Media Representations of Gender and Torture Post-9/11

Marita Gronnvoll

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2010
• ISBN:
  9781136950001
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Ciencias sociales
• Subtopic: Estudios de género

In this timely book, Gronnvoll offers a feminist rhetorical examination of gender and torture, looking at the media coverage of Abu Ghraib and Guantánamo Bay, as well as recent popular entertainment television serials where torture appears as a plot device (including 24). In exposing news media coverage to such scrutiny, she finds that cases of American personnel engaging in torture achieved notoriety chiefly because of the fact that women were perpetrators. The language of commentators suggests at least as much social outrage over the gender performance of the women as over the fact of torture being committed by Americans. At the same time, political and social discourses sketch a portrait of an intractable enemy in the form of the Muslim "Other" and betray a longing for a savior warrior hero who is capable of prevailing over this perceived "evil." Yet, news coverage of Abu Ghraib and Guantánamo Bay suggests women warriors are socially perceived as lacking the necessary qualifications to be such saviors. This finding provides a transition into an examination of popular entertainment television programs that feature male and female heroes as government agents engaged in fighting the war on terrorism. Ultimately, Gronnvoll's analysis suggests that a Western cultural longing for a savior is partially fulfilled through fictional programming portrayals of masculine warriors who engage in torture and remain heroic.

1
Interrogating Torture

Whoever was tortured, stays tortured.¹

There’s no such thing as a little bit of torture.²

On April 28, 2004, the CBS news program 60 Minutes II broke the story of prisoner torture at the American-controlled Iraqi prison of Abu Ghraib. Photographic images broadcast by the program showed naked Iraqi male prisoners being subjected to a variety of physical abuses and humiliations, many of them clearly in violation of numerous anti-torture treaties and conventions and Muslim sexual taboos. Posed in a number of the photographs were American servicemen and -women smiling into the camera, and in some cases giving cheerful thumbs-up. The photographic evidence from Abu Ghraib suggested that representatives of the liberating force in Iraq were torturing imprisoned Iraqis with seeming impunity. Condemnation by government and press representatives for the actions of those labeled as “the few” was swift. President Bush spoke publicly from the White House on April 30th saying, “I share deep disgust that those prisoners were treated the way they were treated. Their treatment does not reflect the nature of the American people. That’s not the way we do things in America.”³ Less than a year later, stories began to be circulated in news media that prisoners were being abused by interrogators at the military prison at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba. Although no photographs accompanied the reports, vivid verbal descriptions portrayed scenes of interrogations that walked right up to the line of torture and, in the view of many, crossed it. Media and political discourses about Abu Ghraib and Guantánamo Bay did not focus solely on the violations of American ethos and military honor perpetrated by the offending soldiers. Headlines that flooded major newspapers across the country suggested that the gender of some of the perpetrators was of particular relevance to the crime. Lynndie England, a woman soldier who appeared in several of the most notorious Abu Ghraib photographs, was quickly singled out for media attention. “Leasher Gal Lashed with Abuse Rap,”⁴ read one headline. “Military Charges Female Reservist,”⁵ “Leash Gal’s Sex Pix,”⁶ “A Woman Apart,”⁷—these headlines are representative of notice drawn to England’s identity as a woman. Another article that singled out the offending women soldiers was entitled simply “Shameless.”⁸

Arguably, Abu Ghraib began a torrent of media discourses about torture that has not subsided. Interestingly, although much media focus was narrowed to the women soldiers at Abu Ghraib, military justice found several of the men to have higher accountability. With a three-year sentence handed down at her court-martial, Lynndie England’s sentence was eclipsed by sentences of eleven years and seven years given to Charles Graner and Ivan “Chip” Frederick, respectively, who appeared in many of the photographs. Nonetheless, England is the one who one newspaper referred to as “The Face Behind a Nation’s Shame.”⁹ England is the one denounced as “a sadistic she-devil”¹⁰ and referred to as “the poster girl for sexual humiliation and degradation at Abu Ghraib.”¹¹

The curious gender focal point of news media did not end with Abu Ghraib. In 2005, as stories of torture reached the press regarding the American detention center at Guantánamo Bay, the narrative again centered on the gender of the alleged perpetrators. “Detainees Accuse Female Interrogators,”¹² reported one prominent newspaper, suggesting that the gender of the accused interrogators was a salient part of the report. “Beyond Decency,”¹³ declared another headline in an article that took severe exception to the use of women interrogators. A well-known columnist entitled her piece to draw direct attention to the gender of some of the interrogators: “Torture Chicks Gone Wild.”¹⁴ Despite months, if not years, of credible rumors and reports suggesting prisoners had been tortured at Guantánamo Bay, as well as other American-controlled facilities, when women were accused, news headlines screamed with indignation. Reading the news coverage of both Abu Ghraib and Guantánamo Bay raises the question of what was worse, the fact that human beings were treated so abominably by representatives of a superpower that is a signatory on numerous international anti-torture conventions, or that the soldiers who perpetrated some of these acts were women.

