Blog Post #4: Zero Dark Thirty, the War on Terror, and Torture
Close your eyes for a moment and imagine that you are in a dark, unfamiliar room. You are exhausted, and you want to sleepââbut you cannot. Your arms are attached to ropes hanging from the ceiling, music blares non-stop throughout the room, and you are covered in bruises. You stay awake, not because you want to, but because your captors have made it impossible to fall asleep.
This was just part of the reality of the torture committed by the CIA against detainees in Pakistan during the manhunt for Osama Bin-Laden, the orchestrator of the 9/11 terror attacks, as depicted in the 2012 film Zero Dark Thirty. However, critics of the film condemned it for its depiction of torture, also known as âenhanced interrogation techniquesâ. Journalists and authors including Emily Bazelon, Michael Wolff, Frank Bruni, Karen J. Greenberg, and Jane Mayer described the film as presenting a pro-torture stance, with the torture of detainees being presented as a necessary evil for the CIA to track down Bin Laden. Notably, John McCain, a U.S. Senator who once suffered torture as a prisoner of war, objected to the film by stating that the portrayal of torture as an effective interrogation method was inaccurate and that the torture committed in the Bin Laden manhunt often produced misleading or false information.Â
The controversial portrayal of torture in Zero Dark Thirty as a necessary and effective interrogation method provides a lens onto the issue of globalization in a post-9/11 world. Since 9/11 and the resulting War on Terror, discussions of terrorism, especially Islamic terrorism from the Middle East, have dominated discourse and turned globalization into an issue of national security from international threats. A consequence of this development has been the injection of themes from the War on Terror, including the normalization of torture against those deemed potential terrorists, into popular media, including film. While some may argue that Zero Dark Thirty is simply a product of its time, it is nonetheless reflective of patterns in the discourse of terrorism and globalization that persist to this day.Â















