When the series 24<\/i> premiered way back in 2001 (has it really been that long ago? Wow…), I thought it was brilliant, inventive, exciting, and, above all, grown-up<\/i> television. Yeah, the plot was full of holes when you viewed it from the mile-high, all-season-long perspective, and the show suffered a bit from the “one-damn-thing-after-another” quality of the cliffhanger serials from which it descended. But when taken episode by episode, 24<\/i> was (and still is, despite its flaws) compellingly watchable, suspenseful storytelling that makes a strong argument for serialized TV drama being the modern-day equivalent of Dickens’ episodic novels.<\/p>\n
I’ve loyally stuck with 24<\/i> for the past five seasons, but I must admit that I’ve done so with an increasing sense of discomfort. My growing ambivalence for the show is partly a result of the inevitable decline that comes as any TV series ages out — in other words, the concept is just getting tired — but a much bigger issue for me is the question of torture.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
I’ve written<\/a> about this before, but, in a nutshell, 24<\/i> champions the idea that torture is both acceptable in certain circumstances and effective as a means of obtaining information, and scenes depicting torture in the show are becoming more frequent and more graphic. A few years ago, that didn’t bother me so much. Like a lot of other viewers, I’m sure, I got a vicarious and cathartic thrill out of seeing the screws put to the bad guys.<\/p>\n Then I heard about Abu Ghraib<\/a>. And Gitmo<\/a>. And Jose Padilla<\/a>. And “extraordinary renditions<\/a>.” And suddenly I found that watching super-agent Jack Bauer shoot out kneecaps and mess with people’s minds wasn’t quite as satisfying as it used to be. What had always been safely in the realm of Hollywood fantasy had become all too real. And watching it in what was ostensibly entertainment started making me feel a little sick to my stomach. As Stephen King points out in a recent article<\/a>, about the only thing that really makes the torture content of 24<\/i> tolerable is Bauer’s haunted features, which suggest that doing whatever needs to be done in the name of God and country is not without without its price.<\/p>\n But not everyone notices that little detail. A recent article in The New Yorker<\/i><\/a> says that Brigadier General Patrick Finnegan, the dean of West Point, is having trouble convincing some of his cadets that America has a moral obligation to respect the rule of law and human rights, and it’s partly because of what they’re seeing on 24<\/i>.<\/p>\n To try and combat the creeping tolerance of the intolerable, Finnegan has asked Jack Bauer himself, a.k.a. Kiefer Sutherland, to come speak in person to the cadets and tell them that torturing prisoners is wrong, no matter what you may see in a fictional TV show. Sutherland, to his credit, has accepted the invitation<\/a>.<\/p>\n I hope somebody will do a follow-up on this story, and possibly even post a transcript of Sutherland’s remarks. From what I understand, the actor who plays Bauer isn’t terribly comfortable with some of the show’s content himself. I’d like to hear what he has to say on the subject, and how he reconciles his personal views with the demands of his job.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" When the series 24 premiered way back in 2001 (has it really been that long ago? Wow…), I thought it was brilliant, inventive, exciting, and, above all, grown-up television. Yeah, the plot was full of holes when you viewed it from the mile-high, all-season-long perspective, and the show suffered a bit from the “one-damn-thing-after-another” quality […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14,26],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-882","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics","category-the-glass-teat"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jasonbennion.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/882","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jasonbennion.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jasonbennion.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jasonbennion.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jasonbennion.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=882"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.jasonbennion.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/882\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jasonbennion.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=882"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jasonbennion.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=882"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jasonbennion.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=882"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}