At the outset I should note that my concern is not solely with the morality of torture, although its blatant immorality is always in my periphery. I take it for granted that most reasonable people would not argue that torture is desirable in and of itself, however much they may disagree about it as perhaps a necessary evil. My concern, rather, is with the rhetorical force of cultural discourses about torture, especially as torture has joined other mechanisms by which gender is shaped and understood in U.S. culture. Simultaneously, gender has become an interpretive tool by which the acceptability of torture is shaped and understood. When torture as an interrogation method, either real or fictionalized, is taken up by mass media, its trajectory cannot be contained and the discourses that cluster around it cannot be controlled. Media reports of torture can enhance discourses that tend to reshape notions of acceptable masculinity and femininity. Likewise, the social disciplinary function of mass media can contribute to discourses that use gender norms to absolve some torturers while condemning others. My major focus is the circular relationship between gender and torture. In other words, I am interested in the ways that gender norms have influenced perceptions of torture and torture has influenced what are believed to be acceptable gender behaviors.

Through an analysis of both news media and popular entertainment television programs, I am interested in exploring the implications of linking gender and torture when these concepts are taken up and disseminated through mass media. My research is driven by a number of concrete and conceptual questions. For example, how have mass media discourses about torture as an interrogation method been shaped by, and contributed to the reshaping of, gender? Relatedly, how have news stories of torture condemned policies that allow for torture as an interrogation method while simultaneously serving as a social disciplinary tool for women who violate gender norms by participating as torturers? In the area of entertainment media, how has torture come to be used as common story lines in popular television programs that serve to redefine masculinity and femininity? Perhaps most importantly, this book is driven by a central query: How have media discourses contributed to the reshaping of masculinity so as to include torture as an acceptable, perhaps even necessary, action of those who wear the mantle of hero and savior in the post-9/11 world?

Before delving into these questions and grappling with their possible answers, it is helpful to examine some of the groundwork that makes possible a discussion and debate about torture here in the 21st century. Indeed, it is surprising that when the barbaric ways of the past have been reportedly abandoned that there can be a problem of torture. To that end, what is unique about the current world conflict that arguably began with the portentous date of September 11, 2001? And how is gender implicated in the topic of torture? Feminists and gender theorists argue compellingly that gender expectations are deeply embedded in our cultural perceptions and nearly inescapable. Rules of gender control nearly every aspect of life, whether or not we are conscious of it, and that now includes the acceptability of torture as an interrogation method. It is also necessary for me to justify my attention to mass media in relation to torture. While it is not my position that mass media serves a top-down hegemonic function in Western society, there is no denying the power and place of mass media in U.S. life. Much like gender role expectations, mass media is deeply embedded in all facets of Western culture and inescapable. Therefore, trends in media are a commentary about society generally. Finally, it is necessary to address the question of defining torture. Since the U.S. became embroiled in the “new paradigm” of this “war on terrorism,” questions that never used to be public questions are being raised and debated by politicians, scholars, and activists. Questions such as: What is torture? Is it something that a civilized people should engage in? Regarding both of these questions, I would add a further question: What is at stake in asking either of these questions in the first place?

I turn now to the question of the historic moment we now face that makes possible the question of torture, the construction of a masculine savior, and the suppression of women who would be, but can never be, saviors.

A “WAR OF IDEAS”

