I suppose there’s a degree to which we must give superheroes beating criminals for information a pass just by the nature of the genre, the same way we give their vigilantism a pass but probably wouldn’t approve of anyone in real life kidnapping a criminal, pounding the shit out of them, and hanging them unconscious from a lamppost outside One Police Plaza. But I think that a good writer, on some level or other, owns up to the ickiness of this behavior. After all, superheroes routinely do things to criminals in their power that we would classify as war crimes if the Bush Administration did them. Far be it from me to impose a political litmus test on fiction regarding this or any issue, but I like to assume that thinking people who make up stories for a living have given this topic some thought (hopefully even before America started routinely doing this), and thus if a writer doesn’t comment in some way on how profoundly fucked-up this aspect of superheroic behavior is, it’s on them.
A case in point is Justice League: Cry for Justice #1. For real, there was a major, major disconnect between how awesome Ryan Choi kept saying Ray Palmer was in the comic, and how awesome writer James Robinson kept saying Ray Palmer was in the supplemental material, and the fact that his main action beat in this issue was torturing Killer Moth. That’s not awesome!
I often think of the scene in The Dark Knight Returns where Batman throws a guy through a window, informs him that he’s bleeding out, and the only way Batman will bring him to a hospital is if he coughs up info. Miller’s writing is such that even though we’re obviously supposed to see Batman as a hero, we are also to understand that he is a dangerous, disturbed man, and that this conduct is not particularly honorable–it’s something his demons have driven him to do.
Another case: recently Ed Brubaker had a scene where Daredevil tortured some nigh-invulnerable supervillain by lighting him on fire or something like that. Now it turned out that he wasn’t actually doing this–I forget how it worked, but I think it was one of those “power of suggestion” deals, like how you read about in frat initiations when they tell the initiate that they’re going to be branded but then touch them with an ice cube, the burn mark appears anyway. But still, Brubaker wrote the scene in such a way that there was no doubt that what Daredevil was doing was a seriously messed-up act by a seriously messed-up man.
And of course there are any number of similar examples, from Rorschach even to that horrible, horrible JMS Spider-Man storyline after Aunt May got shot where he was like “no more Mr. Nice Spidey, I’m going to break fingers and make deals with devils and abandon my marriage every day until I get my octogenarian aunt back.”
The Atom’s conduct in this issue, on the other hand, was just gross–extra gross, given his torture technique’s resonance with his and his wife’s own history, as a friend of mine pointed out.
At any rate, isn’t torture what bad guys do?
Then there’s the whole issue of the unreliability of information extracted through torture, which no one seems to want to address in comics or anywhere else. But that’s another story, I suppose.
You know, I’d have no problem with Ray Palmer doing what he did *if* it was addressed that his experiences in the DC Universe of late had affected his sense of what is justifiable AND if Ryan had been a little bit put off by the act – but none of that was in there. As you point out, Ryan just seems to be so in awe of Palmer that he sees that little bit of torture as a clever use of the shrinking ability.
It just read as another riff on “extreme” superheroics like those you mention above – something to make readers go “damn, he’s hardcore!” Not that the rest of the issue was all that hot, but that moment in particular stuck out as really playing to the cheap seats.
I know Robinson has said this series delves into the differences between justice and vengeance, but by not having Ryan at least be somewhat taken aback by Palmer’s actions, it kind of paints the whole scene as fanwank.
“[I]f a writer doesn’t comment in some way on how profoundly fucked-up this aspect of superheroic behavior is, it’s on them.”
I vehemently disagree, Sean, unless by “comment” you mean something like “explores the issue in a way that feels authentic and enables me to experience it through the eyes of the torturer or the victim.”
Experience is infinitely more convincing than what other people tell you, and good story-telling of any kind approximates experience.
Which reminds me: The Pentagon — Bush-era Pentagon, no less — once tried to persuade the makers of 24 to tone down the torture scenes, out of concern that their own people in the field might take Jack Bauer’s methods seriously.
That’s what I meant, Marc-Oliver. Lectures, even well-intentioned lectures, make for piss-poor art/entertainment. Of course I’d like anyone who tackles this topic to do so in a convincing, you-are-there way.
Sean: Yeah.
Isn’t this a limitation of the superhero trope: That without external limitations of genuine consequence, their use of power is always solely at their discretion and checked only by the inherent “goodness” of the people doing it or the inherent evil of those on the business end of it. Short of some universe that took a Marvel-style registration thing seriously, superheroes always have the post-Bush problem of torture under the Obama admin. We want to believe Obama won’t do it because he’s not that kind of guy, but the lack of a firm legal framework to hold him accountable means that we’ve always got to just trust to in his moral correctness.
As an aside, perhaps this is a “eye of the beholder” thing, but I don’t see that Miller comments much on the moral limitations of torture in Dark Knight Returns.
First, there’s the troubling fact that, in the world of DKR, torture always seems to work no matter who does it or for what reason. Batman puts a dude through a window, he talks. Batman dangles a dude off a building, he talks (and Batman says it’s kinda fun to hear him scream in terror). Baddies torture Selina, she flaps her gums.
Who gets tortured is interesting as well. Bats never seems to torture anybody who does not “need” it. While the thugs and criminals Bats abuses always give up the info, Bats does not torture the general who armed the Mutants gang because that general was just in it to get money for his sick wife and was not “evil.” That general’s innate goodness causes him to give up the information and kill himself honorably (so honorably, in fact, that Batman subtly wraps him an a freakin’ American flag).
In DKR, torture seems to be just another expression of strength and it is the intentionality of the strong man and the vileness of the victim that justifies or not.
I’m willing to forgive Ray Palmer torturing Killer Moth if it involved him pushing him dangerously close to a giant lightbulb.
you just got ‘spurged’
Tom, may I suggest you try your hand at the Lego Batman video game? Plenty of Killer Moth/lightbulb gags in that one.
I wrote a couple of essays in response to yours.
The more recent, “Torture Garden,” references a boo-boo in “Supertorture.”
Carnival of souls
* Yesterday I put out a call for review requests. If there’s a comic you’d like me to review, let me know in the comments and if I have it I’ll try to review it. (Try not to suggest a…