I’ve been feeling a lot of pressure to see Standard Operating Procedure, the new Errol Morris documentary about the goings-on at Abu Ghraib. I had already seen Taxi to the Dark Side, the Oscar-winning account of the detainee abuses at Guantanamo Bay and the Bagram prison in Afghanistan, as well as Rory Kennedy’s Ghosts of Abu Ghraib, so of course I needed to see S.O.P. in order to be a torture “completist.” I had read my good friend Bob Cashill’s review of S.O.P. here on Popdose a couple weeks back, and I can’t stand it when he knows something I don’t. Plus I had Jeff Giles (that sadistic bastard) hounding me to see it, claiming he wanted to hear my “take” on it. Frankly, I felt like multiple forces of man and nature were holding a filthy rag over my face and pouring Standard Operating Procedure down my throat.
So I went – dutifully, and with a sense of dread. And when it was over I felt suitably disturbed, disgusted with my government…unclean, even…and mostly I just wanted to see a normal movie. Perhaps one in which I could scarf my popcorn without worrying about getting a screenful of electrode-laden testicles. So I went to the multiplex, looking for a bit of frivolity, and the marquee read “Harold and Kumar.” Great! A light stoner comedy with the R-rated promise of a little T&A. So I go in, and it starts out nice and funny and a little dirty, and then these two ethnic guys head into an airplane toilet with a battery-powered bong, and…goddammit! There’s Gitmo again! WTF!?!
You know perfectly well I made that last part up. I apologize – but how else was I supposed to rationalize the fact that I’m probably the only person in America (apart from Ebert & Roeper, maybe) who saw both Standard Operating Procedure AND Harold and Kumar Escape from Guantanamo Bay this week?
Oh, the sacrifices I make for you, dear reader. Of course, there was a method to my madness, which was to figure out exactly where torture fits into the American zeitgeist as of mid-May 2008. It’s a fair question. We’ve had visions of “harsh interrogations” dancing in our heads at least since the Abu Ghraib photos emerged in spring 2004, if not since Kiefer Sutherland first went medieval on somebody’s ass on 24 shortly after 9/11. Just this week, a committee of the House of Representatives announced a subpoena for Dick Cheney’s Rasputin-like chief of staff, David Addington, to testify (alongside John Ashcroft and John Yoo) about the initial decision-making that led the “War on Terror” to so closely resemble the Spanish Inquisition. Heck, the presidential nominee of George Bush’s own party was a victim of torture himself, while the Democratic Party seems unable to escape the dungeon of that D.C. dominatrix, Mistress Hillary. (more…)
