Torture in Fiction: Transmetropolitan, Up on the Roof
If you like comic books there’s a good chance you’ll have heard of Warren Ellis’ Transmetropolitan. Along with Watchmen and The Sandman it’s one of the books often cited as showing that Western comics weren’t just for children and could tackle serious themes.
It’s the story of Spider Jerusalem, a foul-mouthed, blisteringly angry gonzo journalist, set in a sci fi world where matter can be rearranged in your home and people rewrite their genetic code for fun or fashion. This comic is a real favourite of mine, in large part because Spider, with his disgusting personal habits, relentless attacks on hypocrisy and peculiar moral compass is (I think) one of the greatest depictions of a Trickster figure in modern literature. But I’m not here to talk about Tricksters.
Once again I’m rating the depiction and use of torture, not the story 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.
In Up on the Roof Spider covers an minority population’s failed secession attempt. The ‘Transients’, people who choose to turn themselves into human/alien hybrids, hold what begins as a peaceful protest against the City’s Civic Centre. When the demonstration turns violent police forces are sent in an a full scale riot erupts.
Spider runs into the middle of it all, blags his way into a strip club and writes his coverage of the riot from a roof looking down. He presents evidence that people were paid to turn the demonstration violent and graphically covers the violence inflicted by police officers on the local population.
This coverage leads to the police being called off.
On his way home a police car pulls up alongside Spider. Four large officers step out. Spider is surrounded and beaten with batons, kicked and punched. Before they leave the police threaten to kill Spider if he ever makes them look bad again.
Spider, bruised and bloodied, gets up and laughs.
1) The art. Good Gods the art. Darrick Robertson’s pencil work coupled with the fantastic colour provided by Aiken, Kryssing and Giordano really helps make this story. Comics (and video games) are often accused of glamorising and glorifying violence, showing it like a kind of pornography. The violence in this issue is brutal, horrific and above all it feels very real. The colours and background can be outlandish but it’s more about the emotion conveyed: pain, fear, despair and defiance which shine through.
2) The art really doesn’t gloss over the physical filth of torture. Blood, dirt and broken bones predominate. This isn’t sexy. It isn’t heroic. It isn’t cleaned or prettied up in any way. And it’s more impactful for it.
3) ‘Enjoying this? You like the way I describe disgusting shit happening to people you probably walked past in the street last week? Good. You earned it. With your silence.’ Spider’s column, his description of the events unfolding before him, is an incredibly hard hitting piece of writing. Remorseless in its apportioning of blame, not just to the police doing the torturing or the politicians condoning it but the general public who are prepared to let it slide. Spider’s analysis shows torture as a facet of social structures, structures that we support by inaction.
4) The general structure of the story and the riot are incredibly, frighteningly, true to life. It showcases disproportionate violent responses from authority in a way that’s horribly reminiscent of police responses to minority protests the world over.
5) Despite the incredible level of technology in this society the torture we see is resolutely and realistically low tech. Beatings predominate, police boots on faces and fingers, batons, fists. There are mentions of incapacity sprays and ‘nerve bomblets’ and a single shot of what looks like Taser use.
6) The reasons the attack stops are completely nonviolent: ‘So Royce explains that Civic Center got drowned in calls from people reading my column live off SPKF. Real-time public condemnation of the Angels 8 scam jammed up their switchboard. Civil rights groups were all over the cops like pox.’ A rare and realistically handled case of nonviolence being shown as effective in fiction.
7) The way Spider is attacked is achingly true to life. It reminds me vividly of recent cases of attacks on journalists. The suddenness, the set up and the motivations all ring incredibly true.
8) There’s no big heroic moment in the scene when Spider is beaten. He isn’t suddenly capable of fighting off four larger, armed men. He hits the ground before he even seems to register what’s happening and curls around himself as he’s kicked.
9) Spider’s immediate response after being beaten to a bloody pulp is a wonderful combination of realistic resistance to torture and using the aftermath of torture to showcase a character’s personality: ‘I’m here to stay! Shoot me and I’ll spit your goddamn bullets back in your face! I’m Spider Jerusalem and fuck all of you!’
10) Spider isn’t the only one affected by the attack in the long term; one of the women on the roof with him goes on to become his assistant, spurred on in part by the riot. The overall story comes back to the riot again and again as the plot dives deeper into an exploration of corruption, political ill-will, state violence and the role of journalism in fomenting change.
11) The narrative tone is resolutely on the side of the powerless and the people suffering.
12) Intentionally or not Spider does exhibit behaviours that could be read as symptoms of torture. He’s socially isolated, shows difficult interacting with people, an addict and often seems to suffer from severe mood swings.
I’m honestly struggling to think of something. The closest I can get to a negative is Spider himself.
He’s an abrasive, angry and often violent bastard.
In the course of this issue alone he threatens at least two people with violence and hits several people with a car as he attempts to get into the heart of the riot. In the preceding issue he assaults three people and shoots wildly into a bar.
Spider is not supposed to be a ‘good guy’ or a character that people should emulate.
But I don’t think that’s necessarily a bad thing or even a bad depiction of torture. Fiction should have room for characters, even main characters, to do bad things.
There are occasions when the series handles torture badly, it falls into the unrealistic ‘torture leads to accurate information’ trope at least once later on. But this issue, for all its sci fi trappings, is incredibly realistic.
It shows police brutality, torture as a function of government systems and neatly, engagingly outlines the ways in which we are culpable.
It shows the pointlessness and cruelty of that violence. And it shows how exposure to that can galvanise people to fight for change.
It shows the resilience and defiance of victims. It shows authorities targeting people who criticise them.
And it uses this incident to define much of the rest of the story, turning it into a case study for a larger critique of the injustice and violence within social systems.
Up on the Roof is a bloody good piece of storytelling and an excellent handling of torture.
