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The Coming Fight Over TV Violence
gollum123 writes "Time reports the guardians of decency are warning about new trouble, with a capital T, which rhymes with V, which stands for violence. The Parents Television Council (PTC), the group at the vanguard of the TV-sex wars, has lately focused on prime-time blood: power-tool torture on 24, serial killing on Criminal Minds, vivisection on Heroes. And the FCC has prepared a draft report suggesting that Congress authorize it to regulate broadcast violence, as it now does obscenity, and possibly force cable companies to let subscribers opt out of paying for channels that run brutal content. In short, torture is the new sex. Jack Bauer is the new Janet Jackson."
"But if politicians simply respected the audience's choices, stopped posturing against theoretical violence and fictional bad guys, they would have to focus on, say, the thornier problems of stopping actual bloodshed in the real world."
'nuff said
"When in doubt, use brute force."
It's actually quite nice that they've finally realised that sex isn't he only thing that's unsuitable for the children.
Not that I really find myself agreeing with these people. But the fact that they've become more consistent makes me respect them a little more.
I remember back in the 70s the Three Stooges were banned from TV in a lot of areas due to violent content. The original Baretta show died when it was on top because the standard was one violent act per half hour and Robert Blake refused to limit the shows based on the standard, definate hindsight irony. Europe tends to be far more sensitive to violence and far less sensitive to sex. The US has been the opposite traditionally but of late both tend to be red flags.
I think the issue why sex is more regulated then violence is the fact that sexual instinct is in most of us. While the extreme violence is only in people who have problems. It is easy to explain to kids why violence is bad, you see a guy doing violence then he is the bad guy. For Sex it is something natural so the person committing sex is not really a bad guy but it is something they don't want their children to emulate. Telling a kid to Never do something vs. Do it when you are ready or after some goal. Then there is living in a culture where parents told other kids on different goals, some are lax and say it is OK to have Sex when you are ready. Other say when you are an adult, others say when you truly love some one... So we have a cultural problem with Sex to many divergent views and it is confusing to try to teach kids. With less Sex in the media helps reduce the level of confusion on the topic (one less place to show contradicting views). Having a child being taught to be too open minded is a dangerous thing.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
...that in the US, people don't seem to have a problem with a guy's brain blown out with a shotgun on TV, but when a nipple is shown, a big part of the US population is disgusted. It seems to me that some people in the US should check their moral and ethical priorities really.
Of course, it's silly to imply that 24 has a place in the chain of command (as if Jack Bauer gives orders for real-life military torture). It's also scary that they could possibly think 24 has more sway than direct orders. Thus, I believe they want it off the show not to discourage torture, but because 24 puts current military practices in a bad light. Bush etc. have already ordered torture (although they refuse to call it such - and to think Clinton's "is" definition was once considered significant).
Now we have a concerned group of citizens doing this PR work for the army. If the people don't see it, they're safer/happier/etc.
I could easily add nine or ten other items to the list, and it's been heading that way from the beginning of the century. So, I doubt there really is anything to be pessimistic about. We just have to sit back and watch them implode.
Its not a 'direct line' as you put it, but if you get an entire generation used to 'fake' violence in this manner, they will be more accepting of it later on when it becomes real.
And if you dont belive me, just do some research on the subject in psychological journals.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
Let me explain to you how the system really works. Having been one of said easily influenced soldiers I have intimate knowledge of this. You're out on a patrol, you come upon a guy who is setting up a roadside bomb. Now more than likely this isn't really the guy you want as he's just some poor sod that a real bad guy paid to have do this. The bad guy that paid him isn't really even the really bad dude, he's just some farmer that got mixed up with the wrong crowd. You know this, so you catch the guy setting up the bomb, cuff him and take him back to your patrol base. When you reach the patrol base you have to fill out a very extensive form detailing everything that was said and done to the guy. When I say detail I mean it too. After that the guy you captured is taken to a holding area where he's given food and water and basically anything he needs even though what he was doing could have killed you or your best friend. Next time a convoy comes around which is usually a few hours they take this guy to the main base where all the interrogators hang out. These guys spend up to two years in school learing how to interrogate without using torture. They know how to mind fsck you, and they're really good at it. These guys never have to do anything that harms you because they're better than lawyer at playing word games and will generally know within the first few minutes whether you're worth keeping or not. The problems like Abu Ghraib arise because you have people that guard these guys and take it upon themselves to try and find out information. Which I don't have to say is illegal and the real interrogators will have your ass if they find out about it. That's the main point of failure. Now after the interrogator has talked with the guy for a while, if he's worth keeping they will, if not they'll give him a job working on public works projects in the city. That's how the system really works, and maybe people should actually do their research before spouting off with something that you have no clue about and put good people in a bad light.
"Some books contain the machinery required to create and sustain universes."-Tycho
People who feel powerless cling to icons like Jack Bauer. They can't affect changes in their own life, but they like to watch Jack break laws in his role as a US civil servant. They can't get ahead in life, but if they could become a 'secret agent' they would have authority for once, and would be able to abuse that authority to their own ends...just like Jack. Just like corrupt police forces. Hmm.
