Torture Is Torture Is Torture

It's that simple (or at least I think so).

I don't think fine lines exist here. I think torture is obvious enough for someone to recognize it when they see it. I think torture manifests itself in all forms of abuse including physical, emotional and mental abuse. Torture is a deliberate act of a person or group of people which aims to humiliate, degrade, harass, and ultimately dehumanize another human being or group of people.

Rape is as much torture as verbal abuse as what happened to Matthew Shepard as what happened...September 22...when that young man committed suicide by jumping off the George Washington Bridge because of the live-streamed video his roommate cast on the internet of him in sexual contact with another male student without his knowledge.

We live in such a violent culture.

I will never know what was going on in the minds of the MPs. I will never understand what it's like to break out of myself enough to become someone who can commit those despicable acts. I will never know how they felt when taking orders from superiors. Personally, I probably would have fought against these orders in court, but I don't know what it's like to be at war. Lastly, I will never understand why the photographs were necessary. But they are honest in a way that a painting could never depict.

As much as I love art, I don't think that Fernando Botero's art is as captivating as is claimed, in the link we read for class. As much as I can appreciate what Botero was attempting to do, I don't think that paintings can substitute the reality, the brutal honesty of the actual photographs. For one, I find his people to be too "full". They are lush and honestly don't look real enough for me to have a close enough connection to them to be effected in the way Botero appears to want to affect his audience. One thing I do appreciate is the fact that he uses multiple colors in the skin of each person so that we ultimately, as viewers, are unable to declare the race or ethnicity of those particular people. I can see how that would allow us to relate to them more, and therefore make them more human. 

For whatever reason, I personally find paintings of Jesus' Crucifixion more compelling and moving than any of Fernando's paintings. While both depict torture, there appears to be more humanity in the paintings of Jesus (or maybe a different kind?). But, maybe that's just because it's an association--He's the Son of God. There's a huge sad, honorable story about him dying for our sins...he's not just some stranger who is being tortured that we are attempting to find a connection with through skin color and the art's depiction of events. There is something profoundly different and more visceral...captivating in the paintings of the Crucifixion. For whatever reason, I feel that the paintings of Jesus do not require the perpetrators who crucify him. We know they are evil. We've heard the stories. We know the history and the beauty of the story. We know he had to be tortured and that he had to die. But no one knew this story before the photos...Americans committed these despicable acts and I think that's something we can't wrap our heads around. And honestly, without their presence in the paintings, I feel that they lack something. 

I can't help but feel that his paintings would be more moving if they incorporated the MPs who were involved, not just through a line of piss. This is one intense aspect which differ the photographs from Fernando's works. The brutality in the photos, wasn't necessarily the fact that the detainees were in pain and suffering, but the fact that the MPs were in the photographs showing delight in their work. Everything looks more deliberate in the photographs. Sure, the paintings bring out a humanity in the detainees which multiple cultures can understand and see, as art appears to be a more universal language, (everyone knows pain in some ways, and there always seems to be a dull ache you feel within when looking at something as beautifully moving as Fernando's works), however, I don't think that it's necessary for the detainees to have "humanity" placed upon them deliberately, as in the paintings (if that's even the proper way to express what I am attempting to say). Obviously they are human...it's the fact that these MPs...their faces...you just know, that they don't see them as human. Anyone looking at those photographs sees the dehumanization. There is no need for replication of these events (in my personal opinion); the photographs say it all. 

Art is deformation. There are no works of art that are truly 'realistic.'

-This event in history does not call for deformation. The photographs say it all. And while photography is a form of art (and after finding out about the Veit Cong photograph being deliberately relocated, I believe that that particular photograph has deformed reality), sometimes photography just tells a more brutally honest story. I applaud Fernando for his artwork and his talent. I just don't believe it's as effective in portraying what happened at Abu Ghraib.