells us that a Devoutly Islamic Terrorist will break immediately under torture, while a Devoutly Patriotic American can keep his silence for two years. In short, 24 is a series for stupid people. Which is why I stopped watching it.

You’re fighting a straw man Soru. I haven’t noticed anyone in this thread actually arguing that 24 should be banned.

Your other point misses the…er…point.

You wrote:

‘Can anyone name a US TV series or film from the last 30 years in which the protagonist, while not wearing spandex tights, was confronted with the option of torturing someone, chose not to, and that decision worked out for them?’

That may be true or it may not. But as you may have noticed the moral climate in the United States has changed somewhat since the ‘50s and ‘60s. Thirty or forty years ago it was perfectly possible for respectable law abiding folks (like my parents) to look to the United States as a beacon of morality and justice in a morally ambiguous world, and, to a certain extent (if only rhetorically) many Americans attempted to live up to those ideals.

However, we now live in a world in which the following exchange can take place:

‘In a January 2006 debate, (John) Yoo was asked if any law could stop the president, if he “deems that he’s got to torture somebody,” from, say, “crushing the testicles of the person’s child.” Yoo’s response: “I think it depends on why the president thinks he needs to do that.”’

It is in this excitingly new and different moral landscape that a show like 24 becomes deeply problematic and disturbing.

I can’t say I have seen every episode of every spin-off, but can you point to one that actually dealt with torture (or ‘torture-lite’) as something that either came up and was rejected, or was tried and failed, by the protagonists?

You can’t counter a point about sexual stereotypes in rom-com movies by pointing to two characters in a political thriller that happen to be married in a way that is not focused on in the plot or dialog.

Fact is, if you make movies that perpetrate false racist or homophobic sterotypes, sooner or later some jerk-wad politician is going to come along and attempt to win the votes of those people who believed the story you just told.

What is needed is not censorship, but for someone somewhere to make a populist movie that treats things more realistically, so that the genre conventions become recognised as such.