 Emily Brown, talk about her speech some of her doctoral research and the title of her presentation today is called zero dark 30 at 10 years the power of cultural texts. This is something I'm really excited about I love popular culture and I love popular cultural international relations I think it tells us a great deal about war violence but just broader global politics and so I'm so excited to have Emily about her research and I'll be listening with a keen I'm sure or year I'm sure all of us will be. Emily is in her final year of PhD candidate here at war states department at KCL. She is a fellow in higher education Academy and has been teaching at King's undergrad since 2017 longer than I have. She has taught at London School of Economics and the joint service command and staff college and shrivenham, as well as a widening participation schemes, such as the brilliant club and the key plus spotlight summer schools. Emily holds a BA with honors and films and film and American studies from the University of East Anglia, and an MA in Shakespeare studies from King's College London. She is focusing on the role of Shakespeare and American identity her research has shifted focus to the role of judicial and political violence in American culture, after working as a human rights charity reprieve. So, Emily is joined today by Dr Frank fully who is a senior lecturer in international relations and the Department of War Studies and he's going to act as Emily's discussing. Emily's main research interests are counterterrorism human rights intelligence and police agency and he conducts field research on these topics in the UK US, France and Spain. Prior to this post Frank held a post doctorate fellowship at the Stanford University Center for international security and cooperation at the Department of War Studies and at the center of political and constitutional studies in Madrid. And he received a terrorism research award from the US National Consortium for the study of terrorism and response to terrorism. Frank holds a PhD in political science from the European University Institute in Florence and an M fell in history of political thought from the University of Cambridge. He conducted research on the Northern Ireland conflict at the University of Ulster doing 2004 and worked as a journalist in Brussels between 2001 and 2003. It's not such a great lineup Emily and Frank you're both very impressive so I'm so pleased that you've agreed to be a part of the seminar series. So, we've agreed that Emily is going to talk for about 25 ish minutes about her research and then Frank will offer some discussing commentary points. Over to you the audience for further general questions and answers you can either raise your zoom hands if you want to ask those questions live, or just type them in the Q&A chat box, and, and I can read them out loud to Emily. So without further ado Emily I'm going to pass the floor over to you. Thank you very much, Amanda. It's such a pleasure to be here and be part of this series. And I'm really excited to share some of my ideas. So, before I go any further, I want to know this is not a complete paper at all. This is kind of early thoughts on turning a section of my PhD into an article and I've kind of used this opportunity in the seminar series to really just start thinking about it. So really any and all comments and feedback are welcome. And this may just turn into a bunch of my ideas coming out in very strange ways but hopefully there'll be kind of some some points them and some structure. So the first thing I thought I would do is kind of do the context of what I'm working on. Amanda, brilliantly introduced me and so I've got you've got the background of doing a, you know, film and work is undergraduate degree and a master's in Shakespeare studies so my background is very interdisciplinary. And my research is on cultural representations of torture and specifically American torture. And I'm trying to interrogate why torture is no longer really considered extraordinary within cultural texts. I kind of argue that torture used to be something that was done to Americans, and then American heroes did it but in extraordinary circumstances. I think kind of Jack Bauer and 24. You know, you know, we've got more, it being kind of undeclared not talked about kind of part of a professional expectation. And, you know, critically no longer really a point of discussion. And sometimes these, you know, torture can even go undercover in these texts in a way and not really be considered as torture as such. So I question where we get our understanding of torture from. And I argue for the importance of culture within that. So that's kind of the context of my PhD and obviously for my background it's I'm very interdisciplinary. So this is probably going to be quite different from a normal war studies or security studies seminar that you'll get so stay tuned. So it's a little bit a little mismatch of everything but again I'm happy to kind of go into that into the comments or questions at the end as well. If you have kind of questions about where I'm coming from. Okay, so this paper this article will be talking about zero dot 30, which is 10 years old this year, unbelievably. It was in 2012 directed by Catherine Bigelow and written by Mark Bowell, who had previously collaborated on the heart locker, which one best picture and the Academy Awards when it came out. And zero dot 30 was also nominated for best picture, didn't win another CIA, you know, docu drama kind of one, I'll go, but it was kind of critically acclaimed so it was, you know, nominated for the Oscars and critically acclaimed. And it is, you know, is a when it came out, it was part of a huge discourse around around two things really not just torture. One of them was this depiction of torture as effective in the search for bin Laden which people have disagreed with. They've disagreed with whether or not torture was effective or not or whether the film shows it as effective or not. I think we can, I can go into that more afterwards if people are interested in whether or not it portrays effective use of torture but I would argue that it does. And it was also a point of controversy in how closely the filmmakers collaborated with the CIA or not, which I will also go into later on in this, in this paper. So my, my basic argument here is going to be that CIA zero dark 30 acts as a piece of history, and people who watch it, and or like interact with the cultural discourses surrounding it, have their ideas about torture crafted by it in one way or another for good or ill. So I'm hoping to examine this process a little bit more deeply unpacking how the film is able to do this and begin to think about the political implications of this and that's something I want to go into in much more depth. So if anyone has any great ideas and do let me know I know I'm like give me feedback but give me feedback on all of this. So kind of the especially I'm really interested in like more recent political implications of it because it's been 10 years a little harder to kind of to kind of unpack that. I'm going to start off by talking about the film itself, the, the, the cultural texts that's created by these filmmakers, and how that kind of helps to create a first draft of history, as they go, as argued. So, Bigelow is known for her use of realistic film techniques, and several scholars have argued that it's her attention to atmospheric detail that makes her films feel, you know, really truthful and really realistic. She's often quoted as saying she wants the audience to feel like they've got their boots on the ground, particularly in her in her more military