Morality in Film

There is a powerful scene in Batman: The Dark Knight, in which the Joker devises a moral experiment. Two ships are leaving Gotham, to escape the terrorism their city is being subject to. One of these ships is full of innocent civilians who are fleeing the city through their own free will, the other ship is filled with the inmates of Gotham's prison. Unbeknownst to them however, the two ships have been filled to the rafters with explosives (not something worth checking during a period of extended terrorism evidently), but crucially each ship has also been given a detonator.

"Why would they give us a detonator to our own bomb?" one of the crew members aboard one of the ships asks.

Fortunately the Joker fills us in. It was he who filled the two ships with explosives, and he is about to conduct a social experiment. The detonator in the possession of the first ship is the one which will explode the second ship, and the detonator which will explode the first ship is in the possession of the second. The Joker explains that they have one hour to make a decision. One ship must blow up the other one, by the end of that hour, or the Joker will explode both ships. Effectively the only way to ensure survival is to destroy the other ship.

This poses a few moral questions. First of all, is it acceptable to kill others if it is to save yourself? Secondly, is it more acceptable to kill those who are on the prison ship, as they are convicts unlike the innocent people on the other ship? Thirdly, will the 'immoral' prisoners blow up the other ship to survive as they have no moral problem with letting others die?

In the film neither ship detonates the other, although all three questions are explored. Eventually Batman prevents the Joker from destroying either ship, and all live to tell the tale. Those on the civilian ship decide that even though the other ship is full of criminals, it is still immoral to blow them up. On the prison ship it is a large, tattooed man is the one who does the moral thing, and throws the detonator off the ship. Human spirit and morality prevails. More necessarily, a fairly liberal idea of what is right and what is wrong prevails.

I realised that the reason this is surprising is not because it is unrealistic (though I fear it may be), but because it is uncommon for this theme to be explored like that on film. It seems more common for these moral dilemmas to justify immoral actions, and for the situation to resolve itself with no immoral act taking place is quite surprising.

Take the immensely popular 24 for example. In this scenario the terribly exciting Jack Bauer is fighting to prevent a terrorist from detonating a Nuclear bomb. He finds the man who he is sure is responsible (incidentally this man is both clothed in traditional Muslim clothing and he is found in a Mosque) and thus Bauer decides he must extract information. Unfortunately though there is only a few hours before this bomb is due to explode, and our terrorist has decided to be a little difficult and is refusing to answer Mr. Bauer's questions.

Jack Bauer procedes to torture the terrorist.

This is known in philosophy as the 'Ticking Time Bomb' scenario. It is used, occasionally, in an attempt to show that torture can be justified. If torture is going to prevent the detonation of a bomb, which will kill innocent people, then surely it is acceptable to torture a terrorist. It plays to a utilitarian idea. It is better to hurt one person in order to save many, than to let this man go torture free but let innocent people die.

It is quite a powerful argument, but one which is flawed. Unfortunately torture does not work. Torture makes people more angry and even less likely to divulge crucial information. It does not achieve anything.

So when Jack tortures the terrorist with extremely upsetting and disturbing psychological torture, the terrorist would clearly get angry and refuse to help the Counter-Terrorist Unit find the bomb...well not quite. Quite oddly the torture works (not only does it work, it works really quickly, and really effectively), the terrorist tells Jack Bauer the information he needs and eventually Jack saves the day and looks bloody cool doing it.

The scary thing about this episode is it aired at a time when the American government was coming under pressure and criticism over 'enhanced interrogation techniques'. America was torturing people in Guantanamo Bay and torturing prisoners of War in Iraq and Afghanistan. Legal documents where created to make torture effectively illegal, wording was produced so that international law would not prohibit the use of torture and the ticking time bomb case was used to justify American foreign policy.

Perhaps I am seeing something that was not there, but is it just possible that the idea of making a difficult decision in a moral dilemma is being used in film to justify the politics and foreign policy of America? I wonder.