The delicate and exquisite art of TORTURE
February 22nd 2007 03:49
Most torture is designed to create intense pain without necessarily resulting in death. However there are acts of torture which are designed to specifically kill the victim, albeit slowly, thus extending the victim’s throes of death, purely for the sadistic pleasure of the torturers or torturers’ instructors.
When I recently read about how the Snowtown killers in South Australia deliberately tortured their victims (sticking a lit sparkler up the urethra of one of the young men), it made me wonder about the link between torture and execution.
Endurance is one of the key questions at hand; how long can a victim hold out?
One of the most well-known which doesn’t actually cause physical harm, but invokes create distress is generally practiced in school. We’ve all suffered through it, and if you’ve never had the displeasure of experiencing this, or if this doesn’t affect you, then you are one lucky bastard. I’m talking about fingernails being scraped down a chalk board. Even writing this makes the hair on the back of my neck bristle and my stomach knot.
Back in the day torture was a serious art. In ancient Athens there was a torture-cum-execution device called the Brazen Bull. Made entirely of brass and hollow, the victim was locked inside and a large fire was lit underneath it which eventually caused the metal to become red hot. The victim was roasted alive.
The scaphism legend was from ancient Persia where victims were strapped into a hollowed out tree trunk and force-fed milk and honey until they developed diarrhea. More honey was rubbed all over the body. Then they would be left to float in a stagnant pond or left in the desert. Insects would be attracted by the feces and increasingly gangrenous flesh and the victim would eventually die as a result of dehydration, starvation and septic shock, if the insects hadn’t devoured them by then. One recorded victim, Mithridates, apparently survived 17 days before dying!
In medieval times torture devices were more simple, but very effective. There were the stocks. Not so much a torture instrument as a ridicule device. Head, hands and sometimes feet were placed between a large hinged wooden block with holes which was then locked down. The stocks were usually set up in the village square so everyone could jeer and hurl insults at the victim.
Things generally got worse for the stock-held victim. Often rotten fruit and vegetables were thrown at them. Not pleasant and a little painful. On fatal occasions the crowd would throw stones. This would inevitably lead to the victim’s death.
Have you ever tried pressing down hard at the base of your thumbnail where the so-called “moon” is? Probably not, but if you get someone else to try, whoa! It hurts like fucking buggery, excuse my French! That’s what the thumbscrew was designed for; a small vice which could be tightened down over that tender part of the thumbnail. The screams could be heard from the dungeons to the towers.
Flogging was another well practiced punishment and torture from days of old. Mel Gibson’s The Passion of the Christ (2004) depicts this like no other film in history.
In Casino Royale (2006) the bad guy, Le Chiffre, tortures Bond in a most inventive way. The bottom of a chair is cut out and a naked Bond is strapped to the seat, his arse hanging low through the hole (obviously his testicles are hanging even lower). Le Chiffre stands a few feet away wrangling a piece of mariner’s rope with a large knot tied in one end. He swings it back, then forward letting the knotted end swing under the chair and thwump! into Bond’s balls. You could hear all the men in the cinema groan in empathy for Bond. Damn, that’s gotta hurt!
The Japanese had a television game show I remember seeing years ago which featured contestants trying to outlast each other in how much pain and discomfort they could endure, like lying on their backs whilst holding a large block of ice between their bare feet or drinking copious amounts of beer outside in very cold temperatures and withholding from urinating.
When I was a teenager I remember hearing about the Chinese water torture. It sounded silly and hardly effective. The victim is strapped tight to a bed or horizontal platform with a tap positioned a metre or so above the victim’s forehead. A small drop of water falls at regular intervals hitting the victim’s forehead. This will go gone on for hours. That’s it. Apparently drives the victim insane.
What about fast-growing bamboo inserted under the fingernails? Or starving rats gnawing their way through a victim’s stomach in order to get to raw meat they can smell through a hole in the wall behind the victim? Where did these originate from??
The horror of torture seems endless …
* images on this page were taken from the following wikipedia pages:
chalkboard and torture
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Comment by Ash
Australian Traveller
Flashes of memories
makes me think of the Saw series of movies.....pure torture there....
Comment by Bryn
Horrorphile
Comment by Damo
For the Sake of Argument
My Apologetics
UNHRC, Red Cross and AI list all the forms of torture and there is plenty of evidence that non painful torture is just as traumatic as painful torture. Sleep deprevation is considered diobolical.
Mythbusters did recreate the Chineses water torture and found that the imobilization of the victim was the most distressing part. The water drops were irritating but the victim was powerless to even scratch. The person broke down within an hour.
