Cartoon Torture

Some “artist,” named Steve Powers, says he built the Waterboarding Thrill Ride to criticize waterboarding.

Waterboarding an attraction at New York amusement park

Curious people can feed a dollar to a machine and peer through a window to see a robotic SpongeBob SquarePants tied down, saying, “It doesn’t Gitmo better!”

I highly doubt that Steve Powers is going to get his point across with a cartoon character at Coney Island. If anything, he is allowing people to distance themselves from the act of torture (re: cartoon characters in an amusement park versus the actual tortured people in the actual GuantanamoBay facility), thereby taking waterboarding (which becomes a symbol for all torture, since it’s the only technique in the news) less seriously.

For example, Theodor Adorno, a music sociologist and philosopher, spoke out against war protest songs in the 1960s because he claimed it made the horrors of war more tolerable. And when you consider how War becomes a generational marker (my father was in the navy during Vietnam, my grandpa was a bomb-diffuser in WWII, etc.) then any anti-war movement also becomes a chapter in one’s life yearbook.

When I think of artists using cartoon figures, I think of Ron English’s billboard paintings a decade or so ago. He used McDonald’s cartoons, Disney characters, and other cartoonish figures to send a message about injustices and addictions that feed big business. He also staged live performances, such as having a woman get a make-believe abortion with a clothes hanger and bleeding all over a billboard, in front of a crowd of people. How are his methods different from Steve Powers’? Did English’s efforts make the horrors of pro-life rhetoric, big tobacco companies, and fast food addiction any less serious? Not in my mind. Since Powers built this “attraction” in an actual amusement park, the Waterboard Thrill Ride is part of Coney Island. On the contrary, English risked getting arrested every time he took over a billboard. Powers is actually making money off of this “ride.”

So Steve Powers is not really speaking out against GuantanamoBay or the torture of prisoners. He’s not risking anything. Instead, I believe he is securing his place in the anti-war yearbook and making some money at the same time. What’s worse, his work may actually result in opposite effects from what he intended, distancing people from what is going on every day, even more.

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