GTA V: THE VIOLENCE DEBATE

http://www.quartertothree.com/fp/2013/09/21/grand-theft-auto-v-relevant-story-torture-since-zero-dark-thirty/
The root is still hanging on right at the gumline. I pull with the pliers while Mr. K screams and gurgles. Am I supposed
to pull the tooth straight out, or just keeping yanking it side to side? I shouldnt have hidden my eyes during this part
of Marathon Man. Ah, I see my problem. The controls indicate that I needed to apply a circular motion, like trying to
loosen a fence post.
Then, a comment behind me: Eww.
Its my roommate. He has walked into the living room on the way to the kitchen, and there I am, with a pair of pliers
plunged into some screaming guys bloody mouth, yanking the tooth back and forth. Well, not me, but Trevor, who
Im controlling. Torture by proxy. My official representative is torturing someone while I look on, pressing the
buttons to let him do this, and suddenly someone is looking at me. Why does this feel strangely familiar?
After the jump, Rockstar is talking to us, America
As soon as By the Book begins, it establishes itself as something new, different, and gross. Trevor is squatting behind
a dumpster, taking a shit. By the sound design, it is a particularly smelly shit. When Michael sees him and asks what
he was doing, Trevor is unashamed. Is this prologue to the mission related to the actual mission? Is there a metaphor
here? Or is Rockstar just a bunch of dudes who think shitting behind a dumpster is funny and a torture scene will get
guys like me to write long articles?
During By the Book, you have four methods to torture a man identified only as Mr. K. You can administer a shock
through battery clamps attached to his nipples, you can strike him with an enormous plumbers wrench, you can pull
out a tooth with pliers, or you can waterboard him. What makes this mission so uncomfortable in a game from a
genre in which youve brutalized lots of people? Why do you wince when Trevor swings the wrench into Mr. Ks
knee, but you giggled when your character in Saints Row IV did the same thing to a random pedestrian? Both clearly
show the impact of the blow. Both victims are helpless. Both instances are violence against innocents. In fact, the
one where you wince at least offers the implication that the victim could be guilty of some atrocity, or at least
colluding with terrorists who committed some atrocity.
One big difference is that the victim in one case ragdolls away, but the victim in the other case cries and begs for
mercy. Theres also the matter of tone. Saints Row IV is a cartoon, but Grand Theft Auto V, for all its goofy satire,
isnt joking right now. Another big difference is that By the Book is politically relevant to your country. Im talking to
folks in the US right now. Also, Poland, Romania, Pakistan, Morocco, and Egypt. You guys get to sit in the section
marked extraordinary rendition over there on the right.
The Houser brothers, whose creative fingerprints are all over Rockstars quintessentially American games, are British.
Their country paid the price for cozying up to the neoconservative response to 9/11. The costs ranged from the 52
dead in the 7/7 bombings to Tony Blairs fall from grace to an intelligence community cowed by its failings. Rockstar
North is in Scotland, a country whose main claim to fame on the global stage is that its under the flight path of Pan
Am Flight 103. These are countries with a keen interest in what we do, how we do it, and why we do it. These are
countries intimately familiar with the FBI and CIA, for better and worse. In By the Book, the interrogation is
conducted by the CIA. The resulting field work is conducted by the FBI. Almost. In both cases, your character is the
layer between the agency and its victim. Trevor performs the actual torture on the subject. Michael pulls the actual
trigger on the target. You are pawns, doing what youre told, whether you approve or not, whether you enjoy it or
not. You are doing it because youve done it before. The animation of Trevor choosing a method of torture indicates
he knows exactly what each of these does and how to use it. Its the same type of animation as a character selecting
a weapon from the wall at Ammu Nation. Its how you select a pair of socks from a dresser drawer every morning.
