War has been declared. Your enemy does not play by the rules, and that makes him very powerful, so powerful that you can see no way of winning this war if you keep to the rules.
So when those in authority say that in order to win you will have to operate outside the rules and undertake ‘extra-legislative’ operations, this is a relief. Now you can fight the enemy on a level playing field, you can play his game, and win. And you must win. Losing this war is unthinkable. And so, with great courage and at enormous personal cost, you wage this new kind of war. And you do win. Because of the ‘extra-legislative’ – illegal – nature of your efforts you cannot be publicly recognized or rewarded. But you know what you did, and you know that in the end you won. Maybe one day someone will make a film about it, and you will be recognized, even anonymously, as truly heroic.
Two recent films, Gangster Squad, and Zero Dark Thirty could be said to illustrate this scenario, and although they are very different they raise similar ethical questions.
Gangster Squad is a fictional dramatisation ‘based on a true story’ of the war fought in 1949 between the mobster Mickey Cohen and the Los Angeles Police Department – or rather one special squad, recruited by the Chief of Police, to fight Cohen with his own weapons and with his own disregard for the law. These policemen left their badges at home and behaved as if they were just another gangster mob. And in the end, we are told, they defeated him. So they are heroes of this movie, unsung until now.
Zero Dark Thirty is the story, also based we on truth, of the CIA’s post 9/11 war on Osama bin Laden. Obama, like Cohen, operated outside the law. Cohen was a gangster, bin Laden was a terrorist. In order to defeat him the CIA operated outside the legal constraints of the Geneva Convention and International Jurisprudence; especially those surrounding the detaining and treatment of prisoners and the conduct of interrogations. It is now clear that during this ‘war’ foreign suspects were kidnapped outside America by the CIA or their surrogates, taken to secret locations and tortured. That torture included waterboarding. The CIA was assured by their government that because they were at war these activities were not illegal. And this was a war that had to be won.
Gangster Squad generally avoids the ethical and moral questions raised by its narrative because they are superfluous to its purpose. The sole purpose of this movie is to make money. This ‘gangster movie’ apes the film noir genre, but it is not truly film noir, which usually explored how integrity was challenged, how good people can make bad decisions and then pay for them. Even if the protagonist eventually won through, or at least survived, the cost was always high. Real noir was character based and almost inevitably tragic. Gangster Squad uses fine actors to portray cardboard thin roles with no depth beyond stock clichés, lazy identifying habits, or the traits necessary to forward the plot. Anthony Mackie’s character is skilled at knife throwing, reminding us of Britt in The Magnificent Seven. Nothing else in Gangster Squad reminds of that film. Ryan Gosling, as Jerry Wooters, plays tricks with this Zippo lighter. The cops raise few questions about the honour of what they are being recruited to do by Sgt O’Mara, played by the square jawed Josh Brolin, but we are left in no doubt that they are heroes. O’Mara displays no subtlety of thought, morality or tactics. He simply goes in with Tommy guns blazing. The only justification for any decision he makes is that it will usher in the next chase or gunfight. As one of the Squad remarks, Cohen is not being out thought, he is simple being out gunned, but the line is not pursued. It is also true that the squad’s ’intelligence officer’, as played by Giovanni Ribisi, does develop some moral qualms, but O’Mara’s attempt to distance him from the cop’s violence tragically backfires. In the end the Squad wins the war, and as O’Mara says, if you win the war you’re a hero. But of course the genre demands that the victory has to sealed not only with a climactic gunfight but also a mano e mano fist fight between O’Mara and Cohen.
This film is about glamour and violence; the glamorisation of violence. It’s message is simple, might is right, and if you have to use your might in ways that are illegal, that’s OK, as long as you win. It has much less moral weight than most of the recent films adapted from cartoons. It is the police procedural version of 24.
