For the first few seasons of 24, I kept trying to get into it -- I'd watch the first three or four episodes and give up. I dropped by for an episode or two this season, and it confirmed my initial impression, which is:
24 reflects a warped, adolescent view of violence and human nature. It reeks of macho fantasies, born of insecurity, entitlement, and above all fear. No problem arises on the show that cannot be solved with more force, more brutality. Anyone attempting to mitigate that brutality is an effete, naive bureaucrat. In the world of 24, torture is always necessary, and it always works.
It is a show for a nation of terrified crybabies who want Daddy to keep them safe, and it both reflects and accelerates the degradation of our national character. It's a genuinely malign force.
I generally kept such sentiments to myself, lest I come off as a crusty old man or, worse yet, be met with the brain-dead refrain that "it's only a TV show."
Looks like I'm not alone, though. A discussion of 24 has finally started in earnest. The proximate cause was a piece in the New Yorker about Joel Surnow, the self-confessed "right-wing nut job" who created the show. Read it and be horrified. Naturally the right has embraced the show and, in some instances, mistaken it for reality.
Kevin Drum points to an L.A. Times piece that sets 24 in the context of a larger trend:
From 1996 to 2001, there were 102 scenes of torture [in prime time television], according to the Parents Television Council. But from 2002 to 2005, that figured had jumped to 624, they said.
What's also changed is that the torturers are more and more often American "heroes."
Now we find out that U.S. military officials are concerned that 24 is affecting the way soldiers and interrogators think about and perform their jobs. In our culture, there is no thing as "just a TV show." The images, narratives, and tropes in popular entertainment seep into every area of our lives. Indeed, this frightened, petty machismo has ruled our foreign policy for years now.
Ezra Klein puts my sentiments into words:
There's been an unsettling change in not only what heroes do, but what makes a hero at all. Any comic book reader knows that what separates heroes from evildoers is their unwillingness to kill, torture, or even personally punish the guilty. Restraint, in and of itself, is a heroic attribute. ... You can't transgress ever, or you blur that line separating you from your enemies (another treasured trope is the defeated villain taunting the hero to give in and kill him, the subtext being that if the evildoer can make the hero act the villain, he will have won even as he died).
Bauer, of course, is the antithesis of that attitude. His heroism stems from his brutality, his willingness to dissolve every ethical boundary in pursuit of higher ends. His is a heroism for a weak and scared nation, one that's decided the old ways of restraint and ethical exceptionalism are insufficiently effective and is trying to convince itself that a loosening of those bonds could restore order and security. That's a scary shift in the culture.
Finally, Matt Yglesias points out a strange aspect of the right's embrace of the Super Agent mentality. Conservative war hawks, he says, display ...
... an almost childlike faith in the competence, honesty, and efficacy of the federal bureaucracy insofar as that bureaucracy is tasked with dishing out lethal force that they would never in a million years ascribe to, say, the people in charge of the Endangered Species Act.
This all adds up to a toxic stew of fantasies about how much we could accomplish if we could just use overwhelming force, no matter the problem (see: geoengineering). It's a deeply anti-democratic mentality. After all, democracy moves slowly, and messily, and is filled with compromises.
The horror of it all is that the lessons of history could not be clearer: force backfires. Violence sparks more violence. Brutality degrades both the brutal and brutalized.
24 is anti-love. Me, I'm pro-love. If that makes me a dirty hippie, so be it.
(Yes, I realize this has nothing to do with the environment. So sue torture me.)
Happy birthday, EMA Awards ... and you other groups, too
Does anyone still care about “the land”?
MTV-approved advice on reaching those who aren’t paying attention
Comments
View as Flat
birdboy Posted 8:35 am
13 Feb 2007
The really scary part is that this is a prime time show, popular with a majority of the American audience. Excuse me, but doesn't the religion so popular with the right wing say to 'turn the other cheek', and 'love your enemy''? How many times have I heard people say "the only thing 'those people' understand is violence", as if that justified our use of violence (at least against 'those people'). I'm afraid this goes way, way back- GWB and company seem to be trying to revive the Holy War. Maybe it's not about the oil, after all. In a race between global warming and a global religious war, global warming is the tortoise.
a liberal in redsville
Permalink
lloydalter Posted 9:09 am
13 Feb 2007
Permalink
Delay And Deny Posted 10:15 am
13 Feb 2007
What's all this with Keefer Sutherland being so "hard working". I mean he his and all...but does he have to show it so much? He's always sweating and grunting and straining through every scene.
BTW -- Kevin Bacon should sue for identity theft...that spiky hair...sort of a Baconism, I'd say.
The Texeme Construct offers international text memetics construction and textcasting services.