Blar.
As a 97E Army interrogator myself, chuckymonkey's message is correct for the most part, and needs no major corrections.
Yvanhoe above brought up a really silly situation involving an officer and a lower enlisted. In that case, the officer would end up losing his commission and he would be thrown into jail for issuing an unlawful order. If the lower enlisted followed through with the order instead of questioning it and informing the officer that it was an unlawful order, he would receive a lesser, but still harsh, punishment. It is absolutely illegal for a non-certified interrogator to attempt or conduct an interrogation.
With the media breathing down our necks, the ability to perform our job is being stifled. I'm not talking about being worried about breaking the law now that we're being watched, but rather the massive bureaucratic requirements now needed to perform simply tasks in our job are affecting our ability to collect timely and accurate information. An example would be the good cop/bad cop technique, which now requires permission from an officer well above our level. For a detainee that is only going to be held for a certain short amount of time, there is no way we would have a chance of filling out the memos, getting permission, and interrogating the guy before he is either released or sent on to a central facility. There are other simple techniques that have insane bureaucratic requirements that are seriously tweaking our effectiveness on the battlefield.
Alright, let's switch gears for a minute. This video's been out for a while and I'm sure a lot of you have already seen it, however here it is again:
US Army: Lazy Ramadi.
Also check out:
British Army: Is this the way to Amarillo?
War crimes, applied properly are a good thing. What's a war crime now, wasn't in WWII. One of the better thought of US generals (Bradley) in the European theater left standing orders that German snipers were not to be brought back alive. Occasionally there were orders to capture German's with specific knowledge like snipers, but that was accompanied by a bounty, and when that period of interest in them had passed, they didn't survive contact with the allies. By modern standards they were murdered. Same thing in Japan. Someone would fuck with a soldier, and they got smoked. Period.
But why is this generally a good thing that should happen more? Well, ulitmately it results in less death. I know, what a bizaar assertion. But there are facts to back this up, such as Sherman's march in the civil war. He remains one of the most hated generals of the union in the south, but he actually killed disproportionately fewer people. And yet he's *still* the most hated. But it's not like that's the only example. The Mongol empire was essentially run with submition or extermination as the policy. Often life improved in cities that surrendered. And in fact Russia and China were largely solidified and given identity under the Mongol conquest, avoiding who knows how many internal wars. Indeed, that is why it would have been so desirable in Iraq. A larger more readily violent force would likely have prevented the coming civil war. But the Americans aren't really dangerous because they have rules about who and when they can shoot. In the end, wholey innocent good people do die, but those that live don't have to try to scrape out an existance in perpetual war. There was a reason the American Indian wars ended peacefully, in the end, the losers just didn't have any other choice beyond peace in the grave or out. And to this day, I've not heard one person cry for poor Carthage.
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a concerned group of citizens doing this PR work for the army. I considered 24 to be part of the pop-culture pro-torture propaganda. So I find it odd, not scary, that the pentagon is now telling them to cut it back...
I don't watch 24, but I did see a member of congress on tv (ok, the Daily Show) say that since so many people loved Jack Bauer, and that Jack Bauer uses torture, therefore the American people have spoken and declared torture to be fine. I'm thinking it's stuff like that that prompted the Pentagon's distancing. Getting people desensitized to the idea of torture in the name of national security is one thing, but that elected representative was taking it too far.
As for the pop-culture propaganda, I recently caught a bit of Enterprise (which I also never really watched) on rerun, from the season where the Enterprise is going deep in enemy territory to disarm a weapon of mass destruction that someone from the future told 'em about (ripped from 2003's headlines!) where captain Archer had an uncooperative POW, and he took him to an airlock to scare and hurt him into talking (an airlock with a convenient slow air drain).
Of course, Enterprise being a badly written show, his effort were transparent and you just know the guy will give in and Archer won't go through with it, but it struck me because it reminded me of Malcom Reynolds putting Jayne in the airlock on Firefly. The difference being, in Firefly you believed he would actually do it, but mostly that in Enterprise the airlock torture was glamourized as an effective way to get reliable information. Firefly never gave me the impression that torture was okay (in fact, it was shown in another ep as futile and sadistic). One show got shitcanned despite being the best sci-fi on TV at the time, the other dragged on long past the point where it was evident that it was a turd with a Federation isignia tacked on. I see the work of the media branch of the military-industry-congress complex here, funding a message and not another.
P.S. Galactica's version of that scenario was the most ambiguous, and arguably the better one: the torture wasn't working, the airlock was used to put a stop to it through summary execution, but the prisoner doesn't really die, being a downloadable conciousness... Galactica being Firefly's evolutionary descendant (hey, same SFX team, ship-cameo in the pilot episode), I'm not surprised they also take the non-apologetic stance on torture, but a more tv-friendly attitude towards summary execution (where would a how be without bad guys being killed off?)
You can't take the sky from me...
please see http://www.salon.com/wire/ap/D8N7KT707.html