films, and the film is just kind of like the lens through which we experienced this. Her cinematography and editing is really key to this she has a handheld shaky cameras fast paced editing. She has a more natural use of lighting and sound than other action films might do. There's very little like non-diagetic music, you know, she really wants you to feel like you were there and part of the experience. And a good example of this is one of the last scenes in the film is the final 40 minutes I think it's the raid on the Butterbird compound compound that a Saladin Larson is hiding in. It's not framed as the night vision goggles and the headcams of the Navy Seals who are taking part in the operation. The timings are close to real time they're not but it's kind of it feels like it's kind of real time. The title of the film is taken from the time half past midnight when they set off. This is a really clear understanding of how realist filmmaking, how it works for Big Low. I think the rest of the film also shows this but this particular scene is what most people can think of oh yeah that's like a video game like you were there. And scholars, particularly Amanda Greer have noted how these this film technique makes it kind of almost like a journalistic objectivity to when you're watching it. Which is that you know, we kind of think oh yeah we're just watching events unfold rather than a story being told. So obviously, I'm not arguing this film as a documentary I don't think anyone is confused about that. We are watching a film or a fictional version of events. But the way that the film is created helps to lend this aura of objectivity around what we are watching. So we kind of we're in a journalistic role from which to observe history unfolding. Right. I think that's one of the key points that Big Low kind of wants to get across. So that kind of this is kind of putting this film kind of close to history, you know, kind of slowly getting there and a lot of my points are going to be like, kind of slowly getting there. Another way that this is done is through the main protagonist of Maya who is the CIA agent who we follow on this decade long journey to hunt for bin Laden. And so she's an absolute professional and torture is kind of always framed as part of her job her role as a counter-terror agents. And it's not a pleasant aspect of her job but it gets the film suggests that it gets necessary information one way or another. And may I think it's a really interesting character particularly in the first scene of the film, which is an extended torture scene it's about 20 minutes long. And it's how my is introduced to us as a, you know, a rookie agent that we had to discover. So she kind of acts like a conduit to the audience we kind of encounter torture at the same time that she does for the first time. She is kind of like the heart and soul of the film. So in this in this torture scene she is a little bit reluctant a little bit disgusted by what's going on a little bit confused much like the audience would be. The scene uses a really interesting technique of cutaway shots to show this. So rather than like focusing in on the talk to a victim and what is happening to him in the scene. It often focuses on mayors face and her reactions to her and her grimaces and how uncomfortable she is with this. And I think this is a really, you know, an interesting, what is an interesting, you know, cinematic choice becomes really key when mayors then asked to get involved in the torture. And the other torture in the scene is a CA agent called Dan, and he says hand me the bucket to Maya so she goes from watching what's going on with us to then being complicit in it. And she does she hands him a bucket from which he kind of performs some, you know, style of waterboarding on this on this victim. And because she stands in for the audience. And this kind of, you know, in a sense that we are also complicit in the torture when she that when she gets involved. And we also we are we are so much, even in the first few minutes, a part of Maya's experience and taking it from her perspective that when she does when she gets involved when she becomes complicit in torture. We are we are to which I think is a really interesting choice done by big low. And I think she she epitomizes this notion of postman 11 torture of this hurts me more than it hurts you. It's a really unpleasant thing, but it's going to work. I trust that it will work. And, you know, it's, it's necessary and I think when we kind of get glimpses into this through her character, it becomes easier for us to understand, or kind of conceptualize torture is something unpleasant but necessary. Even beyond this, before this scene the film opens the title card says this film is based on actual events. This, you know, another really interesting aspect of framing this film in a realist way, because obviously it's a, it's a film that's based on events it's not the truth but it's based on actual events so the glimpses that we get are things that really happened. And this title card has is accompanied by a sound bridge of recordings of victims of 911 in their final moments, and which caused a little bit of an outcry there was a public objection by some of the victims families. It's not about using this but it does, again, serve a very key purpose of the film and that's to make you feel viscerally what it was like post 911 when decisions to torture were made, which is a huge trope in Americans talking about torture and what they did it's like, but you know it was the time you know we another attack was imminent at any moment and you know that stress or anything, anything goes. I think sound bridge kind of, you know, embodies that. And I like to talk a little bit about and Vivian subjack has argued that we don't just watch films but we experienced them right in terms of you know somatically and within our bodies. This is a quote she explains that our fingers are skin and nose and lips and tongue and stomach and all the other parts of us understand what we see in the film experience. For example, when we're listening to the sound bridge of 911 victims, you know we can feel our skin prickle or, you know, stomach lurching or gut churning. And all of this kind of goes into how we experienced film. I think this is a really strong argument against that oh it's just a movie argument, because yes it is just a movie but movies are not as easy to dismiss. I think people may think they are I think our bodily reactions and the experience of a viewing films is really important. And so clearly this is not a documentary and it's not supposed to be like exactly what happened, but this film and the creation of it lends itself aspects of the real. It's kind of trying to shift into that semi real status close to history status which I think is a really interesting aspect of how the film is made. It's not just the film itself that kind of brings it close to history. That's certainly part of it, but we've got the context in which it was created. So the film started started its life as a film about Osama bin Laden escaping into the mountains of Torah Bora in the wake of the invasion of Afghanistan, and there's going to be a film about like the failure to find him. And then when it was announced that Osama bin Laden was killed they changed tack really fast and started working on zero dot 30 the film that came out. This is worth briefly mentioning I think the closeness of the film to the event because it's I think it's almost unprecedented in the sense of global events being turned into cultural texts happened within under two years. And this is a little bit of an iffy argument but I think it's worth