Should your kids be watching cartoon torture?
Every year around this time, Fox TV brings us back another season of 24 where Kiefer Sutherland’s mythological Jack Bauer will do whatever it takes to prevent America from suffering the consequences of a terrorist attack. And every year, there is a series of thinkpieces about whether or not the popularity of 24 (which I’ve argued is *not* pro-torture) desensitizes Americans to the abuse of detainees resulting from the war on terrorism, some of whom are alleged to be terrorists, or al-Qaida’s enablers.
Wherever you land on the debate about the appropriateness of depicting torture on 24, the show is usually understood to be made for adults. It airs, most of the time, at 9 pm Eastern Time on a school night, with advisories for ‘viewer discretion.’ Generally, audiences assume that the show is not for kids.
So what if a show that has been made mostly for kids depicts torture? Would you let your kids watch it? Should something like that even potentially be shown to your kids?
Enter Star Wars: The Clone Wars, on the Cartoon Network.
The Cartoon Network started broadcasting ‘Clone Wars’ in 2008 as a part of its normal Cartoon Network programming on Friday nights – i.e. it’s not explicitly marketed to adults like the great late night animated and other bizarre shows on Adult Swim. The program is broadcast with a TV-PG warning, which calls for ‘parental guidance,’ but not caution against showing the program to kids outright (that’s TV-14). The commercials for toys during the program strongly imply that children are its primary target audience, and if you look at the popularity of ‘Clone Wars’ action figures and Lego toys during this holiday season, the picture becomes even clearer.
‘Clone Wars’ is on a mid-season hiatus right now, and new episodes return in January, just like 24. But I have not yet observed much in the way of debate or discussion about the show’s recent use of a ticking time bomb scenario like you see routinely on the Fox series, and whether it’s sending the wrong message to kids.
Anakin Skywalker uses his powers to strangle Poggle the Lesser in a recent episode of the Cartoon Network
On the final episode of 2009, ‘Brain Invaders,’ Jedi Master Anakin Skywalker (the young man who later becomes Darth Vader) is in a bind. Two apprentices are trapped aboard a ship with killer, mind-controlling worms. The only being in the galaxy who knows how to stop the worms is an accused war criminal, Poggle, who led his planet Geonosis against the Republic and is now in the Jedi’s custody. Poggle refuses to talk, so Skywalker uses his Jedi powers to choke him. A Jedi mind trick to Skywalker, torture to you and me, and it works – Poggle confesses that if they can freeze the ship, the worms will be stopped.
There’s no moral ambiguity in the scene, which you can watch in the link above (for now) about 14 minutes into the video. Anakin Skywalker is faced with a threat to two people he cares about, and he does whatever it takes to stop it. Poggle is not a character any child would sympathize with or feel sorry for, and the actions taken based on the intelligence he provides go off without a hitch. The message to kids watching the show, at least to me, is that torture works.
Now, a few caveats.
First, I know that against the broader story arc of George Lucas’s Star Wars, Anakin’s action has some useful purposes for the development of the Anakin/Darth Vader character. In moments like this, we can see how Anakin falls to the ‘Dark Side’ and begins using The Force for ill. But unlike a longer Star Wars movie where we see the consequences of evil actions, be they torture, killing, or the destruction of entire planets, the torture scene happens in a single 22-minute episode of ‘Clone Wars.’ We never see Anakin’s eventual transformation away from the Jedi into an evil Sith or understand how it causes him to lose everything he loves, and suffer the mortal injuries that transform him into the damaged Darth Vader (which we will see in the third film in Lucas’s six-movie Star Wars cycle).
Additionally, I know it’s not the only time there are acts of torture in the Star Wars universe. But unlike, say, the interrogations of Princess Leia in ‘A New Hope’ or Han Solo in ‘The Empire Strikes Back’ the ‘Clone Wars’ depiction is right on screen, out front for the audience of children to see.
