Actually it’s not a straw man argument. A straw man argument would be something akin to “You’re saying that we should be able to torture anyone anytime we like, but clearly if we do that then we’re completely evil!” A straw man involves taking someone’s position, distorting it, and then refuting it, which I did not do. Actually, I wasn’t even taking sides with my post.
I was merely pointing out that we really seem to enjoy discussing and thinking about torture based on how much TV and radio airtime is devoted to it, how many newspaper column inches are about it, how many blog posts are about it, and how many popular films have torture scenes. Even James Bond films have torture scenes now! It used to be that the villain would just set James up to snuff him on some elaborate device but now he must torture him first. On “24”, Jack Bauer is constantly having to torture people. Even on a great show like “Lost” we’ve got Sayid and his history as an Iraqi torturer.
And yes of course the “Saw” movies do well overseas, so people all around the world are just as sick as we are. Of course the movies themselves are actually made here. India has the biggest movie industry outside of the US (maybe even bigger), but their movies seem to be mostly love stories with lots of song and dance numbers and goofy moustachioed villains. Only the US, for some reason, seems to produce this disturbing torture pornography. What does this say about us?