it's worth making because it puts both the event and the film of the event on a very similar like timescale and context surrounding it. And that's only going to get closer and closer the further we get away from it. So I think that's going to be an interesting aspect to see how how closely they meld together and we start thinking of them kind of almost as one. Although that's it's tricky I'd still need a little bit of thought but I think it's worth worth mentioning. Another thing that was really key in the making of this film was this question of how closely the filmmakers collaborated with the CIA. So there was a huge controversy around this and the Senate Intelligence Committee launched an investigation that was really short lived. Everyone's saying oh the CIA gave out classified information how could they get this so right. Essentially, I think it's safe to say that we know now that the CIA did not give out classified information I don't think anyone broke the law. However, the CIA does have an entertainment liaison office. It does get involved in filmmaking in Hollywood, particularly. And this film I think is a classic example of that. There's a fantastic book on the CIA and Hollywood if anyone's interested by Tricia Jenkins which really lays out how to essentially spot when the CIA has been involved in the film or television show or not, because they don't make it clear they don't say oh the CIA has helped in this in this film. But they do, they get involved. It's often at script level or pre script level. They'd like to push potential ideas that recently be classified missions I think might make good movies. Argo. You know, I think that that's that's part of their job. They invite filmmakers, as they did with Bigelow and Bowell to Langley to have discussions with staff members. So I think, you know, there was a lot of involvement in the film but nothing illegal. But the interesting aspect about this is it doesn't really matter if anything illegal happened people think they got classified information that that making the jump between or having a conversation with a with a member of the CIA and then all knowing the exact truth of what happened. Is a hard is a hard thing to separate. So I think it's interesting when I think it's interesting that it's not just a whether or not they were given classified information or not it's more like people kind of suspect even though like the briefest hint of a suspicion that it did that they did get information. And I think this is particularly interesting when we're talking about something that's really classified so zero dot 30 is a story of a really classified hunt and especially in the final scenes. In the operation to kill a summer bin Laden. It's it's it's classified so we're not supposed to know what happens. And it gives the CIA an interesting opportunity here so when we say if we had the title card, you know this film is based on actual events the CIA can mean quite heavily into the fact that it might not be accurate. And the CIA was kind of invested in in in saying this there was a really interesting round. Shortly after the film was released with a lot of senior members of the CIA into being like ex chiefs of the CIA, explaining that the film wasn't was an accurate tool and the depictions of torture weren't accurate. And the head of the CIA had sent a memo around to other staff and said I've been like this was an accurate don't worry. So spent a lot, a lot of time saying oh this is an inaccurate film. And so, but I think that again lends itself this idea of this film being true but not quite true right so we know that they've had access to the CIA they've spoken to the CIA, people suspect they may have got classified information from the CIA. But, but we have like, you know, it's cliched but plausible deniability as well right, the idea that things not necessarily not necessarily true. So, I think this this space between truth and untruth or like not quite true is a really interesting one that fiction kind of fills. So, it kind of gives us impression that what we're watching is like the tip of the iceberg that we can only get like a small a small glimpse into what really happened and that glimpse might not be 100% accurate but like on the whole, it gives us a glimpse into the into the iceberg of what is of what is going on. It's kind of close to a version of the truth and that if the filmmakers kind of veered too far from the truth that the CIA might have like interceded and said no no we need to push it that way this is kind of closer to the truth. I think the Timothy Melly has a really interesting concept called the covert sphere that kind of goes into this. I'm going to just briefly talk about because I think it's fascinating. Because the nature of counterterrorism requires secrecy, we cannot know exactly what it is that's being discussed or talked about in the public sphere, you know in order to keep us safe. So, whilst we need to know that the government is doing all it can to keep us safe we can't know exactly what it is it's doing. Timothy Melly suggests that fiction bridges this gap and gives us a space through which we can discuss, like the secret covert actions of what the government may or may not be doing to keep us safe and he calls this the covert sphere, as opposed to the public sphere. Essentially, it's like we kind of we know what to expect when watching films about counterterrorism because we have watched previous films about counterterrorism. And it's a way, it's a way for us to kind of discuss and understand and feel good about what a government is doing secret or possibly doing secretly. For Melly the covert sphere is not just a way to publicly acknowledge and not acknowledge the secret government actions of the government. But it's also a really complex ideological system in the covert sphere citizens of the democratic United States find comfort protection pleasure in the knowledge that the government is acting in a necessarily undemocratic way. They are reassured the government is looking for them by the way they see process and interact with fictional representations of the covert in contemporary culture. So he actually uses an example of zero dark 30 in this there's a scene where Navy Seal was kind of doing a big, you know, hangar with all this, you know, secret planes and is kind of coded as area 51. And he says, technically, you know, this doesn't exist these don't exist. This is secret. And Melly kind of picks up on how that makes us feel, you know, relieved you get to be like, yes, the government does have the secret stuff. Super high tech that's there to keep us safe. And yet, you know, if you think about Mark Bissonette who's one of the Navy Seals on the operation to kill bin Laden he got, he got in trouble for writing a book about about about what happened. So something that's allowed to be discussed within the idea like zero dark 30 is I'm not allowed to be classified as as fact or memoir right you can't be like no this happened. You've got to be very careful about how you discuss covert actions. So, you know, Melly suggests that the, the public needs a government that abides bylaws but also needs to a government that they believe will break laws when when necessary. And he this is the quote from him the best policy on terror in other words is actually two policies, one public and idealistic, and the other covert and pragmatic. So our reliance on fiction to bridge the gap between feeling secure and knowing and not knowing that the government might necessarily break the law cultivates kind of a worrying sense of trust in the government. And I think that's just kind of one aspect that's worth diving