And, I think it’s good that ‘Clone Wars’ doesn’t pull punches on death so often – I remember the old days of the GI Joe cartoons where every Cobra bad guy would parachute out of his plane just before the good guys shot it down and incinerated him. The show’s acknowledgment that the soldiers in the Republic’s clone army suffer mightily in the course of their war against the droid forces of the separatists sends an important moral message that war actually kills living things and should not be fought lightly.
But ultimately, in ‘Brain Invaders’ and its ticking time bomb scenario, Dick Cheney’s favorite, all we see is that Anakin used an ‘enhanced interrogation’ technique, and it worked. And it’s not just ‘we’, adults like you and me, who are waatching. It’s children, because however late the Cartoon Network runs Clone Wars, they are the show’s main audience, and they may not yet have the capacity to consider the moral implications of an act of torture.
I doubt that the good people at Lucasfilms want children to think that torture is OK. But unlike 24, which does quite a bit to expose the consequences of acts of torture, ‘Clone Wars’ provided a much less ambiguous depiction of ‘the dark side.’ Going forward, I hope that the show’s writers and producers, and the people at the Cartoon Network, will more carefully review what they screen to the kids who watch the show. If they don’t, the FCC really needs to raise the question of whether or not the show deserves a rating beyond the TV-PG it gets now.
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To me the Clone Wars scene and 24 are both torture porn, and an unfortunate legacy of the out of control Bush administration. I give it two years until there’s a reality tv show that includes a waterboarding challenge, but then I’m pretty cynical about the prospects of moral character in mass audiences these days.
Considering that they did everything but waterboarding on NBC’s ‘Fear Factor,’ I think your prediction is likely to come true, sadly.
In response to another comment. See in context »If they’d air a torture scene where the more likely thing would happen, I’d be a little more OK with such a plot, but not terribly. The “more likely thing” would be false information given out to end the torture.
I can see your point that 24 isn’t pro-torture, but I do believe that most people don’t like to think too hard. Seeing agent Bauer go in and torture for the needed information is on the same level as Det. Sipowicz doing it on whatever cop that was (I don’t watch a lot of the tube; sorry). There is a desensitization to that technique by the average viewer, I’m afraid.
There wasn’t much outcry when a GOP debates of 2008 asked about handling terrorism and candidates – Rudy you da man – answered “Jack Bauer.” I think The Daily Show might’ve been the only major media outlet to cringe over this one.
I can say slapstick humor in cartoons doesn’t bother me, although parents should probably check in with the kiddies now and then to make sure they understand the line between reality and the cartoon (ex: if you blow up the coyote with ACME dynamite, he won’t be back next week). The kind of thing you describe in the Star Wars episode doesn’t fall into that category. It’s more tv drama in the sense of a graphic novel.
You’re totally right that the average audience member probably isn’t going to take away 24’s deep, complicated message. But I just think it has to be acknowledged, just like you wouldn’t look at Act 5 of Hamlet and conclude that Shakespeare is pro-matricide. That broader context also needs to be considered in what I say about Clone Wars, but the marketing of the show to kids makes it far less relevant
In response to another comment. See in context »Agreed.
I should’ve stuck to the Star Wars cartoon, so here’s what crossed my mind after logging off. It would have been better for the strangling not to have worked – resulting in bad intel, as it were – and have young Anakin learn a Jedi lesson in interrogation. Then again, he DID go to the dark side later. no win – even in after thoughts
In response to another comment. See in context »If you see the whole episode context and details -droid in room reaction, dark ambience and music, other jedis reactions, the two padawans conversation in the beginning- I’m pretty sure that the most of the kids seeing the episode understand that Anakin is doing a bad thing. He is a Jedi, the Jedis cant do these things, but…
In other Clone Wars episodes these themes appear clearly spoken by the characters, showing clearly to the viewer what is the series position about torture or othe dark themes how the war.
