On Torture- Part One

It is interesting to consider the idea of torture, particularly the Hollywood presentations of torture, in relation to chronic pain.  Prolonged pain, I suppose, would be a downer, so it seems always to appear in brief scenes, however many in a single film.  A great deal of time is given to the explanation of the pain.

In particular, I am again and again brought back to the torture of Wesley in Joss Whedon's Angel.  The five types of torture that shall and are inflicted upon Wesley are explained at great length, including: blunt, sharp, hot, cold, and loud.  The audience witnesses him being cut a few times by a piece of glass, and the next time we see Wesley we know that he has already been through all of this mess.

Yet even when longer scenes are depicted, the act of creating pain itself is generally brief but gruesome-- the cruel extraction of teeth or other body parts, sharp jolts of electricity.  Such acts are so painful, we are told, that they simply cannot be withstood for more than a few seconds at a time.

This reality may be one reason that Mel Gibson's The Passion of the Christ was seen as so particularly disturbing.  I had long believed that the scene of the scourging (flogging/whipping) must have been exorbitantly long-- I had heard it lasted somewhere around fifteen minutes.  Yet upon viewing this scene recently, I have found that it is remarkably shorter than has been said- under three minutes. It is a portrayal of pain, and a successful one as far as empathy is concerned, but the real question that remains is how to portray even more long-term pain effectively?

One of the television shows that has been important in my understanding of pain is the medical drama House M.D.  What is particularly interesting about this show for me is the depiction not of the first experience of prolonged pain, but the secondary pains-- the effects of pain on House as a CNCP (chronic non-cancer pain) sufferer.  We see hallucinations, an inability to urinate, irritability, a limp, use of a cane, etc.  I will definitely need to a do a more in-depth analysis of this show in the future, in particular this most recent season's finale, when House speaks with a woman in a similar condition to his own just before his CNCP begins.  Like House, this woman is faced with the choice between having her leg amputated or risking death, which House explains could result in lifelong pain-- yet in this instance House instead clarifies for the woman why she should choose amputation.

House: You asked me how I'd hurt my leg. I had a blood clot, and the muscle was dying. And I had all these doctors telling me I should amputate, and I said no, and they did this... very risky operation. I almost died.
Hanna: But you saved your leg.
House: I wish I hadn't. They cut out a chunk of muscle about the size of my fist, and they left me with this mutilated, useless thing. I'm in pain... every day. It changed me. Made me a harder person. A worse person. And now... now I'm alone.You don't want to be like me.

How can we display our pain without being seen as overly dramatic, "fakers"?  There is little doubt now that anything that cannot be sensed (seen, heard, felt) by multiple people as a communal experience is capable and likely of being questioned.  Elaine Scarry explains in her book The Body in Pain that the person in pain can effortlessly grasp the reality of pain, while as the person perceiving another's pain, it is effortless not to grasp the reality of hir (his or her) pain (4).

Chronic pain is tortuous-- in the case of my own pain it is not only long-lasting, but often unbearable.  The feeling of having been whipped 39 times can last with no hope of relief.  Flesh wounds will generally heal, CNCP often does not or takes a long time to heal.  There is no weapon-- the weapon which Scarry finds the most important part of understanding another's pain (13). Is the only manner in which this pain can be sensed and perceived by other's through the aftereffects?

I would like to consider the portrayals of pain experiences as demonstrated in films, such as the tinnitus depicted in Music Within. 



(See at about 25 seconds to around 31 seconds)

I will come back to this post later, and put a bibliography at the end, but it's getting late, and my neck hurts, as it generally does.