into I don't really have time to go into any depth but that's kind of one interesting side to this. So, the space between truth and fiction and real unreal is really complicated, and film such as zero dot 30 take advantage of this. And I think one consequence of this is this kind of suggesting that kind of edging towards the real or kind of a real history is my history. And so I think, you know, all of this is is going on in my head when I'm thinking about this. And thinking about other possible political implications beyond this kind of worrying sense of trust in the government which is sort of questionable and worth thinking about more. But Darius Rajali who is a really key torture scholar has talked about films as a convenient truth, you know showing tortures convenient truth. So, we can agree that zero dot 30 is not torture propaganda was not propaganda. The CIA did not make it to say hey you know talk just great. However, films cannot represent the reality of torture and so is part of that failure failing. They do kind of propagate these convenient truths. And really so like what I do of counter terrorism comes from previous representations of counter terror the same kind of goes for torture. We can we can recognize torture ideas of torture come from previous fictional incarnations of it on the whole, not necessarily just fictional but like mostly fictional representations of it. And then here is Rajali argues that most people don't understand how torture works like the details. You know the techniques that Genesis and their effects on human beings he says this is a quote, hell is torture in the details, people forge convenient truths often by ignoring details. And this is not just like a willful, you know, ignoring of what's true or not but it also kind of plays into the narrative approach to storytelling and filming and filming things. So he often he uses as an example, actors asking him how to realistically portray someone going through electro torture and Rajali always says, just act like you would people expect you to act, not like what really happens which is bones breaking and jaws locking and, you know, being really grim he's like just convulsing you know grimace a lot that's what people expect. So it will, you know, break the reality break the fantasy, if you do something different. And I can kind of relate this to the sound of a punch in a film, which everyone knows what the sound of a punch is like in Hollywood it's loud, you know punch, but it's not what a punch sounds like a punch is much quieter than that. In the Hollywood film, you had the sound of a realistic sound of a punch, it would jerk us out of the fantasy. It's not what you're expecting to hear so it would kind of break, break film at conventions and so that's why punches sound like they do because it's been going on for so long. It would be really jarring to not do it. I mean, people do but they have a reason for doing it right. If you just want like a faultless narrative storyline you don't pull people out of that. So that's kind of the same thing when it when it comes to torture. And these kind of the truths that are portrayed fit like a thought fit what like what required to keep the story going. So again, it's not like a willful ignoring the details. It's what the film needs. The film doesn't need like the realities of torture it needs what we expect torture to look like in order to forward the plot on and be a narrative device. It argues that they are information shortcuts that are real enough. An audience except these cinematic features a substantive truths about torture, and they don't think too hard about them. Real enough that certain understandings we have of the world. Don't ruin the movie for everyone. When this is done well movies achieve a semi documentary status. So this is almost a bit like a positive reinforcement of what we already recognize. And I think that's why we're saying that it kind of it fulfills a narrative function of making a film. Torture is fascinating if anyone were making a film of this time period they would want to include torture because it is, it is so interesting and so dramatic. And at the same time, we also have to root for for these characters. We also have to sympathize with with mayor and the CIA so the torture can't be too brutal. The force wrecked all the hydrations are not in zero dot 30. It needs to be grim, but not grim enough for us to be like, you know, breaking the fantasy of being on the side of the CIA. And one other final, I think probably one final point that I think is interesting in terms of, you know, the film kind of reaching historical, you know, the state of history is that it may turn out to be like the most represented representation of the event. And I'm relate this to the film The Battle of Algiers in 1966, which that is the most represented representation of that event and often gets conflated with reality in much more so than zero dot 30 does. When it was first released in the US Battle of Algiers needed, you know, to say this is not a documentary when showing it. When it was released on DVD in the US in 2003, the Pentagon had a showing of it. And there was an accompanying flyer and I'm going to read the words on this. It says how to win a battle against terrorism and lose the war of ideas. Children shoot soldiers at point blank range. Women plant bombs in cafes. Soon the entire Arab population builds to a mad further sound familiar. It's definitely framed as like fact as like, oh, this is what happened in the Battle of Algiers. And Rajali himself gives a really fantastic rebuttal to that arguing that torture was in fact not as important in the Battle of Algiers as people think it is, but people think it is because of the because of the film which which is really interesting so I don't necessarily think that zero dot 30 operates in this way just yet. But I think it might do it definitely has the potential to become like the most represented representation of certainly when I was whatever I think about as long as I'm alive and I think of zero dot 30 but that could just be a me problem because I've been working on it so much. So that's going to be really interesting to kind of look into. The acceptance of torture as like part of the job is much easier when you've seen kind of what it entails or you've seen what you think it entails. That's kind of close enough to to reality. That's kind of semi real semi documentary kind of sitting in this place between real and unreal. It doesn't but it happened and they go. And we can see the implications of this, you know, starting up you've got Obama's favorite and famous we've tortured some folks speech which is in 2014 just like two years after this film was released, which I think was really startling, you know, piece of public speaking when it came out. It's a really interesting example of how we kind of normalize torture, and then you've got like the nomination of Gina Haskell to the head of the CIA under Trump, you know woman who was in charge of a black site just like the one in zero dot 30 where torture was going on and, you know, was definitely involved in destroying evidence of torture, and all of this was known at her confirmation hearing and still had no problem, you know, getting through and becoming the head of the CIA. There are some really interesting implications and implications to this, not just in, you know, thinking about torture and how we conceptualize it and how we, you know, deal with it or allow it to happen in certain places but also in just the notion of how we go forward with what's happened in the past. Okay, it's like zero dot 30 I think operates at a place where