Torture in Fiction: Captain America, The Winter Soldier

buckbuckbuck:

keire-ke:

scripttorture:

With its superb fight scenes and stand out performances by a
talented cast, this movie is a fan favourite and cornerstone of the Marvel
Cinematic Universe.

I don’t think you’re going to like what I have to say about
it.

So I’m going to start with the little disclaimer I have for
this series as a quick reminder.

Once again I’m rating
the depiction and use of torture, not the movie itself. I’m trying to
take into account realism (regardless of fantasy or sci fi elements), presence
of any apologist arguments, stereotypes and the narrative treatment of victims
and torturers.

If you are in any way upset by my analysis of this movie or
its characters I advise you to consider both the impact
fictional depictions of torture have in real life and Rule 6 before you
respond.

On to the movie–

The relevant plot details are, well, most of the film. I’ll
try to be as brief as I can.

Steve Roger’s (aka Captain America) boss at SHIELD (Nick
Fury) is assassinated by a mysterious man known as ‘The Winter Soldier’. Before
dying Nick tells Steve that SHIELD itself has been compromised and gives him a
usb.

On refusing to hand over the usb Steve is attacked by a
large group of his former colleges in a lift.

He escapes and teams up with Natasha Romanov aka the Black
Widow. Together they discover that SHIELD has been infiltrated by Hydra, a Nazi
organisation who are particularly interested in SHIELD’s latest weapons project
which they could use to kill millions.

The Winter Soldier, a character who is heavily coded as
mentally ill, is ordered to assassinate them by Hydra.

Steve and Natasha track down a SHIELD/Hydra agent and
threaten him with death or grievous bodily harm unless he gives them
information. They get the information they want.

They clash with the Winter Soldier and during the scuffle he
is unmasked and revealed as Steve’s long lost wartime friend Bucky Barnes.
Steve, Natasha and their friend Sam are all captured by Hydra.

The audience is told that Bucky, apparently now a super-soldier,
was captured by Hydra, tortured and brainwashed. He has been their best
assassin for decades. A scene of his memory being ‘wiped’ follows with props
that are heavily reminiscent of ECT machines.

Steve, Natasha and Sam stage an assault on SHIELD HQ in an
effort to stop the launch of the new weapons. In the process Steve takes over
the comm system and announces Hydra’s plan to the entire base.

Two sympathetic characters are shown resisting Hydra demands
when threatened with death. One of them dies for his trouble.

Steve and Bucky fight until the last weapon is disarmed.
With the threat of civilian casualties gone Steve refuses to fight Bucky and
tries instead to appeal to his humanity, asking him to remember their
friendship. Bucky beats him unconscious but stops short of killing him.

I’m giving it 0/10

The Good

And well that really is the problem: with regards to torture
I cannot think of more than one good thing about this film. Usually I’d throw
the movie at least one point for a single good scene, but in this case I think
the scene is part of a larger entirely negative trend in the narrative.

1)     
The scene I’m thinking of is the attack on Steve in the
lift. About eight or nine people, all armed in various ways, attack Steve at
once. His arms are pinned by several people each while he’s repeatedly shocked
with a device a bit like a cattle prod. This basic set up is extremely true to
life for many cases of police brutality, although a Taser would have been a
more likely weapon.

The Bad

Where to begin?

1)     
Every major
‘good’ character in this movie engages in torture.

Our heroes Steve, Sam and Natasha
torture a Hydra agent for information by threatening to kill him, then throwing
him off a building (Sam catches him before he falls to his death).

This is not just portrayed as good and reasonable but it is played
for laughs. The scene is used to extend a joke about Steve’s dating life.

2)     
The ‘good guys’ obtain accurate, timely, relevant
information through torture. This
never happens in real life. Torture
cannot force someone to give accurate, timely or relevant information. And
it’s a stereotype in fiction that I particularly despise because it has been linked
to the justification of and practice of
torture in real life.

