Torture, Television, and Social Responsibility

I have been meaning to write for a while about how much I love "Grimm". That will still happen, but something put me off Friday night, and I need to get that out of the way first.

At the end of the episode, Viktor and his henchmen were on the trail of Meisner, Adalind, and the baby, and they were there because they had tortured the proximate location out of Sebastien.

Oddly, torture had come up in "Person of Interest" too. My warning flags went up, actually, but they went back down because no information was acquired. I believe the reason that scene happened at all was to remind us that Stanton had no conscience or qualms about anything, and contrast with Reese, even before he meets Finch.

I get that a certain amount of contrivance happens in writing. You want to show certain things, and you find ways to make it work. If it requires too much contortion, the scene doesn't sit right. If demonstrating one person's character causes someone else to act out of character, it will not sit right. The contrivance becomes a problem if it makes the scene too false.

So, the problem that we have is that torture scenes can seem very reasonable and logical if people believe torture works. Since it doesn't, that makes scenes where people get the information they want, whether it involves good people or bad people, false. The problem is that a lot of viewers will not see an issue with the scene, because they also believe torture works, and these scenes reinforce it.

I will gladly agree that no one should be taking their political and ethical beliefs from television shows grounded in fantasy, but it does reinforce. The more you see torture as a viable way of getting information, even when you see the villains using it, the easier it is to justify it as a legitimate intelligence tactic.

Sebastien was water-boarded, just like the various US detainees who did NOT end up revealing the location of Bin Laden. Water-boarding techniques came out of training that was developed for resisting brainwashing. These are techniques that are designed to break people down so they say false things, not so you get the truth out of them. The most realistic outcome would have been Sebastien lying. (The reason the "Person of Interest" scene was not as problematic for me is that they did not get any information out of the prisoner.)

I know the scene is serving other purposes. I am hoping that getting Sebastien in the same vicinity as the other characters means that he has a shot of living. However, this is a show that has magic as a legitimate factor. They could have used some form of divination, or used magic on Sebastien. We saw Frau Pesch take on Adalind's form, they could have had Viktor take on Renard's form and asked Sebastien for help in locating them. There were other options.

The problem is that no one sees the need of other options. Apparently, torture is appearing more and more:

http://www.interpretthis.org/2014/01/05/the-rise-and-rise-of-television-torture

Entertainment has amazing power, and television reaches a lot of people. There have been some really beautiful points about human nature seen on "Grimm". Sebastien's torture is a low note for them. I know they can be better than that.

No one wants to watch straight out propaganda, but keeping an eye out for opportunities to do good should be happening. Reliance on torture shows something that is factually false and morally wrong, and that needs to be known.

Spread the word.

(I have written about this before, but it's been a while: http://sporkful.blogspot.com/2011/06/one-more-thing.html )