Trevors torture leaves marks. If you use the car battery and clamps, Mr. Ks chest is burned bright red. Depending
on where you hit him with the wrench, his pants will be bloodstained. If you pull his tooth, his mouth is bloodied and
his speech is slurred. Although if you waterboard him, he just gets wet. Waterboarding is chilling for how harmless it
seems to someone who hasnt been waterboarded. Its torture, Mr. K insists as you hold the right trigger to flip his
chair back. Hes been through this before. Youre not his first torturer today. It shouldnt be legal! he cries as you
put the rag over his face. Push up on the left stick to pour the water. Intellectually, I know how it works; it creates
the sensation of drowning. But I still dont understand the effectiveness. Im one of those guys whos all, Ive put a
wet washcloth on my face while taking a bath and I didnt freak out One of the most admirable things Christopher
Hitchens did was see for himself whether waterboarding was terrible. Im just going to take his and everyone elses
word for it.
While Trevor tortures Mr. K, the mission cuts to Michael training a sniper scope on a houseful of people. In Chris
Heckers upcoming two-player mini-game, Spy Party, one player is a sniper trying to pick out a target at a cocktail
party. The sniper observes details such as how party goers sip their drinks. This is how he determines who he will
shoot. Theres no context for this. Thats just the gameplay. But in By the Book, Michael and FBI Agent Dave are fed
intel directly from the interrogation, giving them increasingly specific details about the target, who must be
identified through a sniper scope.
The first bit of information is that the target is Azerbaijani. Do you even know that Azerbaijan isnt a place in World
of Warcraft? Could you tell an Azerbaijani from a Kurd or a Turk or an Albanian? Dave and Michael certainly cant. I
know I cant. My only frame of reference for Azerbaijan is that the Armenians used them as whipping boys in the
early 90s. The Armenians! Imagine getting your ass kicked by Armenia. But I wouldnt know an Azerbaijani from an
Armenian without poring over their respective passports. How am I going to tell that through a sniper scope? If
youve seen the denizen of one former Soviet republic, youve seen them all, amirite? Hashtag uglyamerican.
Fortunately, the interrogation yields more information, even if its obvious the victim is inventing details to satisfy his
torturers. The first address he gives is wrong. How can anything come of this? Is he just going to invent another
address? But when the CIA suggests a name, Mr. K readily admits to knowing that person. Hed installed a sound
system at that persons house! Theres a party there today! Maybe thats what they want to know! Maybe thats
behind the six weeks of suffering hes endured! Maybe the end is near! You can see the synapses firing behind his
eyes as his brain clutches at hope.
So you have a location, which is conveniently a Malibu house, all windows and balconies, with about fifteen people
milling about. Now to narrow it down to a specific target. The target is average height, average build, average age,
Mr. K offers desperately. The interrogators need more. He has a beard, Mr. K offers. Several people at the party who
could be Azerbaijani have beards. What kind of beard? A big beard, the torture victim offers after another round of
brutality. Ah, the sort of beard a terrorist would grow. But they/you still need more information, so more torture
happens. The target smokes cigarettes. Okay, now were getting somewhere. Its not easy to find smokers in Los
Angeles, but if youre going to find someone smoking, a hipster party in Malibu is a good place to look. The FBI agent
needs still more specific information. More torture. The target is left handed. Thats it! You now have a target. A left
handed smoker with a beard. Whos Azerbaijani, but whatever. Youve got enough information to kill someone. The
torture victim or interrogation subject, if you prefer was plucked out of a skyscraper based on what must have
been reliable intel, maybe from someone tortured up the intel stream. Of course hed know who to shoot.
I dont believe the men interrogated by the US government, whether by the CIA or at the hands of Eastern European
or Egyptian officials, were chosen at random. I dont believe the men held at Guantanamo or Abu Ghraib were
simply swept up like so many fish in a broad trawling net. I believe the men and women who captured and
imprisoned them had mostly good reasons. I therefore believe that some of them are very bad people. And I even
accept that some of them might be innocent of significant wrongdoing. Although its unfortunate, I accept that some
of them were in the wrong place at the wrong time. I am willing to accept the collateral damage of the occasional
Afghan taxi driver or travelling Moroccan when it comes to dismantling terrorist networks, just as I am willing to
accept that a Predator drone strike might kill all the family members in a strike against an al Qaeda safehouse. I am
and I admit this without shame a realist.
