I take issue with Slavoj Žižek on the portrayal of torture in Zero Dark Thirty (Bigelow's gift to America, 26 January). I found the film's torture scenes profoundly disturbing, made more so by Maya's uneasy acquiescence to it. I wanted her to intervene, but had she done so, the film would have become a superficial thriller with "good guys" and "bad guys". Instead, I was left to think: how would I have behaved? Might I have done the same? Circumstances can cause any of us to break our moral codes, as any psychologist or historian knows.
What Žižek decries as the normalisation of torture is what makes the film so powerful. Post-9/11, torture was normalised by our politicians, hidden behind words like "enhanced interrogation", and this is what the film shows. Bigelow is right: showing does not mean endorsement. Are we not intelligent enough viewers to work that out? The film does not attempt to answer whether torture works. I certainly did not come away thinking torture was right because Osama bin Laden was discovered and killed, an equally horrific scene that raised moral questions of its own. This is a powerful, psychologically sophisticated film that, in the debate it has provoked, shows the value of the serious artist in our society.
John Marzillier
Oxford
• Even if we accept Slavoj Žižek's dubious premise that Kathryn Bigelow's film condones torture, is he arguing that there should only be films which confirm the cosy certainties of leftist, bourgeois audiences? That all films should offer some sort of mushy liberal consensus that never challenges the beliefs of their liberal audiences? What an extraordinary thing for a man who characterises himself as some sort of intellectual rebel to say.
Simon Jarrett
Harrow, Middlesex
• Jon Boone's report on the "howlers" of Zero Dark Thirty (Less than zero, G2, 28 January) is based on a false premise – that fictionalised events are an appropriate hunting ground for fact-checkers. Bigelow's description of it as a "reported film" (whatever that is) in no way sanctions a criticism of the but-that-hotel-doesn't exist kind. It's still fiction.
Edwina Rowling
Ditchling, Sussex