My mother-in-law explained what police do to people they catch in Sri Lanka. They beat them on the bottom of their feet. The pain goes all the way up the body to the head. The people shout and scream I am told.
Another way of extracting a confession used their was to tie the person little finger behind their backs and keep lifting. Plenty of cruelty left in the world.
Comment by Ash
Australian Traveller
Flashes of memories
yeah paper cuts are terrible....
and putting cloth sacks over the prisoners head and then pouring water over - apparently that`s supposed to be like drowing.....
Comment by Bryn
Horrorphile
I remember being young and reading the fabulous Book of Lists and in it was a list of countries still practising torture (most of them middle eastern). One was the electric grill ... as a boy I fathomed to think of what ghastly device that could actually be and how it was used on prisoners ....
Comment by dementia
Coffin Conversations
Comment by Bryn
Horrorphile
Comment by Mark Schultz
Random Musings on Life, Love and Everything
Normally once the body suffers a certain amount of pain, it shuts down (ie. it gets so painful that you pass out, the body's defence). Today, however, there are drugs that can delay (and even prevent) this response to pain, meaning that when tortured, you experience a level of pain more intense than anyone has ever felt before.
Pretty twisted stuff.
Comment by JohnDoe
Film & TV on DVD
On the topic of paper cuts when Frank Whalley ties Kevin Spacey to a chair and starts inflicting tiny wounds in the movie Swimming with Sharks, I squirm.
Comment by Cibbuano
20/20 Filmsight
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What about the US army and waterboarding? It doesn't look that bad, really, though it must be effective...
Comment by Nina
TV Babble
One torture scene that has always stuck with me is in the Pilot episode of Alias, where Sydney has all her teeth pulled out with no anaesthetic. I think I find it worse to watch than most though, since I am insanely afraid of dentists and all acts associated with them.
Comment by KylieW
Celebrity Obsession
And Nina, oh god, I'd forgotten about the teeth pulling in Alias (I'm getting out my wisdom teeth next week so that's particularly painful for me to think about right now!!).
Fantastic bloody post......oh god I'm still shuddering at the thought of all these!!!
Comment by JohnDoe
Film & TV on DVD
Comment by Adrian
Philosophy Blog
Comment by MelissaA
Fun Facts
Anyone know which movie I'm talking about.....
It may have 'road' in the title but i'm not sure.
Comment by Bryn
Horrorphile
Mark,
I had heard about the drugs to keep the mind awake ... God! That just reeks of the most extreme sadism!
JD,
Yes, the infamous head scythe machine!!! Most glorious!
Cibby,
Sorry to sound ignorant, but I'm not familiar with waterboarding ...
Nina,
teeth pulling, no anaesthetic ... UGH!!! As JD mentioned, Marathon Man ..... and it ain't safe!
Melissa,
Don't know the movie, but I do know of an extreme doco-drama called Men Behind the Sun (1988)about the experimental torture the Japanese did on the Chinese during WWII ... I haven't seen it, but apparently it is HARDCORE.
Have a fabulous weekend everybody ... and don't forget to tickle someone silly! Now, that's torture!
Comment by MelissaA
Fun Facts
This movie's going to bug me for a while now I think.....
Comment by DuskDevi
Rucks and Rolls
Rugby World Cup 2007
Supposedly The Chinese Water Torture method is one of the most effective vays of making you tok...
Supposedly the drops just get louder and louder and louder...til it sounds and feels like someone is hammering or drilling a nail into your forehead.
So I've been told.
I think that scene in 'Casino Royale' made everyone wince.
Comment by DuskDevi
Rucks and Rolls
Rugby World Cup 2007
Comment by Bryn
Horrorphile
yeah those eye clamps in Clockwork Orange made my eyes water!!
And, yeah, I'd heard that about the water torture too ... The Scaphism legend really gets to me ...
And I'd forgotten another appalling one: Keel-hauling ... when you, usually for insubordination, you were strapped to a rope with you back against the side of the ship which went under the ship's hull, and back up the other side ... then you were haulled down under water and scraped along the hull of the ship which of course is covered in barnacles .... this "torture" ... actually more of an execution really ... would tear your back to shreds ... then they'd leave you in the water for the sharks to devour you ...
Comment by DuskDevi
Rucks and Rolls
Rugby World Cup 2007
Keel-hauling was once a formal practise in the English Navy...hence the use of the term as it stands today... to severely reprimand.
....milk and honey is supposed to be wholesome...
I will admit that I had to speed read that paragraph...
yech!
Comment by Bryn
Horrorphile
Comment by charles
FanFootball
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Flinch!! EEEEEEK!!
Charles.
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