But what I am not willing to accept is that the victims of interrogation and the targets of drone strikes and the men
held indefinitely in extralegal facilities arent there by a carefully established due process. The insight of By the Book
is that it recreates the absurd lack of due process in a chain of events that goes from gathering intel with enhanced
interrogation to using that intel to determine a target to actually executing that target. It is a grotesque bit of satire
about a failed and disavowed American policy, much like Dr. Strangelove is a commentary on the Cold War,
Apocalypse Now is a commentary on Vietnam, and In the Loop is a commentary on the invasion of Iraq. These are all
important chapters in our national identity, and they all deserve the close examination that comes with satire, black
humor, and even ridicule.
Zero Dark Thirty is an examination of the same topic as By the Book, but with an important difference. Kathryn
Bigelows and Mark Boals movie carefully skirts editorial opinion. One of the things I deeply appreciate about Zero
Dark Thirtys narrative arc from 9/11 to the cathartic killing of Osama bin Laden is that it leaves me to examine how I
feel. It does not tell me how to feel. It does not exaggerate torture. It doesnt even demonize the torturers. It is a
dispassionate procedural that leaves viewers to decide what they feel. Discussions about Zero Dark Thirty say more
about the people having the discussion than the movie. Thats its genius.
Something you might discover while watching the movie, if you didnt know it already, is the uncomfortable reality
that retribution is arguably better than having never been wronged. The term satisfaction implies as much. In Pulp
Fiction, John Travoltas character Vincent Vega is talking about someone having keyed his car. Boy, I wish I couldve
caught him doing it, he says. Id have given anything to catch that asshole doing it. It would have been worth him
doing it just so I could have caught him doing it.
I dont apply that reasoning to 9/11, of course. But I do apply it to the killing of Osama bin Laden. If hed been killed
by Navy SEALs after the bombing of the USS Cole in Yemen back in 2000, I wouldnt have felt that weird heady
concoction of emotions when he was killed by Navy SEALs after 9/11. I wouldnt have gotten the same buzz. I could
have easily remained above that ineluctable sense of satisfaction the satisfaction of duels of honor and legal
courts and avenging angels that came from a mans death. The bombing of the Cole was easy to process and keep
in a little emotional box, because servicemen dying in the line of duty is as venerable and familiar as the concept of
duty. But the secret shame I confront about myself and the thrill I felt when bin Laden was killed, the thrill I relive at
the conclusion of Zero Dark Thirty, is that the thrill wouldnt exist without 9/11, and I dont dislike the thrill for the
event that caused it. Revenge does weird things to people. Zero Dark Thirty holds up that weird thing for you to
consider, and it folds into the weird compartments of that emotional box the idea of torture. Time was you would
immediately know the answer if you were asked if torture is a bad thing. Now you pause before answering.
But unlike Zero Dark Thirty, By the Book has no desire to remain detached. It is as opinionated as Kubrick, Coppola,
and Iannucci. It is an editorial and not a document. It is a fully processed, fully articulated opinion on torture and
remote assassination. It pulls no punches and brooks no ambiguity. It even presses into service a psychotic to lucidly
articulate an opinion on what youve just seen. No, not seen. Committed. You did that. You made Trevor do that. You
could have quit out of the mission and spent the rest of Grand Theft Auto V doing races and scavenger hunts. You
could have taken a stand. When you booted up the game, you never had the luxury of opting out of disturbing
scenes, Activision style. You didnt get a disclaimer about multicultural awareness when the game started, Ubisoft
style. So heres where you can react to the game veering outside your comfort zone. Here is the point Rockstar
wants to make with your direct assistance. Now that youve mowed down so many bystanders with cars and guns,
what do a few more moments of brutality matter?