Permalink
greenlantern Posted 11:14 am
13 Feb 2007
Permalink
Jason D Scorse Posted 3:50 pm
13 Feb 2007
J.S. teaches environmental economics and blogs at http://www.voicesofreason.info.
Permalink
Nucbuddy Posted 5:21 pm
13 Feb 2007
timebomb2000.com/vb/showthread.php?t=226555
timebomb2000.com/vb/showthread.php?t=229465
timebomb2000.com/vb/showthread.php?t=229299
timebomb2000.com/vb/showthread.php?t=226237
timebomb2000.com/vb/showthread.php?t=225970
timebomb2000.com/vb/showthread.php?t=225846
timebomb2000.com/vb/showthread.php?t=225748
Those threads are from just the past 30 days. Paranoid Personality Disorder (PPD) is associated with vindictiveness:
google.com/search?q=%22paranoid+personality+disorder%22+vindictive
Ekleberry on PPD
These individuals view themselves as righteous and mistreated (Beck, 1990, p. 48) and will attempt to enhance their self-esteem through exerting power over others. They fight "on the side of the angels." Other people are wrong; they are pure. They are vengeful and pursue conflict with great tenacity, never seeming to tire in their quest for self-vindication; they acquire an inordinate fondness for righteous causes [...] People with PPD often feel that their own hurt feelings provide sufficient cause for justifying almost any retaliation
Permalink
cod731 Posted 5:29 pm
13 Feb 2007
Permalink
KathyF Posted 5:42 pm
13 Feb 2007
She shut up.
Permalink
caniscandida Posted 6:14 pm
13 Feb 2007
It is interesting, how families unexpectedly divide over politics. Our Senator Chuck Hagel, Republican of Nebraska, an admirable man, a Vietnam veteran, perhaps seeking the GOP nomination as candidate for president, is a strong conservative on most issues. But his brother, who served with him in Vietnam in the same unit, has ended up a Democrat. So, there is no way to predict these things.
To say nothing of my father, the life-long Republican loyalist. Why, not even David Brooks and Kate O'Beirne have said such stupid things in defense of W., as has he.
On "24": I have never seen it, and have no desire to see it. If it has something to do with law enforcement, then I am not surprised by anything any of you has written in this thread.
My suspicion is that TV shows with violent subjects have tended to instill values favorable to Republican politics. That is, the enforcers of the law, and the prosecutors, are the sympathetic characters; and when they inflict violence, it is so that justice may prevail. They operate in a world that is full of dangerous outlaw violence which needs to be crushed.
Opinion polls have shown that people who watch primetime TV regularly tend to agree to such statements as, "Life in the US is dangerous on account of crime," significantly more than people who do not watch.
Hence, it was easy for Karl Rove and his operatives to bring out lots of voters for their candidates, in 2002 and 2004, after campaigning with the twin messages, "there are dangerous outlaws out there," and "the Republicans are the enforcers of the law, and they will protect us."
Notice how the old pop-culture term, from ancient 20th-century movies and TV, for people, shooting at the hero, who deserve to be shot back at and killed, "bad guys," an ethically stupid and one-dimensional expression, has regularly been applied to anyone who shoots at the US occupation force in Iraq.
With not much background, I wonder if certain liberal values are being undermined. Not long ago, on a visit with my parents, the TV was left on in the late evening, and I saw two disgusting shows back-to-back.
In the first, a "CSI" thing set in New York, the heroic young detective mercilessly tortured an innocent man in the course of interrogating him; his career ought to have been ruined; but the emphasis was on saving his career, and on redeeming him, because of course he is the hero, he is the one we love, he is the one who counts.
Next, an "FBI" set in LA, having to do with illegal immigrants, a Catholic priest who shelters immigrants and does not ask about their status, refuses to speak to the feds about a suspect of theirs, and ends up being hauled away in handcuffs.
I may be paranoid, but it strikes me that with enough brainwashing of that sort, of course I am going to vote Republican.
Not for nothing is Rudy Giuliani a leading contender for the GOP presidential nomination. A ruthless former prosecutor, he remains a deeply controversial figure here in NYC, in spite of his post-9/11 conduct.
On TV dramas about lawyers: It seems that prosecutors have been treated more and more sympathetically, since the days of "Perry Mason"; and it seems that defense attorneys have to deal with a lot of ethical complications. Gone are the days when the story is about how the valiant, hard-working advocate for the defense, Perry Mason, say, or Ben Matlock, exculpates the wrongly accused defendant. Now, the defense attorneys have to face themselves in the mirror, and ask how they can morally present a defense in court for clients whom they know to be very nasty criminals.
