william chen my thoughts, ramblings, rants on this ever-changing world

People need to separate real life from fiction

Books, movies, TV shows create a new world where laws of physics do not exist, miracles happen, and characters don’t react how a normal person would. It’s alright to fantasize the fictional world the media creates, but by the end of the day, you must realize that is a fictional world. It does not exist.

Take the recent popular teenage-girl novel, for example. I’ve never read the Twilight series by Stephenie Meyer, but I’ve read/heard reviews about it. And this FML post proves my point:

Today, my girlfriend dumped me proclaiming she wanted someone more like her “Edward”. I asked her who Edward was. She held up a copy her “Twilight” book. She was talking about a fictional vampire. FML

If anything, this is probably what would’ve happened: CollegeHumor’s “Deleted ‘Twilight’ Sex Scene”

Anyway, back to the point. If you say, “Aww, come on. It’s just a teenage girl who doesn’t know any better.” Okay, let’s move on to my next example: 24 and torture. Anybody who have seen 24 knows it’s a very intense show, and Jack Bauer never gives up a chance to torture someone until the guy gives up the info he wants. In the show, those intel are always accurate – not necessarily true in real life.

It is Day 6, between 10.00 and 11.00 in the hectic schedule of the television series 24, and a normal day at work for Jack Bauer of the Counter Terrorism Unit. “People in this country are dying, and I need some information. Now are you are going to give it to me, or do I have to start hurting you?” Inevitably, he does. A few lurid torture scenes later and the terrorist confesses, the civilised world is saved for another hour or so, and Jack, played by Kiefer Sutherland, is hurtling towards his next violent confrontation with the forces of evil.

This is the central plot of 24, in many respects the only plot of 24, a brilliantly constructed, wildly popular, strikingly timely series based on a single premise that also happens to be untrue. 24 is fiction, and so is the notion that torture produces results.

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Torture is morally repugnant and illegal, but also frequently useless. It certainly extracts confessions, but the resulting intelligence is usually flawed, and often dangerously inaccurate. Instead of undermining insurgency, routine abuse of captives has precisely the opposite effect.

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A person confessing under torture is motivated solely by the need to end the pain, which means telling the person wielding the electrodes whatever he wants to hear. The truth is irrelevant. Indeed, the greater the agony, the more likely is the victim to say whatever is expected. Once one lie has been extracted, more lies follow to back it up.

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Yet the idea that torture works has become deeply embedded in popular culture, thanks in large part to Jack Bauer, whose onscreen behaviour both reflected and reinforced the supposed correlation between inflicting pain and saving lives.

(Source: Times Online)

In this video, “Bill O’Reilly was desperately in search of a good argument for torture, but thanks to Cato Institute legal analyst David Rittgers — a former Army Captain — he came up empty.”

Third argument: special Hollywood effects. Enough said. If not, watch some Mythbusters (If Discovery Channel lies, then I don’t know what to believe anymore…)