The main point in the Anakin arc is that a inclusive wanting the best you could ending doing the worst for achieve your a priori good objetives, for me the ambiguity and moral dilema the premise for the whole saga.
Perhaps very small kids dont understand these level of sutility, but really this show is not aimed for they, the target is kids around 10-12 years old.
Really, we are overprotective with our kids, they need see and understand that life is not all about bad guys doing bad things and good guys doing always the best. Of course they must seeing this show with these torture scenes, perhaps they learn something.
In response to another comment. See in context »I hope you’re right, but I fear you’re not. As I noted in my comment above to grayward, I think kids often don’t pick up these subtleties. Perhaps I’m wrong, but I think I preferred the films’ approach to torture scenes versus the approach we saw in ‘Brain Invaders’ because whether or not kids are supposed to be the show’s primary audience, they are being marketed to, and many are watching it.
In response to another comment. See in context »[...] Jack Bauer-esque treatment of Poggle the Lesser in “Brain Invaders.” Some guy at this website wants Cartoon Network to bump up the show’s rating to TV-14 or have the show’s [...]
I guess it all depends how intelligent the kids are.
Lets be honest, what is the point of the scene? Why was this scene included at all? Torture porn? Please! The whole point of the scene, nay, of much of the Star Wars saga are precisely the dangers and consequences of acts like these; the imperceptible and gradual corruption of Anakin, and the ultimate price we pay when “the ends justify the means”. We become monsters, destroyers of the very things we love.
If the child is young enough that his memory only lasts 22 minutes then he is indeed in trouble. Especially if he/she doesn’t know yet that Darth Vader is Luke’s dad. Whoa wait, should I have put a spoiler alert on what is perhaps the most well known plot twist of all time? I know you wrote as a “caveat” the ultimate arc, but how can you, as a caveat or no, dismiss the very purpose of the scene? Are you criticizing the intentions of Lucasfilm? The fact that its marketing towards kids? The weekly cartoon serial format? I mean if Episode III played immediately afterward, would it be ok then?
It really sounds to me like you’re saying that if torture occurs in a book or play, the evil consequences must be immediately evident in the same chapter/scene or the book is pro torture? If the consequences happen two chapters down, heck the poor child might stop reading in between so you can’t write it like that.
Overall, I have to say that the series is, definitely made as much for the hardcore SW fan as for the younger new ones. If you think your kid can’t understand something as complex as Anakin’s gradual fall from grace, either explain it or simply don’t let him/her watch. But I can’t see how older pre-teen/teen kids would miss the obvious direct references to Darth Vader in this one, and while the short format may have its dangers, I really like the depth brought to a series that exists with such well-developed (and widely known) lore as backdrop.
So… pssssst: thats Darth Vader.
I think you can’t rely on a child’s ‘intelligence’ to form their values. For instance, my two young first cousins, both under 10, are very bright, but when they start re-telling me a scene from an episode of ‘Family Guy,’ they’re more fixated on slapstick details of the show than I am – I fixate more on the satire. It’s not that they’re dumbasses – it’s that a child’s perception of what they see on TV is more blunt than yours or mine because their intellects are less developed.
And then while you and I, both presumably serious Star Wars fans, get what’s going on in episodes of the Clone Wars in the broader context of the Star Wars epic, there have to be a fair number of young fans of the show whose parents are not Star Wars people and who won’t be able to sit down and explain to them that this is a sign of bad things to come in Anakin’s future. The lessons a lot of kids are going to take away from a show that they watch primarily because they like the adventure and the characters. You and I, presumably, are both watching the show because we want to see the details filled in a Star Wars epic we’ve been fixated on for many many years of our lives.
So while I don’t think it’s Lucasfilms’s intentions to say torture works, I think it looks like it works in that scene. And when you’re marketing to kids, you should be more careful about how you tell the story if you want a TV-PG rating.
In response to another comment. See in context »[...] From the article: [...]