it's a semi real understanding of what happened, a potential truth and a potential history that has real political implications. It's partly due to the impossibility of really representing torture in any meaningful way. And, you know, partly through to how Americans particularly have portrayed torture in their input or texts in the last 20 years or so. So I'm going to be quiet now and I'm really interested to hear what people's views on this obviously it's a hodgepodge of my ideas so yeah. Okay, so I believe a man dude like me to jump straight in so so everybody. This is Frank foley here from war studies. So I'm very glad to give some comments on on a great presentation by Emily so I really really enjoyed the presentation and this is just some spontaneous comments from me. I wanted to just highlight first of all some of the things that I found most striking about the presentation, most interesting and most striking, when I think your analysis of the movie. I found that the torture scene amounts to 20 minutes of the movie until like, that's, that is astounding that that is that does merit further commentary just a sheer length of that out of a, that's a huge chunk of a movie. There's a lot of time so that's, but your analysis of how the audience, you know, becomes complicit in the in in the torture by the main character is fascinating and sort of, you know, seems to me that yeah you're drawing and you're sort of interdisciplinary background there to sort of do that analysis and I think that's something you could, you know bring out strongly in this, you know, as part of this planned article. And what I found particularly interesting was, you know, you bought in Tim Melly and this contrast between CIA is involved with films and how we seem to, as a public know a lot about the secret world through film and the contrast between that and the increasing sort of criminalization of leaks any kind of national security information, anybody who, you know, tries to write a book faces massive obstacles. So I think there is something very interesting there that I haven't seen much in the literature about this contrast between, you know, in films the CIA is very open and involved and interested than ever with that liaison office dimension which is quite interesting and the contrast between that what the trend, as well as post snow to really crack down on anything that is claiming to be fact. So that contrast they find quite interesting that information does come out but only in only in this kind of control of way that it can be represented as fiction, but still somehow have a truthfulness about it as you allude to so that's the second point of this film quite striking and and can be developed more. And, and also what you said about, you know, this example of something that is in theory less violent but the sound of a real punch being less violent than an actual movie punch. And, and, yeah, the unreality of this is not something that I was have drawn my attention to and I think that is, again, come out of your background and quite quite interesting to bring into a sort of security studies audience to get them thinking about this so these are all the things I think that are really striking and can be developed and maybe put at the center of this article. And so in terms of other comments. I mean, I think there's been some studies which have shown that, you know, depictions of torture in movies and in popular culture do influence people I mean there so I get this is something that other disciplines have shown like criminologists or psychologists. And I think I'm pretty sure I mean that people like Joe young and Aaron cairns. If I recall correctly they've think they've done experiments where they show people a scene, a torture scene from a film and they try to gauge people's opinions afterwards and they've got other findings are consistent with what you would expect I mean when you said at the beginning of the presentation that one of your arguments is to indicate how people's views are crafted by something like zero dark 30. I don't think I mean unless you want to go off and do these experiments as well. I mean, I don't think this should be one of your main claims to mention that the, that I think you're you're doing something different and equally valid and I think that the things that some of the including some of the things I just mentioned, but that you guys think you can just sort of take the existing research on this by Joe, and by Aaron cairns and others. So do you and sort of feed into that and, you know, exemplify in a deeper way like because what they haven't done is they haven't got the deep understanding of films that you have so they haven't, you know, done a deep analysis of the 30 and show how the audience is made implicit to this 20 minute torture scene like that's something that I'm not aware of that exists in the in the literature so so I think you could just sort of take that and sort of have it as an outcome that you're sort of taking from the existing research and you're illustrating the first part of that sort of causal claim in a sense, just how exactly the movies do that and how they, you know, so I think that's quite I think that will be one suggestion for me in terms of framing this article. A second question I had for you was on. As well this is a minor love point because I think in your other work you are looking at other films but this article seems to make claims with zero dark 30 but I guess all the impact of this film is only in the context of all the other representations of torture. Now we see in so many other films I think there's one study which claims that the majority of films have at least one torture scene, and that's include some children's movies. So just the regularity of this, I guess you will refer to in the article, and I guess zero dark 30 has its influence just in the context of all this other stuff. You can have itself it might not have impact but but it's it's against the background of all these other cultural representations which prime the audience already to expect the torture will be effective, you know. So all those other films might be worth bringing out just a little bit more in terms of context. So two final points. I was interested in in sort of how you see this film matching up against other major sort of texts and sort of tendencies in politics. I think of what influences American sort of policy and torture today I think a lot about the CIA's report, sorry the Senate report into the CIA's enhanced interrogation techniques program of 2014, where Diane Feinstein and and members of the CIA really, you know, did all they could to show that torture was ineffective. And there was a big public debate and they had the, and through their efforts and the general reaction to the interrogation program. It seems that many people are most people within the CIA have been turned off, you know, having an enhanced interrogation techniques program again so this is this nice book by sociologist Jared Russell, talking about torture which, which sort of depicts how or shows how US public opinion went from, or at least elite opinion went from denial of torture to acknowledgement and eventually criticism so there's that tendency as well. So I think it's quite influential in Washington DC. So you've got that going on to sort of public policy level I think, and you've got this whole cultural world, film world, popular cultural world which says something else about torture being in a you know as being effective and. And then you have sort of Trump and right wing populism, which is, you know, Trump Trump said he would bring back torture he didn't for reasons we can