That TV primetime climate is ideal, for supporters of the ilk of John Ashcroft and Alberto Gonzalez, and of Guantanamo, and of severe interrogation methods amounting to torture, and of warrantless surveillance.
But maybe I am just being paranoid.
Chickens are our cousins!
So are other sensitive animals!
Enough is enough!
No more factory farms!
Permalink
frump Posted 10:46 pm
13 Feb 2007
Permalink
caniscandida Posted 1:34 am
14 Feb 2007
I have not seen "traditionalist" used before quite as you use it, apparently as a synonym for "social conservative."
But if that works, I understand you well enough.
I am not sure you interpret correctly the response to Dan Quayle after his attack on poor Murphy Brown in the maternity ward. It was not, "Lighten up, this is only a TV show," as though it were a piece of fantastic fluff with no connexion to reality. On the contrary, the basic sentiment of the responders was, "Look, this is VERY real, it happens all the time, and it is not a problem, and jerks such as you are not welcome in her hospital room."
It is an interesting socio-aesthetico-political question, Frump, and I am grateful to you for helping to elaborate it: Do law-and-order TV shows create a mindset among viewers which favors voting for Republican candidates?; and by contrast, do sit-coms, in which sexual innuendo is frequent and sexual permissiveness is not a big moral problem, create a mindset among viewers which favors voting for Democratic candidates?
I think the connexion in the former case is more solid than in the latter case. In fact, the insistence that the government not involve itself judgmentally in sexual activity is a very important part of libertarian politics, and has a strong following among Old Original Republicans, pre-Reagan, pre-Rove. Perhaps Sandra Day O'Connor would be a good example of that kind of Republican.
Chickens are our cousins!
So are other sensitive animals!
Enough is enough!
No more factory farms!
Permalink
MikeF Posted 3:18 am
14 Feb 2007
I cannot describe how vast my contempt is for this stupid, pompous show. What's frightening is the influence it has over the people who actuallly run and defend our country. As the New Yorker story pointed out, it enjoys a cult following among Republican politicians and pundits, as well as members of the military. As a consequence, the show has mainstreamed torture, making it not only acceptable, but even celebrating it as a key weapon the United States must rely on to defend itself.
Utterly sickening, especiallly since "24" has set up a vicious feedback loop in the real world that only grows worse with time: Cheney & Co. authorize torture and illegal kidnappings, which inspires story lines on "24," whose support for torture and illegal kidnappings gives the green light to Cheney & Co. to indulge it even more. Meanwhile, the public's outrage remains muted because, after all, it's "just" a TV show. Right, and crystal meth is just another way to lose weight.
One thing I'd like to point out is that Jack Bauer is simply Dirty Harry updated for the post 9/11 era. In the 1970s, the enemy wasn't Islamic terrorism but street thugs whose crimes were abetted, if not encouraged, by bleeding heart judges, defense lawyers and lawmakers. A spate of movies appeared during the 1970s and early 1980s that celebrated vigilantes like Harry who cared more about keeping the streets safe than protecting criminals' civil liberties.
Like Bauer, Harry beat and tortured and abused people's civil rights without compunction because he knew he was on a mission for justice, for law and order. To hell with the Constitution.
Same goes for Jack Bauer, but with the difference that Jack knows the fate of the world is resting on his shoulders --- which means he can pretty much do as he pleases. Sound like
any President you know?
MikeF
Permalink
mnymj Posted 3:34 am
14 Feb 2007
Permalink
birdboy Posted 4:23 am
14 Feb 2007
a show glorifying torture is "...somewhat politically incorrect"
Perhaps we are no different than our enemies.
Is PPD the next epidemic? Could psychological disorders, spread via prime time TV and paranoid leadership, be our undoing?
a liberal in redsville
Permalink
caniscandida Posted 4:28 am
14 Feb 2007
The paternity of Mary Cheney's child, and the circumstances of her pregnancy, are a much more closely guarded Republican secret than even the whereabouts of Dick Cheney's "undisclosed location." The VP nearly leaped across the table to throttle the meek and mild Wolf Blitzer, not long ago, when poor Wolf asked a very delicately probing question.
I imagine this sort of scenario, in a few years, on "Antiques Roadshow":
Guest with Object, i.e. a turkey baster: Well, I happened to be passing by Mary Cheney's house, and she was having a garage sale, so I stopped to have a look around.
Antiques Roadshow Appraiser: Well, when we saw you walk into the Roadshow this afternoon, carrying this turkey baster, we were speechless with delight. Do you remember what you paid for it?
GwO: Well, she was originally asking two dollars, but she was real sweet, you know, real down to earth, and I got her to come down to fifty cents.
ARA: Fifty cents! Well, in my auction house, this turkey baster, even with all its condition issues, would likely bring ten thousand dollars.
