Popular torture imagery in American media normalized real torture of Muslims abroad.

Evidence

Like other colonial spaces examined in this study, Abu Ghraib displays desires about others, as well as revealing the fantasies of torture that ran riot after September 11. The popularity of torture in television and film has gone largely unnoticed by scholars, but as Ziauddin Sardar has written, “There is a seamless connection between what happens in American society, the way society is represented by Hollywood, and the torture meted out by US soldiers abroad. In movies, torture is an everyday activity.” Abu Ghraib also perpetuates the idea that, for some, torturing Muslims is an acceptable pastime, a hobby for good old boys, what Rush Limbaugh described as, “a good time… sort of like hazing, a fraternity prank. Sort of like that kind of fun.” — Sophia Rose Arjana, Muslims in the Western Imagination, 755

Categorization

• XREF: Directly animates the reader’s core thesis: the manufactured Muslim monster (medieval monsters, demons, giants) resurfaces as the justification for Abu Ghraib — the fantasy precedes and enables the real violence.
• SEED: An essay angle: tracing the ‘torture as entertainment’ lineage from medieval monster-morality plays to modern Hollywood torture-porn, showing the continuity of the monster-suppressing-fantasy.