discuss maybe later but that's kind of that's influencing opinion on the right, and in terms of torture as well so there's a, I saw I see sort of US opinion and torture sort of as an quite a delicate position. But I do sort of pay a lot of attention as well to the critics of torture. And so I was wondering what you think about that how do these texts, they're the influence of the cultural cultural things like like this important how would you assess their influence versus the something like the Senate reports that the elite debate on torture as being ineffective. And then you know it's just right wing populism on the other side. And then the last, the last question is, is that wondering, you know the CIA wanted to influence this film and other many films it seems in 2012 but at the same time the CIA at that time was at least ambiguous or was to some extent moving away from torture. I wonder how did you make sense of that or. I mean, did they do we know anything about, I mean, why did this film maker go off and, and do that. I maybe just did it for dramatic purposes but. But you know it just, what was going on in the CIA at that time and then they then they tried to deny it but anyway it's really, really interesting work and it sort of ties in with some of my own work on narratives of torture at the sort of public policy level how Obama, and I see this in the British case as well. Sometimes there are these kind of really striking events like the British experience in Northern Ireland, how that's represented in narrative does have implications today and so then what you're bringing in is this very visual very visceral very important cultural narrative in the form of film. And I'm just fascinated is what you think about how that interacts with the sort of public policy narratives that some of us have been studying as well. So thanks very much Emily for very interesting work. Absolutely. Thank you for your comments I just kind of really briefly respond with a few of my key thoughts in terms of like, you know, public policy narratives or like expert narratives around torture. Absolutely right I think people moved away from torture very very quickly, especially members of the CIA, but I think they moved up the narrative is they moved away from it because they got in trouble with like, you know, popular opinion. Certainly, the, the, you know, the story that comes through all of all of the memoirs everyone involved in the CIA interrogation program has a memoir. Most of them goes written by the same CIA public affairs official, but they all have the same story of, Oh, what we did was right at the time and that it was legal but we would never do it again because we got in so much trouble for it. The lawyer john Rizzo is like, you know, I did my best. I tried to keep everybody legally safe and blah blah blah but you know look what happened anyway. It was kind of a false narrative of people coming for him he did a great job nobody ended up in jail for torture, like, you know, he did fine, but there is this kind of narrative of it being like, Oh, if only people kind of understood the reality of it a little bit more, we would still have this option open to us. Absolutely everyone has been has been closed off. I think because of the reaction to it right because I can't imagine the CIA would ever you know necessarily have a detainee program again, let alone any kind of any kind of torture. And I think the zero dot 30 is in a really interesting place in history where, where we, we haven't had the Senate report on torture yet so no one really understood the actual the horror of it right no one really understood what really happened you know the stuff that was happening to these prisoners. No one really understood how ineffective it was how it didn't really work but we did know that prisoners were getting waterboarded and they're the big you know the cultural images that came before zero dark 30 were like that Abu Ghraib which is not like official torture but kind of close by. So we said, you know if you're talking about things that you know but you don't know you do know that people are being tortured. And as part of, if that's your country that's doing that you are kind of an invested sense of it being, you know, effective, not doing it for no reason. So, I think the filmmakers, when it comes to their representation of torture, it's impossible to know, but I strongly suspect that that's something that the CIA didn't necessarily talk to them about. I think they would have been very, I think the CIA would have been very, very careful going anywhere near the interrogation program with any kind of filmmakers. And so, perhaps they would have been like rain that in a little bit if it did get too outlandish. I don't know. But I don't think they were like that this is exactly how how the torture worked, which is why the CIA was so able to be like this is this is not what happened this is not what the torture was like it was very different. I think the argument would be, oh, it was much more controlled. There are much more people in the room. You had to get written, you know, authority to do any kind of waterboarding session. It was highly bureaucratized that certain certainly the line that the CIA given how it was, how it was done it wasn't quite as visual or as brutal or as fast as the film would, you know, have you believe, but it was deeply brutal in another way that we don't get to see. I think, yeah, and I've toyed with the idea of pairing this film with the reports about the Senate torture report. So the report just came out to me a couple of years ago but like in my thinking on this but I that's something that I'm going to look into. And I also think the Mauritanian is a really interesting film about about torture. If anybody hasn't seen it you absolutely should because I think that's a really fascinating glimpse into into kind of what happened so lots of things to be thinking of I'm going to, you know be quiet and other people ask questions but thank you so much for your feedback Frank. Well, before we turn to everyone I'm going to totally abuse my position of chair and ask you a few questions too. I wonder. Are you reading this film as a representation of something that happens so trying to come to grips and represents, you know, you know what happens. Or are you thinking of it as a key kind of text in its own right and reading it in its own right in how it creates another imagining of geopolitics. The politics of what it's actually doing right and so I mean what I mean by that is that I feel like I'm going to weigh on the side of the ladder, and I'm going to tell you why because I think. If you if you treat the film as you know let's talk about how real it is right you're never you're going to you're never going to know right because you're going to be taken you know taken up with these questions but we don't know what the CIA actually told them or whatnot. I think what's happening for me, very powerful political here is that through film in general but through this film is it enables us as an audience to imagine a geopolitics, for which we get effectively invested in right and so whether it's true or not true. It almost just, it doesn't become as important. And I think you know for this film I wonder to like I'm imagining a really key film, I'm Canadian. So a real key film for Canada and Canada's geopolitics was shaking hands with the devil, right and that was all about Romeo de laire and Rwanda and you know the broken general and Canada's you know work with UN peacekeeping and the dark continent and what the film, you know reading of the film and the book did and Shareen Razak offered a brilliant