We
will be all right. Jack Bauer will be here soon” (“Day 7: 2:00 PM
- 3:00 PM” 0:11:13). In the television action series 24, the
ruthless counterterrorist Jack Bauer is the nation’s only hope when
civilization is faced with attacks from in- and outside the USA.
Accordingly, this paper examines the role of 24 as a vehicle
for pro-torture politics in a country that has been changed by the
traumatic qualities of the 9/11 attacks, whose media coverage has, in
turn, been likened to catastrophe movies by Slavoj Žižek and
others. The following argues that national trauma and a rekindled
fear of loss of control have been the perfect environment for a show
that blurs the borders between reality and fiction.
24 mimics the aesthetics of real-time news broadcasting and
combines them with a politically charged narrative to advocate
unethical and illegal measures as the only solution to time-critical
scenarios of extraordinary proportions. I
will provide examples of the use of torture in 24 to
illustrate the series’ striking deviation from reality in the
portrayal of torture by contrasting them with facts from
real-life interrogation experts. Further, this
article will include references to 24 by pro-torture
activists to underline the intentionality of the show’s bias.
Finally, in a brief analysis of the seventh season, I
will highlight how its producers attempted to discredit their critics
within the framework of the show itself.
The Ever-Ticking Bomb: Examining 24’s Promotion of Torture against the Background of 9/11
Issue:
3 (2010)Pages: 37-51
Abstract: Drawing on the theory of
collective trauma and the increased display of torture on TV since
2001, this paper investigates how the repercussions of 9/11 serve as
a basis for the popularity of the TV series 24 and how its
success impacts the cultural and political landscape of the US. This
article argues that 24 justifies and promotes the use of
torture as a method of interrogation and cites evidence of references
to the series in political and juridical discourse. It shows how
national trauma may increase the appeal of extreme violence against
suspected terrorists and how 24’s conflation of fact and
fiction falls on fertile ground in a post-9/11 culture of fear.
Examples from 24 are used to give insight into the way the
audience is confronted with so-called ticking bomb scenarios in order
to increase acceptance for the criminal and unethical behavior of
24’s protagonist Jack Bauer. Furthermore, I will cite
government reports and observations from military instructors as
examples of the influence Jack Bauer’s use of torture has had on
soldiers and interrogators in Iraq and Afghanistan. In order to
complement the existing evidence of a political bias towards the
legitimization of torture in 24, my article inspects
statements from the creators and writers of 24 and scrutinizes
their choice to respond to criticism within a subplot of the seventh
season.