3)     
The ‘bad guy’ they torture does not resist once they
have tortured him. This is extremely unlikely. The data we have at the moment
suggests that torture makes people far
more likely to resist.

4)     
This stands in contrast to the way ‘good’ characters act when threatened
with death or torture. The film consistently shows ‘good’ people resisting torture and ‘bad’ (or in
Bucky’s case mentally ill) people complying
under torture. This is not only wrong; it’s frankly sickening and perpetuates
extremely harmful stereotypes about victims and torture.

5)     
Brainwashing does not work and is a central, important
plot device in the film. The story simply does not work unless violence,
torture and pain can ‘force’ a victim to change sides.

6)     
Torture cannot change hearts and minds. It cannot force
someone to support or work for a cause they are strongly against.

7)     
Memory really
does not work in the way the film suggests. Anything that could remove old,
strongly held memories, such as those of childhood or the victim’s name, would also have removed their memory of how to
drive a car, fight hand to hand, use a gun or virtually anything else Bucky
does in the film.

8)     
Even accounting for the sci-fi idea of removing specific memories, torture and pain
would not force a victim to comply with their captors. In fact it makes
resistance more likely. A Bucky Barnes
without the memory of his friends or the war would still almost certainly
resist Hydra simply because they caused him pain.

9)     
There has never been a recorded case of ECT machines
being used to torture. They have been
used as a form of abuse in some hospitals but they have never been used by
military or terrorist organisations such as Hydra. This is another inaccurate
stereotype: the idea that torture is ‘scientific’ or ‘high-tech’.

10)  The
film assumes that a victim of systematic abuse over decades would be physically and mentally capable of complex
assassinations. Instead the sort of damage to both physical and mental health
this would inflict means that Bucky and Natasha should both be noticeably less capable than
their colleagues. Instead they are more capable than their colleagues,
implying that abuse made them ‘better’ at committing wanton acts of violence.

11)  Both
this film and other Marvel films state that Natasha has both suffered and
committed abuse, yet she shows no severe symptoms. This seems to be narratively
linked to the idea that she is ‘strong’. And I detest the notion that a basic,
bodily reaction to trauma makes victims weak.

Overview

I think the word for this movie’s use of torture is ‘dire’.

It’s not just consistently wrong.

It’s not just based around an impossible, trope laden
premise.

It’s not just running through a check list of every harmful
stereotype that regularly turns up in fiction.

The movie supports the notion that the torture of ‘bad
people’ does not ‘count’.

It shows ‘heroes’, particularly individuals that the
audience is supposed to think are morally above reproach, engaging in torture
and the plot supports and justifies
their doing so. It tells us that really ‘good’, ‘pure’ characters, such as the
titular hero, threaten ‘bad guys’ with torture and then stand back to watch
their friends do the torturing.

It shows victims (ie Bucky) as dangerous and violent and without other symptoms. It shows
torturers like Natasha as without
symptoms. It shows torture as a successful interrogation tactic and shows
torture fundamentally changing hearts and
minds.

Even accounting for sci-fi elements, the movie’s attitude to
and treatment of torture is consistently false, dangerous and fundamentally against the basic principles of human
rights.

Human rights are not for ‘good people’. They are for everyone.
Whatever their race, gender, creed, politics, or crime. Torture is never justified.

And for that reason this movie’s treatment of torture is
quite possibly the worst I’ve ever seen. It is a shining example of how much
torture apologia pervades popular culture.

This, readers, is how not
to write torture.

Disclaimer

Question re: Bucky (setting the “that’s not how memory works” aside) – I think the central premise was less that he was tortured into complying and switching sides, and more that there was some complex psychological mechanism that included him no longer being able to tell sides apart (possibly as a result of memory loss), some extreme form of Stockholm syndrome, PTSD and anything that is leftover from the army.

This is a harsh thing to read when I still want to pretend CAWS is the only MCU movie I enjoy without reservations… (ʘᗩʘ)

i don’t hold catws quite in the same regard so this was an interesting read.