analysis of this. Is it did a healing for the Canadian nation that the experience of Romeo de laire the experience of Canada peacekeepers they were confronted with, you know their own histories of white supremacy racism torture, you know, and Canada wasn't like imagining itself like that right we don't do things like that we're friendly Canadians, and film was this film was an artifact or a text that enabled a broader Canadian as a nation to heal, and to reimagine itself of well you know we were good people just in a really difficult spot right and it was, it wasn't, you know, our peacekeepers in general that you know are inherently racist, but rather it was the context itself right so that's doing something really important politically in and so whether it actually read you know the movie actually represented what happened or not becomes beside the point and so then it becomes about you know Shareen talks in particular about how stealing the pain of others. So the ways in which the, you know the liberal peacekeeping Canadian sense of self, and itself healing was more important that you know the violence that Canadian peacekeepers inflicted upon people became the backdrop, right. And so I wonder if you read zero dark 30 as an important geopolitical text in its own right and not necessarily have to compare it to the, the facts or the ground truths, and the fact that it appeals to a ground truth is also part of that narrative that I think there's something really profound and compelling story that you can tell, and you get away from those, you know critiques of like well did that really happen that way because again, that's beside the point right. It's an affective imagining and it's bringing the audience and embodiment and that visceral experience like you said through film that the that the popular, you know, community feels as that's important that's doing something really important politically. So that would just be my feedback for you. You know, take it or leave it but those, those were my thoughts when I was thinking about your, your fascinating research. I'm going to now switch to a few comments ever actually everyone's engaged here. We've got Clara, who says a fascinating topic and refreshing talk on zero dark 30 Thank you very much Emily. Also is if helpful CIA crest reading room is fantastic and then she puts a link into the question and answer so you can look at that. It's a digital archive of us declassified documents. And then Paul Foreman writes, is this a problem that that the argument about torture tends to focus on does it work, or is it moral, when the real argument against it is a legal one in a democratic state everyone must be equal under the law. No one in zero dark 30 says, and now what we are going to do is put these do with these detainees. How can we put them on trial. So, yeah, again, it's, yeah, I guess, you know, looking at the film and thinking of what is it doing politically what sort of representations is it reinforcing which ones is, you know, it's denying that we don't even think possible. Yeah, I think that's a really key point. I think it works into your comment as well about what the film is actually doing. And I think they very early on they they they make it clear that these in the first scene carries like all this person's never getting out and they're like no they're never getting out they're never getting a trial. It's fine you can take off your mask. Absolutely. I think I think it's a I think it does. And it works. And I think of the way that you talk about it like Obama's speech like we talk to some folks like Obama inhabits this idea of, yes, it happened. Yes, we can move past it now. Right. Like, yeah, okay. You know, we did a little bit of torturing, but we at heart it was in a, you know, coming from the right place these people were patriots. Like, we're not going to do it in the future. Let's move on. And I think zero dark 30 is really kind of a part of that and epitomizes kind of Obama's, you know, opinion on this or his, you know, his communication on torture rather than, you know, interceding and saying stop let's let's launch an investigation that's, you know, let's send, let's send some people high up into jail because they're talking never happened and won't happen. Because of this reframing of what happened and really putting it in the past and making it patriots and good people who've done it. So I think that's really interesting. I think, you know, talking about torture. It's always, you can't, you can't talk about whether it's effective or not or whether it's, it's more or not. You could talk about that, you know, for years. And I think the legal argument is an interesting one because you have to strip someone's, you know, legal rights in order to torture them. And so, and I think the film is very much, it just, it just accepts that that, oh, yeah, there are many legal rights and so we can talk to them and move on, much like they do with torture. Oh yeah, we talked to them, you know, we got information from it, but we can we can move on it may not it was certainly unpleasant. And, yeah, really fascinating. Yeah, and linking it to new US nationalism and a sense of self because it's really rooted in that right like I wonder, you know, someone from Tanzania would understood that you do know you mean so it's a part of that film is a broader artifact in this broader kind of geopolitical imagining of who the US is as the rightful leaders and how they, you know, come to tensions of brutal tactics and yet a projection of a liberal sense of self right. Sorry, I'll stop talking. And, and and you had a comment or a question. Yeah, hi, I'm an aunt, and it's a very interesting, you know, introduction, Emily you've made, but you know, let me just focus from Europe to India. The concept of influence operations came here when the ISI across the border from India that is in Pakistan, and the Indian intelligence agency started interacting with each other in such way. So, the source of the argument was movies, and we've got a hell lot of them we've got a movie on 1971 that says how we went into war in 1971 we've got a movie dedicated on 1962. We've got a movie dedicated in 1999 on Kagil, we've got a movie, which everybody, every general officer in India is so over and over and over again about it. You know how we defeated Pakistan four times a year. So, you know, we get to hear all of that on a daily basis. So, it's a very interesting that you focused on zero dark 30 however I'll put this into your notice that zero dark 30 is just a segment, a small piece in a bigger picture that you're essentially trying to see. So, if you bring in Jack Ryan from the Amazon series, you know, the commonality between both the case officers are they are hesitant and reluctant in the first time. So Jack Ryan essentially in this particular movie does not go up into the aircraft because he thinks that he's just an analyst and he will not do a dirty fieldwork. However, in my experience have been to a lot of these, you know, blackstone cages and all. This is a perception, which has been played not only by the US but also by the Iranians. I mean you've got the Iranians coming in with their movies the Turkish have been coming in with their movies. So, currently even my analysis, I'm currently focused on my analysis in Afghanistan. So you've got the Iranians coming in the Turkish coming in. Everybody has their own different, you know, rules to play. So if you could, you know, rather than analyzing the US component, if you could simply analyze what the other institutions have been doing so far per se in Asia, which is prominent. And you won't believe, because of