The Punisher

It does seem to be a double-standard.  Villains torture people and they are rightfully hated by the audience.  Heroes do it to bad guys and most people shrug it off.  Touches on how humans can be okay with questionable actions if they are rationalized.  Killing bad guys is another example, but torture is even more extreme.  Yet, the latter is probably more common than the former.

For some clarification: One can say that putting any type of stress on a person to get information is torture.  The hero shooting a bad guy in a major joint for every ten seconds they don’t speak is an extreme example.  It’s along the lines of what we would normally think of being in this category.  Yet, Batman holding someone over the edge of a building or Punisher putting a gun to a thug’s head are also forms of torture.  People seem to gloss over this, which means our definitions differ.

Torture is when you inflict pain and/or suffering on someone as either a punishment or to get information.  Note that I made one word bold here.  You don’t have to cause physical pain to make it torture.  Inducing enough fear and anguish to have someone act against their own interests or give up information counts.  Heroes tend to go this route since authors might feel inflicting pain is going too far.  It’s rather strange since a physical wound takes less time to heal than mental ones.  So, one could easily see how Batman dropping a goon off a roof only to catch them will take longer to recover from than simply being punched in the face.

Still, it is strange how heroes can still get away with it, right?  No.  Why?

Humans will accept bad things when they happen to bad people.  It isn’t only villains getting killed or suffering some karmic backlash at the end.  All characters who are shown as ‘bad guys’ fall into a category where they are allowed to be tortured, killed, or put through just about anything.  We don’t usually realize this because we are raised on a pure ‘good vs evil’ concept.  Good guys always do what is right and win while bad guys always do bad things and get their comeuppance.  As long as nothing humanizes the villains to the point of pushing them even slightly towards good, we accept the heroes doing what would normally be unforgivable actions.

You also have anti-heroes who are allowed to get away with a lot.  Many would say that this label has to be put on a character as soon as they cross the line.  I keep mentioning Batman because I’ve seen him come up in ‘hero vs anti-hero’ debates.  Torture ends up being subjective for each reader because they have different lines before they would consider an action as such.  So, Batman dropping a goon off a building with a bungee attached would be seen as fine by some and torture by others.  Hence, some people will say he can do this with no damage to his hero reputation.

As you can see, this can get very messy and you might disagree with everything I’ve said here.  So, what do other people think about heroes torturing villains?