After September 11, 2001, the Bush administration made the point on several occasions that the attacks on New York and Washington, D.C., introduced a “new paradigm” of modern warfare.¹⁵ This paradigm, the administration claimed, is marked by terrorists who blend into civilian populations, do not wear uniforms, claim no national allegiances, and have as their solitary goal the murder of innocents. Prevailing against these “enemy combatants” required, according to the president, winning the “war of ideas.”¹⁶ Indeed, the Bush administration’s phrase gained much traction in the weeks and months following September 11th with numerous newspaper editorialists expounding the importance of winning the “war of ideas.”¹⁷ The two sides delineated in this war, and the president made it clear that there were only two sides, were the American ideals of love, tolerance, and preservation of human life against the terrorists’ perceived commitment to hatred, intolerance, and a culture of death. Similar to any conflict between nations, portraying the enemy as brutal, unreasoning, and animalistic is necessary as a justification for killing “him.”¹⁸ Consequently, it was not new that many of the issues that contributed to the attacks on September 11th were so simplified. But several things about this conflict were new. For one thing, women represented a growing portion of those enlisted in the military branches of service, and this is consequential when engaging an enemy of a culture where women are expected to maintain severely limited roles. But a second and even more important difference in the conflict for which September 11th was a continuation is that a clash of ideologies became evident. Indeed, I would argue that September 11th marked a date where the war between Judeo-Christian and Muslim ideologies took center stage.

Those who spoke for al Qaeda made no attempt to obfuscate regarding their motivations. Following the deaths of several al Qaeda members in Pakistan, the movement’s leader, Osama bin Laden, issued an explicit exhortation:

We hope that these brothers are among the first martyrs in Islam’s battle in this era against the new Christian-Jewish crusade led by the big crusader Bush under the flag of the Cross; this battle is considered one of Islam’s battles. We incite our Muslim brothers in Pakistan to give everything they own and are capable of to push the American crusade forces from invading Pakistan and Afghanistan.¹⁹

Meanwhile, President Bush assured his worldwide audiences early and often that the U.S. had no quarrel with Islam. In a pivotal speech delivered just nine days after the attacks on New York and Washington, Bush spoke directly to his Muslim audience:

We respect your faith. It’s practiced freely by many millions of Americans, and by millions more in countries that America counts as friends. Its teachings are good and peaceful, and those who commit evil in the name of Allah blaspheme the name of Allah. The terrorists are traitors to their own faith, trying, in effect, to hijack Islam itself. The enemy of America is not our many Muslim friends; it is not our many Arab friends. Our enemy is a radical network of terrorists, and every government that supports them.²⁰

This expression of respect for Islam became a common refrain for the president, and over the years he stayed on point. But other voices were not so circumspect. A number of prominent media and religious figures stepped into the fray following September 11th and argued for an interpretation of the conflict as Judeo-Christianity against Islam. In an op-ed piece in the Boston Globe, the writer acknowledged that

Of course Islam should not be gratuitously insulted. But neither should it be sugar-coated or kowtowed to. Yet too many Western elites are unwilling to speak plainly about the problems within Islam itself, or to hold Muslim culture to what should be universal standards of decency and justice.²¹

This writer’s implicit suggestions are that Judeo-Christian culture contains no prevailing problems, and that it is in a position to dictate “universal standards of decency and justice.” He further notes, “We do Muslims no favors by excusing attitudes or practices that ought always to be deemed inexcusable.”²² The writer does not specify who “we” is in this sentence. It may be Americans, but it is certainly not Muslim Americans who appear to be part of the problem of Islam generally. Another editorial disputes the notion that democracy mitigates “Islamofascism” (a term that came into vogue in 2002 and has not retreated). This editorial asks the question, “If Muslims in democratic societies are inherently less radicalized than the fundamentalist or dictatorial regimes in the Muslim world, then why is Europe seething with radical Muslims?”²³ The article implies throughout that there is a shortcoming inherent in Islam, which is apparently absent in its Judeo-Christian counterpart, which makes it immune to the palliative of democracy.

Several conservative media pundits with large audience followings added to the prominent strain of media criticism of Islam that had begun to emerge. Conservative radio talk show host Rush Limbaugh, who commands a daily audience of millions,²⁴ proclaimed his viewpoint in 2007 that American Muslims represent a danger to the country. His interpretation of a Pew Research Center study is that

Muslims in America are not so different from their co-religionists around the world. In fact, their viewpoints are pretty much the same as that of their religious counterparts around the world, and getting more extreme with age and American upbringing.²⁵

Limbaugh goes on to claim that the “Drive-By media in concert with the Democrat Party” has produced news headlines and stories that falsely claim that American Muslims are moderate and mainstream. Why? In order to keep people from understanding “that Bush is right ab...

Table of contents

• Routledge Studies in Rhetoric and Communication
• Contents
• Figures
• Acknowledgments
• 1 Interrogating Torture
• 2 Gender (In)Visibility at Abu Ghraib1
• 3 Sex, Blood, and Degradation
• 4 Torture Television
• 5 24
• 6 A Question of Torture
• Notes
• Bibliography
• Index