So you extracted that tooth, shattered that knee, clamped those jumper cables onto that mans nipples and flipped
that switch. You made sure he was in pain and not simply killed. You stabbed him in the heart with an adrenaline
syringe to make sure he didnt die. You shot the bearded, left-handed, smoking man who may or may not have been
from Azerbaijan. And now the mission is over and youve been instructed to basically shoot the broken sobbing Mr. K
and dump his body in the LA river. If this mission were No Russian from Modern Warfare 2, thats how it would play
out.
Evil is a convenient theological construct that serves a purpose every bit as valuable as love, honor, patriotism, duty,
respect, and so forth. But it can only offer you so much insight into why people do what they do. British director
Simon Rumleys Red, White, and Blue is a grim slice of Texas gothic about three decent people doing utterly
reprehensible things to each other. Its a slacker mumblecore movie that spins out of control into the grotesque
excess of a Jacobean tragedy. Richard Linklater meets Titus Andronicus. But its difficult to watch because it demands
that you understand why the characters do these reprehensible things. It carefully and relentlessly unfolds the
humane motivations behind inhumane deeds. The most psychotic of the three characters, who incidentally claims
hes a torturer for the CIA, is also the most emotionally honest, the most level-headed, the calmest. Its an
unforgettable performance by Noah Taylor, fiercely hollow-eyed and scraggly, with the duct tape dangling from his
belt as ominously as any assassins pistols.
Similarly, its the madman in Grand Theft Auto V who most clearly explains whats just happened in By the Book. If
you want to understand what Rockstar is doing here, you cannot gloss over Trevors explanation at the end of the
mission. Trevors motivation for performing the torture is two-fold. First, hes psychotic, so he enjoys torture. He
says as much, but you already knew he was sadistic from the rest of the game.
But he further explains an additional motivation. Instead of shooting Mr. K and dumping his body in the LA river as
per the instructions from the CIA, Trevor instead drives him to the airport, coldly ignoring Mr. Ks plea to go to a
hospital, or to see his family again. Instead, Trevor is exiling Mr. K from his country, their country, my country,
separating Mr. K from his family, explaining to him that life as he knows it is over. On the drive to the airport, Trevor
explains his second and more relevant motivation. He explains that he knows torture doesnt work. He knows the
information he got from Mr. K is useless for anything but placating the CIA. He wants Mr. K to leave the United
States and tell the rest of the world what happened here. He brutalizes and then saves Mr. K to expose a
government policy. Trevor might be psychotic enough to enjoy torturing people, but hes also smart enough to know
that his government should be better than he is.
That is the crux of the issue. Even if torture works it doesnt, but even if it did my country should be above it.
Whether the objection is moral or practical doesnt matter to the substance of the objection. Is it wrong because its
wrong, or is it wrong because its not effective? Whatever the case, its wrong. And now Mr. K is an anti-torture
evangelist/martyr, created by Trevor and sent out into the world.
In Modern Warfare 2s No Russian level, you participated in the massacre of civilians during a terrorist attack on an
airport. It was shocking and crass, but also as pointless as someone taking a smelly shit in the middle of the road and
then pointing at it while people drive by. But By the Book, which is also shocking and crass, has a point. It has a
reason for taking us outside our comfort zone. This is something your country you, me have done. It is
something we must account for. That we squatted behind a dumpster doesnt mean we didnt do it, it doesnt mean
that no one saw, it doesnt mean there are no repercussions because it already stank back there. By the Book points
an accusing finger, it calls us out, it calls out our country, it says something very specific to you and me about
something very specific we have done. And it situates Grand Theft Auto V someplace few videogames reach,
alongside darkly relevant stories like Dr. Strangelove, Apocalypse Now, In the Loop, and Zero Dark Thirty.