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" Way too much has been said about the depiction of torture in Zero Dark Thirty, in particular by people who haven&amp;#039;t seen the movie. First, lawmakers investigated the origins of the film&amp;#039;s &amp;quot;bad information,&amp;quot; bringing up an old and settled argument about what access director Kathryn Bigelow and writer Mark Boal had to military officials. Then they asked the filmmakers to append a note to the film calling it a work of fiction, which would not sound unreasonable if so many other Hollywood films didn&amp;#039;t already crassly exploit faux-verisimilitude for ticket sales (did you know there was a guy named Ed Gein who inspired The Texas Chain Saw Massacre?). It finally seemed as if the conversation might die once Bigelow was passed over for the Best Director Oscar nomination. The damage was done. Zero Dark Thirty, unlike The Hurt Locker, was officially &amp;quot;controversial,&amp;quot; whatever that means. Maybe people could start to focus on watching the movie. (They&amp;#039;re doing that anyway: It was the highest-grossing at last weekend&amp;#039;s box office.) Now Kathryn Bigelow has made the unwise and ultimately pointless decision to take up the Los Angeles Times&amp;#039;s offer to &amp;quot;elaborate on recent statements I&amp;#039;ve made in response to these issues&amp;quot; with an op-ed in today&amp;#039;s paper. As she writes, &amp;quot;I&amp;#039;m not sure I have anything new to add, but I can try to be concise and clear.&amp;quot; Yes, that is exactly the problem: There is nothing new to add, and clarity will not change anyone&amp;#039;s mind in this case. Bigelow here and elsewhere, along with others defending her, has called the accusations that her film glorifies torture anti-art. &amp;quot;Those of us who work in the arts know that depiction is not endorsement,&amp;quot; Bigelow writes. She&amp;#039;s right, of course. That some people point to the fact that torture did not help lead to bin Laden in calling the movie irresponsible highlights the hypocrisy of this line of attack: Would not depicting torture at all in a film about years of C.I.A. work during which torture in the agency was at its most prevalent somehow be more responsible? Zero Dark Thirty depicts our messy history in order for us to reckon with it, all of it, good and bad. Those like Jane Mayer in the New Yorker who have said the film &amp;quot;milks&amp;quot; torture for drama &amp;quot;while sidestepping the political and ethical debate it provokes&amp;quot; seem to miss the point of movies entirely: Zero Dark Thirty doesn&amp;#039;t exist to help us hash out our principled or unprincipled political dialogue about a particular U.S. policy and how it was instituted. (Mayer, no doubt, prefers Lions for Lambs to Apocalypse Now.) Instead, it puts us in the cockpit, literally and figuratively, which is a much more uneasy place to be. Faces of politicians like Barack Obama and George W. Bush flash by on TV screens in Zero Dark Thirty, while the characters working for the C.I.A. furrow their brows and stay silent. They&amp;#039;re too busy to debate. What seems to disturb people like Mayer most of all is that Bigelow doesn&amp;#039;t treat such characters as placards in a Congressional hearing. She sees them as real people, with flaws and understandable motives. Luckily, Zero Dark Thirty is a movie that speaks for itself, which is why people should just go see it. I can remember another uneasy moviegoing experience seven years ago, United 93, that seemed to have no idea how it was using the disturbing images it invoked. United 93 very much milked our national horrors for thrills, as if the recent memory of 9/11 wasn&amp;#039;t enough to outrage us; we had to experience the whole thing in Jack Bauer real time. If you talk to anyone who has seen Zero Dark Thirty, they will tell you the same thing: The torture in the movie doesn&amp;#039;t titillate. It makes you feel awful. It makes you feel more awful to know that it happened, and that the people who did it were by and large decent people who wanted to get a job done. Where should our outrage really be directed? Follow The Culture Blog on RSS and on Twitter at @ESQCulture. "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
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