24 links us, of course with Zero Dark Thirty. I believe that 24 is the most dangerous and corrupting popular TV series ever made. Its star, Kieffer Sutherland, played Jack Bauer of the American Counter Terrorist Unit (CTU). This show premiered on November 6, 2001, two months after 9/11, and ran for 192 episodes, until May 24, 2010. It won many awards, including the Golden Globe as Best Drama Series of 2003 and the Emmy as Outstanding Drama Series of 2006. Its message was also clear. There are no means that cannot and should not be used if they are necessary to save us from disaster. It is therefore justifiable to torture anyone, even to death, if the information gained will save the lives of thousands. This stance was admired and adopted by the Bush Administration and, it seems, by members of the US military and intelligence operatives. It must be said, however, that I know of no occasion in modern history when this justification has been proven necessary. Professional interrogators know that torture does not provide reliable evidence. Anyone who has read up on the ‘intelligence’ that triggered the 2nd invasion of Iraq knows that was it was offered up by Khalid Sheikh Mohammed when, after being repeatedly waterboarded, he decided to tell his interrogators what they wanted to hear; that Saddam Hussein did indeed have WMD, rather than continue to tell them the truth, which was that Hussein did not have WMD. Most people being interrogated eventually work out what their captors want to know.
Zero Dark Thirty has been criticized for not condemning the methods used by the CIA, and this lack of condemnation has been seen as approval. But Mark Boal and Katherine Bigelow have made it clear that it was not their intention to condemn or approve. Mark Boal is an investigative journalist. Katherine Bigelow is a film maker. Together they wanted to record on film what Boal had to report about what happened during the decade-long hunt for Osama bin Laden, and do so as accurate as possible. Katherine Bigelow has said that ‘depiction is not endorsement’ (open letter in the LA Times) and they refuse to be the counsel for the defence, or for the prosecution. They are content to leave judgement to their audience. Jason Clarke, who plays the CIA interrogator seen waterboarding at the start of the film, has said ‘It’s all one the screen….let the film speak. I think the film does an amazing job of speaking, if you want to listen.’ (The Guardian Guide 19th January p 18).
In one of the many interviews conducted after the film’s release Jessica Chastain said that she recognized the growing obsession of her character, the CIA operative Maya. This obsession can become all consuming. Maybe this reflects the way in which the America became obsessed, in varying degrees, from its populace, to its politicians, to its military and intelligence personnel. Such obsession does not necessarily make people wrong, but it can narrow their vision dangerously.
Jason Clarke was asked how he got through the harrowing torture scenes. He said that ‘you read the script, you see that this is the job to be done, this is what the Director wants, and you do it’. This could also be the attitude of the CIA character he plays. Both might say ‘in such a situation, despite your own qualms, you just do what ‘the script’ says, what the Director wants, and the Director – either of the film or of the CIA - has to be right. He or she sees the full picture. You have to trust them, and do the job,’ The psychological and emotional costs are simply part of the necessary sacrifices made, in obedience. This is their Duty. But these activities have consequences, both personal and political.
The hunt for Osama bin Laden changed the character of American politics. Clauswitz told us that war is the extension of politics by other means. When kidnapping, rendition, illegal imprisonment and torture – including waterboarding – become part of how a nation fights its wars, they become part of its political make-up too.
The North Koreans used waterboarding during the war in the 1950s. It was condemned as monstrous. If we behave like the monsters – or mobsters - we are trying to defeat, we become monsters ourselves.
Gangster Squad never seriously questions the illegal activities of its protagonists, and it leaves us in no doubt that the are its heroes. We are told that Zero Dark Thirty does not claim that bin Laden’s capture was made possible by information gained through torture, but is clear that torture took place. It does not justify – or heroify – the actions of those taking part in these activities. It simply presents them to our gaze. It may be that it is moral by not being moralizing. Liberal Hollywood, it seems, has difficulty with that idea, and the film and its makers have sometimes been shunned and booed.
We have to see this film ourselves before we can make up our own minds, but that seems to be the invitation it offers. Watch, and judge for ourselves. Gangster Squad, on the other hand, wants to make our judgements for us.
Bob Vernon.