GwO: Wow! Oh my! Who would have thought! Well, I guess I am going to stop bringing it out at Thanksgiving!
ARA: And if you had reliable documentation identifying the man whose semen Ms. Cheney used, you could easily get ten times as much.
GwO: Wow! I had no idea! I'm going to have it framed! There's a space over the dishwasher where I can hang it! That pink color of the squeeze part goes real good with the wallpaper ...
Chickens are our cousins!
So are other sensitive animals!
Enough is enough!
No more factory farms!
Permalink
rentslave Posted 9:55 am
14 Feb 2007
Permalink
Joel D Posted 12:50 pm
14 Feb 2007
One thing: as a counterpoint to Jacks' unorthodox methods they present (in the current season, anyway) the fictional President of the United States to be the height of accomodation and acceptance for America's Arab citizens. He also opens a dialogue with the terrorist who's renounced his past life (perhaps something Bush should've tried in Iraq). There are some good values present here.
"The truth is rarely pure and never simple.
Oscar Wilde
Permalink
malaguy Posted 2:15 am
15 Feb 2007
Permalink
amazingdrx Posted 2:36 am
15 Feb 2007
So is this administration. Disney was brought in to make the homeland security facility look just like the set on "24".
Remember the "Mission Acomplished" teevee show, that duuhbya the shaved ape appeared in?
TV shows like this administration is directing can be very, very dangerous. Ask a cabdriver kidnapped for a bounty (payed by this administration)in the ME and tortured in gitmo. Or the Canadian kidnapped by this administration and rendered to Syria where he survived 9 months of torture. He is now suing US for that incident.
Maybe you would like a few of your heroes, like rummi, perle,wolfi, and feith to star in a teevee show? Wouldn't it be nice to see if accurate information on the missing 100s of billions of taxpayer dollars dissappeared into the gaping maw of iraq-catastrophe could be obtained with some waterboarding?
But that would be wrong wouldn't it? Hehehey.
http://amazngdrx.blogharbor.com/blog
Permalink
Pandu Posted 2:55 am
15 Feb 2007
Permalink
amazingdrx Posted 2:56 am
15 Feb 2007
Anyone remember this guy?
http://edition.cnn.com/2003/LAW/03/03/cnna.Dershowitz/
This stand in favor of official state torture for the USA pretty much placed him in a cave somewhere.
A famous defender of the constitution and now look at what happened. It is all he will be remembered (forgotten) for, as it should be.
Everyone involved in "24" ought to suffer the same fate. Anyone seen any of the bush administration friendlies in entertainment lately? James woods, Dennis Miller, even the great DeNiro has been marginalized by his support of the oil wars.
And "The Dixie Chicks" got all the grammies.
FOXNEWS going under from it's duuhbyaist regime propaganda?
Punish them all. They have mislead US into this disaster as surely as Cheney did (Bush just repeats what Rove tells Condi to drill him on every morning). We the people are owed apologies by all these good faithbased folk. Pay up or go into oblivion you wing nut hacks!
http://amazngdrx.blogharbor.com/blog
Permalink
malaguy Posted 3:00 am
15 Feb 2007
Permalink
amazingdrx Posted 3:16 am
15 Feb 2007
Thanks so much for breaking your normal pattern and helping out with constructive criticism.
This is known informally as "ad spellinum". If you can't address the point another person is making, critique their "grammar, spelling, capitalization, (and)sentence structure".
http://amazngdrx.blogharbor.com/blog
Permalink
MikeF Posted 4:17 am
15 Feb 2007
But it's way more than "just" a TV show because of its loyal following among policy makers and the military. That's the point of my post earlier. The show doesn't tell you what to think, but what to think about.
And it is having a real world impact, as was demonstrated by the visit the West Point dean and the FBI interrogators made to the show's set last year to urge its creators to rethink how they depict torture. Too many West Point cadets were basing their attitudes toward the acceptability of torture on the actions of fictional characters such as superhero Jack Bauer, according to a recent New Yorker story.
No doubt about it, "24" is a fantasy. But fantasies can be dangerous things if they are latched on to by the wrong people who have power over other people's lives.
History is littered with the results of such deadly fantasies. The Crusades. The Third Reich. And, alas, the U.S. invasion of Iraq, which was fueled by the neo-cons' nutty ideas of securing the peace for Israel by turning Iraq into a pro-Western democracy.
By the way, despite what you may have learned about debate and rhetoric at the Oxford Union, the use of the F-word in the upper case starts to lose its effectiveness by its third repetition. Hope this helps.
Permalink
Lucky3 Posted 4:28 pm
01 Jan 2008
Permalink