A trip down to Coney Island includes the world-famous boardwork, gut-wrenching Cyclone and a general sense of disrepair in the amusement park. Well now, in its very last summer (in the current form anyways) a new attraction joins the scene, the "Waterboard Thrill Ride" by Steve Powers.
From The NY Times:
It looks at first like any other shuttered storefront near the boardwalk: some garish lettering and a cartoonish invitation to a delight or a scam — in this case there’s SpongeBob SquarePants saying, “It don’t Gitmo better!”
If you climb up a few cinderblock steps to the small window, you can look through the bars at a scene meant to invoke a Guantánamo Bay interrogation. A lifesize figure in a dark sweatshirt, the hood drawn low over his face, leans over another figure in an orange jumpsuit, his face covered by a towel and his body strapped down on a tilted surface.
Feed a dollar into a slot, the lights go on, and Black Hood pours water up Orange Jumpsuit’s nose and mouth while Orange Jumpsuit convulses against his restraints for 15 seconds. O.K., kids, who wants more cotton candy!
In interrupting a day at the beach with scenes of the United States government’s rougher practices, Mr. Powers is being deliberately provocative. “What’s more obscene,” he asks, “the official position that waterboarding is not torture, or our official position that it’s a thrill ride?”
The Bush Administration would call it a thrill ride, because, as we all know, the United States does not torture. Powers' creation is certainly a great way to attract attention to the issue, especially with our typical short attention span when it comes to hearing about waterboarding on the news. Yesterday's atrocity is today's afterthought for too many of us. So if a few thousand people get to see a re-enactment of what we do to terrorism suspects, then good for them....and cheers to Steve Powers for bringing it to Coney Island.
|