Copyright by Julie Anne Beicken 2015 The Dissertation Committee for Julie Anne Beicken Certifies that this is the approved version of the following dissertation: Terrorism, Television, and Torture: Post-9/11 Morality in Popular Culture Committee: Sheldon Ekland-Olson, Supervisor Michael Young Mounira Maya Charrad Ben Carrington Simone Browne Terrorism, Television, and Torture: Post-9/11 Morality in Popular Culture by Julie Anne Beicken, B.A., M.A. Dissertation Presented to the Faculty of the Graduate School of The University of Texas at Austin in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy The University of Texas at Austin May 2015 Dedication This dissertation is dedicated to Dr. Suzanne Julia Beicken (September 4, 1944-February 13, 2011): mother, friend, musician, teacher, and inspiration to many. Acknowledgements I am indebted to the support, patience, and generosity of my advisor, Dr. Sheldon Ekland-Olson, for helping me get through this project and graduate school. His encouragement, enthusiasm, energy, and sociological insight have been invaluable to my progression through the PhD program. I cannot imagine a more wonderful mentor during my many years at UT. I have been very fortunate to benefit from the expertise and support of a fantastic committee, Drs. Simone Browne, Mounira Maya Charrad, Ben Carrington, and Michael Young. Each one has provided me with wonderful insights and challenges that have made my research more robust and attentive to social complexity. I am greatly appreciative for their patience and guidance. Thanks to my Bikram yoga community for teaching me how to focus and how to find my strength. And thanks to my family for their extensive support throughout this whole process. Thanks to my father, Dr. Peter Beicken, who has sent me every New York Times and Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung article relating to torture since I began looking into this topic. Thanks to my brother and his husband, Sascha Beicken and Jason Morrison, for comic relief when I needed it. Thanks to my dog Max (2003-2014) for patiently sleeping by my side when I wrote. And finally, thanks to my fiancé, Ryan Young, whose inquisitiveness, sense of humor, and love have made this all possible. v Terrorism, Television, and Torture: Post-9/11 Morality in Popular Culture Julie Anne Beicken, PhD The University of Texas at Austin, 2015 Supervisor: Sheldon Ekland-Olson This dissertation analyzes government documents and popular media to explore how 9/11 altered the moral stance on torture in the United States. It considers the emergence of a mainstream consequentialist legitimization of torture, wherein torture is construed as a lesser evil to that of terrorism, in contrast to the deontological position embodied in international law and treaties that torture is always prohibited. Rooted in both political and cultural sociology, this project argues that 9/11 resulted in “cultural trauma” (Sztompka, 2000) in the United States, the evidence of which can be found in a series of government memos from the early 2000s and in the increased portrayal of torturers-as-heroes in popular media. Specifically, a great deal of post-9/11 media that depicts the ‘War on Terror’ relies on a torturing hero to fight terrorism and thwart terrorist attacks. Jack Bauer of Fox’s hit series 24 is the quintessential archetype of this new trope, but the interrogators of Zero Dark Thirty and Showtime’s show Homeland also follow suit. Through a content analysis of the above listed media, as well as ABC’s torture-heavy primetime series Scandal, this project finds that post-9/11 media represent torture as justifiable, effective at gaining life-saving information, and entertaining. In order to track this moral shift, this project analyzes both government documents and pieces of popular media through ethnographic content analysis. It uses vi Ekland-Olson’s (2011) model for how moral systems change, which argues that boundary drawing and the resolution of dilemmas are at the heart of establishing new moral positions. In the case of the ‘War on Terror,’ a boundary has been drawn around terrorists and potential terrorists, deeming them Others who are undeserving of protective mechanisms such as the law. The Othering of suspected terrorists draws on the history of antagonism towards Islam as incompatible with democracy and the West (Said, 1977). This project attends to the Islamophobia of torture-heavy media that depict Muslisms and Arabs as unassimilable Others posing a persistent threat to the Western way of life. It concludes that torture has become a frequent practice of the U.S. government and a staple of post-9/11 entertainment media. vii Table of Contents List of Tables .......................................................................................................... xi Introduction: Torture and Popular Culture in the Twenty-First Century ............... 1 Morality .......................................................................................................... 7 Risk society and insecurity in the modern age ............................................. 10 Creating terrorist others ................................................................................ 13 Torture: definition, history, and relationship to the ‘war on terror’ ............. 16 History of Torture ................................................................................ 18 Torture and the ‘War on Terror’ ......................................................... 20 The Torture Debate ............................................................................. 22 Media, Politics, and Popular Culture ........................................................... 29 Methodology ................................................................................................ 33 Chapter Outline ............................................................................................ 38 Chapter One: Terrorism, Television and Torture: Dehumanization and the Construction of the Terrorist Other ............................................................. 42 Who Counts as Human? Othering and Torture ............................................ 42 Hollywood .................................................................................................... 50 24: Terrorists are Taking Over ..................................................................... 54 Homeland: Muslim = Terrorist .................................................................... 62 Zero Dark Thirty: Pakistan is “kind of fucked up” ...................................... 67 Scandal: Different Kinds of Others .............................................................. 72 Conclusion .................................................................................................... 76 Chapter Two: Geneva Doesn’t Apply: Analysis of Government Documents on Torture ...................................................................................................................... 77 A New Kind of War ..................................................................................... 81 Boundary-Drawing and the Creation of the Terrorist Other: Reassessing the Applicability of the Geneva Conventions to Twenty-First Century Warfare ............................................................................................................. 84 Reevaluating Habeas Corpus for Suspected Terrorists ....................... 89 viii Creating the Terrorist Other and Dehumanizing the Terrorist Enemy 90 Resolving the Moral Dilemmas of Terrorism .............................................. 93 Opening the Door for Torture: The Bybee Memo .............................. 94 After Bybee: Legitimizing Increasingly Severe Techniques .............. 99 Abu Ghraib ................................................................................................. 114 Report of the International Committee of the Red Cross ......... 116 The Taguba Report ................................................................... 117 The Mikolashek Report ............................................................ 118 The Schlesinger Report ............................................................ 122 The Fay-Jones Report ............................................................... 127 Reports Critical of the Administration’s Response to Abu Ghraib128 Outside Abu Ghraib: Guantánamo Bay and Elsewhere in Iraq ................. 129 Conclusion .................................................................................................. 133 Chapter Three: “Talk and the pain will stop:” Jack Bauer and the Changing Moral Status of Torture after 9/11 ........................................................................ 135 Torture on TV ............................................................................................. 136 Why 24? ..................................................................................................... 138 Influence and Reception ............................................................................. 140 ‘Improvisations in sadism’: Hollywood’s Rationalizations of Torture ...... 143 Literature Review of 24 .............................................................................. 148 Style 148 Gender ............................................................................................... 150 Politics and Insecurity ....................................................................... 152 Morality and Ethics ..........................................................................