Bollywood that we so are very keen to, you know, the saga of exaggeration, I stopped going into movies and watching these action films, because I know how a silencer sounds, and they are unable to replicate the silencer on a movie hall. So essentially, this is a perception that has been played of how, forget about a punch, how a silencer sounds. It's as simple as that. However, the impact of people seeing those movies and clapping at the end of theater when the carpet comes down, the enthusiasm and I am one of those individuals who actually went in, got recruited, went into the higher ranks because I saw that that was, you know, that was a reflection of how I wanted to serve my motherland. So these are influence tactics that are used by, I think roughly, all government institutions. So you need to broaden your space you're looking at a crossroad here. So either you want to analyze it from a, let's say a picture perspective, or limit to yourself to Hollywood, or analyze on the basis of that, or Dr. Can you believe with me on this? It's a bigger player that is the influence operations. We were a dedicated influence operation station in German Kashmir, just because Pakistan, the interservice intelligence in Pakistan has been doing so for a very long time. I mean, absolutely. I think you torture and films are such big topics. It's impossible to say, hey, this is, you know, this explains every aspect of it. We have to narrow our scope. And I think, you know, from my perspective, I've narrowed my scope to the United States because it's something I've studied before. I'm really familiar with how the United States operates. And it's history, and it's, you know, global interactions, but I think it is something that could be, I mean, a life, more than a life's work is thinking about this from different perspectives of different countries, and different things that films do like films are so powerful and not just films but television shows as well. And like you mentioned, Jack Ryan, and I'm kind of also working on an article about without remorse, which is a film that's kind of in the Jack Ryan world. So, and I think also has the approval of the CIA, I think the Jack Ryan TV show does but that's a story for another time. But yeah, fascinating comments. Absolutely. Thanks a month. So we're running out of time, but I'll let Jim ask his, his question. Thank you, Emily. A very interesting paper. Let me give you a perspective from an American point of view. First of all, Hollywood, in World War Two Korea and Vietnam movies, and it represents the Americans as being the torture. Okay. And so what you're dealing with Catherine Bigelow and films during this past 20 years is something new. I would argue that you should go into horror films too, because I was personally down in lower Manhattan when the towers were attacked. So, I remember the reaction, which of course was overwhelmingly, let's go get them. The issue of torture came up very early. And having myself been a soldier, I knew that in the field, those issues were going to get thrown out the door completely because people if they get somebody who's captured, they're going to find out what that person knows immediately, not wait until a international lawyer comes in. Now, the films that essentially and I personally think that the popular culture dominates. Forget about the Academy. The Academy did not have an impact on this. So you talk about the CIA, the 24 TV series, openly talks about how they cooperated with the CIA when they created it. And usually the films that were, and the reason I mentioned horror films is the hospital series. I don't necessarily recommend everybody, but the Americans are the victims in those, those series. And, you know, you also have to look at Yale did two conferences on during the war about how films on Iraq were being received. And, frankly, all of them didn't do well at the box office. They made at the most on average $100,000 a year $100,000, except until Bigelow came out with hurt locker. All right. And then that changed the equation. There's another trope that comes in about how we are fantasizing the war on terror, because I don't have to tell you all the films are how cool special operations forces are. So that seems to be the kind of trope is we're staying with now so and obviously Catherine made money. So Hollywood doesn't make doesn't do invest 40 to $50 million on a film unless they want to make a lot of money which they did on this film. So I just think and finally, I interviewed just F side, who was the person who created the scenario for Battle of Algiers. And that's a whole separate situation. But that did indeed spawn an international campaign at the time in the 50s, that's toward that was throughout the world. So this is a very important paper you're working on. And yes, you should broaden it out and look at these other things that I mentioned because it's a much deeper issue. You know, much deeper issue. And unfortunately, we're left with a situation where Trump did of course openly advocate torture. He openly advocated it. And I think that there's a certain segment of the American population that feels totally justified and using torture if somebody comes in access. And I think that that sort of the issue of human rights is something that they throw out the door, when they contemplate that so thank you for your work it's very important to look at that and frankly zero doc 30 and other representations of what happened in the last 20 years, later more than a great scholarship and critiques that we've had, unfortunately. Yeah, well thank you very much I think you've you've nailed it I actually do talk about hostel the hostel series and the series of my PhD and 24, obviously, but it is I think that is such a such a huge topic and there's so much to be to be discussed and also you bring up the point that the battle of algeas did actually did do political work itself in arguing against torture and really getting the public outcry about it so that we can all agree that there's just so much to discuss it and it's so fascinating. But I really value all of your all of your comments on my work so thank you very much. So unfortunately sorry Paul I know you have your hand up but we don't have time because there's another zoom event on the school account after this and I don't want us to get bumped off on it. But Paul please do reach out to Emily directly I'm sure for more conversations and Emily thank you so much. And Frank for you know bringing such vibrant discussion for you the audience to such vibrant discussion Emily you know you're onto something because everyone's jumping to give you comments and feedback so I'm fab looking forward to seeing this in print at some point right. Yeah, and I want to again thank everyone else or everyone for coming to the seminar we have another one next Wednesday please do pop in. Have a great afternoon the sun is coming out in London now yay. So have a great afternoon everyone but before we go I'll just give Emily the floors yours for any final comments. Thank you all very much for the comments you've given on my work I'm you know looking forward to working more on it and as I finished my PhD and start to get parts of it published as very different articles. And I think it's just really important to know how important it is to talk about this and to not disregard pop culture and film as something that's just entertainment and has no bearing on politics or you know the world or the world at large because we can see it's you know just so important. Alright, thank you thanks everyone have a great week the rest of the week and hopefully I'll see you next Wednesday. Thank you.