Investigative reporter Justine Sharrock, writing for Mother Jones magazine, discusses how the military has used music as a form of torture to break down detainees without leaving any physical marks. Widely used at Guantanamo and in Iraqi prisons such as Abu Ghraib, the technique involved playing an endless loop of music cranked up loudly just shy of the level capable of rupturing eardrums, depriving the prisoners of sleep.
Guards were given free rein in the selection of songs, the point being less about the songs themselves than the context in which they were played. But the songs reflect a wide variety of points of view. The obvious choices were songs that verge on noise: the screaming vocals and guitars of death metal bands like Dope. Some songs seem to have been chosen because they were merely annoying, such as the Barney theme song or the meow-meow cat food commercial. Other songs, like Springsteen’s “Born in the USA,” seem to have been chosen for patriotic reasons. And others, like Christina Aguilera’s “Dirty,” seem to have been chosen because their lyrics would be offensive to the religious sensibilities of the prisoners.
Many of the songs probably reflect the demographic tastes of the soldiers: songs with a patriot bent, hard rock numbers like AC/DC’s “Shoot to Thrill,” country music. Although rappers like Tupac and Eminem appear on the list, Sharrock talks about how one guard switched from rap to heavy metal because rap turned out to be music that some of the younger prisoners listened to.
Although imagining Prince’s “Raspberry Beret” or the Sesame Street theme song as a form of torture has a surreal and perhaps even humorous element, painfully loud music and sleep deprivation are no less objectionable than forcing prisoners to stand for hours on end, which can lead to kidney failure and death, or no less objectionable than waterboarding.
One hundred years ago, the military used waterboarding in the war against Filipino insurgents after Spain ceded control of the Philippines to the United States (see Paul Kramer’s “The Water Cure” in the March 10 issue of The New Yorker). The U.S. did not want Filipinos to establish their own democratic country, even though the reason for fighting Spain was ostensibly to liberate the Filipinos from Spanish imperialism. When the press reported the scandal, a national debate ensued, with the country deeply divided and the patriotism of critics questioned. And here we are again today, with 68% of Americans saying that torture is justified with terrorists. It’s deja vu all over again.
To learn more about Sharrock’s article and listen to some of the songs used, check out The Torture Playlist at the Mother Jones website.
