A Screenwriter Ponders the Ethics of Torture

Posted on October 25, 2007

With torture being in the news, screenwriters are debating how to deal with the subject. The New Yorker revealed that the show 24 had 67 torture scenes during the first five seasons, which is more than one torture scene in every episode aired. That's a lot of televised torture, thought Josh Singer, a writer-producer for Law & Order: Special Victims Unit, so he decided to create an episode of the show where the moral and legal implications of torture are explored.

"We wanted to use the medium to take on the question of whether torture is ever justified," Mr. Singer said. "To be clear, we make TV to entertain, but we entertain a lot of people. And while we didn't want to use the show as a platform to proselytize, we did feel it might be refreshing to create an episode of television with a real debate on the question of torture and whether/when the American government should engage in torture."
The resulting episode, entitled "Harm" and airing tonight at 10 p.m. on NBC, is about whether and in what situations torture is justified. "It specifically deals with the question of if our government or the private military corporations they hire should be engaged in torture," Mr. Singer said. Characters from the show � like Olivia Benson, Elliot Stabler, Casey Novak debate the question while the actress Elizabeth McGovern guest stars as a doctor who has been hired to facilitate torture abroad.
"In our research we found that a number of American doctors were involved overseeing torture at Guantanamo and Abu Ghraib and this led to another question: can a doctor, someone who's taken the Hippocratic Oath, participate in torture for what she deems to be the greater good?," Mr. Singer said.

He isn't the only screenwriter to tackle the issue. Last week's episode of Numb3rs revealed that Diane Farr's character, behavior specialist Megan Reeves, is suffering emotional issues because of an assignment in which she helped the government design ways to effective interrogate prisoners.