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Green pond frogs (Euphlyctis hexadactylus) perch on an Asiatic water buffalo (Bubalus bubalis) in Kumana National Park, Sri Lanka

Equiping an armor tutorial

The basic problem with this question is that the high end of what player characters can do in high-powered tabletop RPGs very rapidly becomes too big to powerscale. If you push things far enough, shit goes all conceptual in a way that defies direct comparison.

the op linked the study in the replies & i’ve been skimming it & it’s actually rlly rlly interesting to think abt

in the appendix (which you can find by scrolling down) CA:TWS is listed as having one torture scene, which immediately made me wonder because there are two that I can think of.

further on in the appendix when the authors are discussing the criteria for including torture, they give the vault scene in CA:TWS as an example of a scene that isn't torture, with the justification that Bucky seems to comply with his captors, and given the information shown on screen we can't conclude whether or not Bucky is a willing participant in the "wipe." Willing participants cannot be tortured, therefore the vault scene is not counted as torture

That is a WILD take on that scene. "doesn't fight back" does not equal "not being tortured" come on now

now, I could see disqualifying the vault scene as being a torture scene on the basis that the purpose of the "wipe" is not to inflict pain, it just happens to be an extremely painful process.

That's an interesting take. Is doing something incredibly painful or distressing to a person torture when there is ostensibly a secondary purpose to the painful thing, even though it also clearly doubles as a way of inflicting suffering and asserting power? This is a really important question to answer, since a lot of instances of torture and mistreatment in prisons and military situations etc. seem to fall under this. e.g. a strip search is nominally for "security" purposes, but it is also forced nudity which is a common form of sexual violence inflicted as part of torture.

But disqualifying the scene because there is not enough evidence that Bucky is being coerced to do it is nuts, since immediately prior Bucky gets slapped in the face for not answering a question and doesn't retaliate, and immediately before that Bucky gets a bunch of guns pointed at him when he acts up

That's another important question. Does being forced to comply with or participate in your own torture disqualify it from being torture?

The answer is, to me, obviously no, and in fact this seems like a relatively common feature of torture: e.g. forcing prisoners to dig their own graves requires a good amount of compliance from the victim and that's a major reason why it's so distressing

[Image ID: tags that read "#i can understand them choosing an conservative threshold for deciding what torture is #it's so hard to be objective with these kinds of things #like the last comment said the data is likely a sever undercount #but that they found an effect still should emphasize the point that much more"]

So I really want to focus on prev’s tags here because I disagree that this is a case of “the paper researching torturing in media excusing torture in media.” Jazzafrazz is completely right, the threshold is stated by the paper to be conservative.

[Image ID: excerpt from the linked paper with two lines highlighted: "we erred on the conservative side in an effort to understate our case" and "excluded any incidents where it was unclear whether or not the actions amounted to torture"]

“In an effort to understate our case” and “unclear” are important words to note here. Brainwashing, while absolutely a human rights abuse, causes the scene to have a layer of nuance to it. Yes, any average viewer would perceive what Bucky is put through as torture (that’s largely the point, since it’s a scene setting up how evil the antagonists are), but someone critiquing the paper could argue that the scene is an extension of the brainwashing rather than torture done punitively, or for the purpose of gaining information. At the same time the average viewer might not clock the scene where the protagonists dangle a man off the side of a building to get information out of him as torture, despite it more firmly fitting into the paper’s threshold.

In a study, you have to have a very CLEAR operational definition of the thing you're studying for the results to mean anything. So i understand why you might decide to disqualify any scene where there is potential ambiguity.

This purpose of this study was to demonstrate how common torture in popular movies, and it succeeded greatly. The fact that the stats are SO high, even though a lot of scenes that could be torture weren't counted, arguably makes the conclusion stronger.

BUT, I think that the authors' analysis of the vault scene in CA:TWS sticks out as a really weird take. AND, the issue of defining torture is so heavily debated and so laden with implications that it's worthwhile -- or at least interesting -- to talk about it.

A lot of the reading I've done on torture discusses at length how difficult it is to define torture, and particularly how States have, in response to criticisms about use of torture and laws restricting torture, pioneered what's known as "white torture." or "clean torture" -- basically torture that "looks" less violent because there isn't blood everywhere and visibly mutilating the body. Waterboarding, stress positions, confinement in tiny boxes, things like that.

So basically, the recent history of torture is full of people trying to say that Actually, This Doesn't Count as Torture. And I could think of several Actually, This Doesn't Count as Torture arguments that could be applied to the vault scene:

Bucky is experiencing pain, but not actual bodily harm, so it doesn't count as torture

The fact that the "wipe" causes pain isn't the primary purpose of doing it to him, so it doesn't count as torture

Bucky isn't necessarily in enough pain or being hurt for long enough that it reaches the threshold of being torture

The "wipe" was necessary to get Bucky to functioning again as they needed him to function, so it doesn't count as torture

because the US government made all of these arguments about torture it did to people.

But instead, the authors pulled out something completely different and argued that they couldn't rule out that Bucky was a willing participant in the torture, since he appears to do some things voluntarily (opening his mouth for the mouthguard)-- which was really uhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh interesting to me because

being forced into participating in your own torture by complying with your torturers is a really common feature of torture,

physically, bodily forcing someone to do something isn't the only way "forcing" happens

I'm not saying the conclusion of the paper is bad. I'm saying that the authors' definition of torture is, in some ways, extremely out of touch with the reality of torture. Which in turn, just further highlights how embedded our cultural acceptance of torture really is.

Okay...one more point about the vault scene, though

Here's a list of the known "advanced interrogation techniques" used by the United States.

I just want to draw attention to

Pierce does this to Bucky in the vault scene!!! Clear as day!!! It's a textbook example!!!

"Advanced interrogation techniques" were designed to be things that Don't Count as Torture. They are that "clean torture" I just talked about. The effect of the "insult slap" is psychological; it demonstrates to the victim that violence can and will be used against them.

The implication of its use in the vault scene is clear: Bucky is being shown that his captors WILL hurt him if he doesn't comply (as per the literal Real Life torturers who came up with the technique) which clearly rules out the whole "willing participant" thing.