Another Day: 24 and the Age of Obama

24 is back. And while it sounds somewhat more thoughtful, it's not repentant about promoting torture.

One of the signature TV series of the Bush/Cheney years is back. What relevance, if any, does it have in the new age of Obama?

The hit thriller series 24 is back, with a four-hour season premiere spread out over two nights having just concluded. The show, which scored big at the Emmy Awards in its fifth season in 2006 and endured a notably sub-par sixth season in 2007, was supposed to be back a year ago. But the writers' strike, and the need to retool, wiped out 2008 for the show. So now its seventh season begins, amidst questions about its relevance.

The show had increasingly embraced torture as a foolproof means to get information. While that's a useful story-telling crutch for a TV show with a ticking clock motif, it's not a serious reflection of how things work, nor a worthy policy for America.

This CNN report discusses 24's real-world impact regarding torture.

While there has always been a less remarked upon yet powerful lefty side to the show, let's talk first about fictional agent Jack Bauer's propensity to torture, a relentlessly hardball approach that has made him an icon to many on the right, and the show's inevitable amping up of the terrorist threat.

The Bush/Cheney Administration essentially adopted the thriller approach to politics. What underlies that? The knowledge that most anything seems plausible if you keep things moving too fast for the audience to think about it.

We saw it again in the just-concluded season premiere of 24, when Bauer (played by the terrific Kiefer Sutherland), told a balky agent: ''You're running out of time -- you don't have a better option.''

If that's how you define the logic of the situation, then extreme measures always seem more plausible.

24 took the thriller genre and amped up the adrenaline even further with the show's format, in which everything takes place in a 24-hour period, ostensibly in real time, with hour-by-hour episodes replete with not only the requisite fast cuts and handheld cameras of the modern thriller genre adding to the urgency but also regular split screens and a ticking clock motif.

The entire premise of the show is that a terrorist disaster is just about to happen, usually several disasters in the same day.

What the Bush/Cheney Administration did politically was to add a superstructure on top of the 24 premise. They adopted what author Ron Suskind calls "the one percent doctrine," Vice President Dick Cheney's notion that if there's a one percent chance of a terror plot existing, it should be treated as if it is a certainty.

This is akin to basing your approach to intelligence as if every situation is an episode of 24.

That's hysteria masquerading as rationality.

President-elect Barack Obama, introducing his intel leadership team, denounces torture and Guantanamo.

Real life is not an episode of 24, which has backed off some from its increasing torture motif. Under pressure from U.S. Army brass, including the dean at West Point, which told the hit show's producers that their easy storytelling crutch was giving the troops in Iraq the wrong idea about how to get information.

On the evidence of the four-hour season premiere, the series hasn't really backed away from torture as a good way to get important information. Though I doubt it will be as prevalent as it became in the show under its departed creator and former showrunner Joel Surnow, who is definitely way over on the right, having produced the mercifully short-lived Fox News comedy Half-Hour News Hour, which debuted with President Rush Limbaugh and Vice President Ann Coulter.

24 fan and former President Bill Clinton discusses the show.

The characters this season debate torture, even as they begin again to employ it, with main character Bauer adopting a new stance that what people like him do shouldn't be kept secret, it should be brought on in the open for the public to decide when and where to draw the line.

With regard to torture, this is where keeping things moving really fast to keep that suspension of disbelief going is terribly important. Because if you think about it, all the bad guy has to do in 24, since it all takes place in a day, is tell a lie that holds up for a very short period of time. In other words, until the bomb goes off, the target is assassinated, the biological warfare agent is released, etc.

24 started out somewhat differently. In fact, its roots are actually in the Clinton years, when terrorism was a significant problem, as it's been for decades, but not an obsession. That was before we were so dramatically attacked on 9/11. Before, as it happens, the Bush/Cheney Administration cared much about terrorism at all.

Let's not forget that the report of the US Commission on National Security, appointed by then President Bill Clinton and chaired by former Senators Gary Hart and Warren Rudman, which predicted a major terrorist attack inside the US, was ignored by the new administration. Or that then national security advisor Condi Rice was about to give a speech on what the White House saw as the prime national security threat -- missiles in the hands of hostile nations -- on 9/11 itself.

The first season of 24, depicted in this German trailer for the global hit, was about fictional agent Jack Bauer's quest to prevent the assassination of the first African American with a serious chance at the White House.

The first season of 24, which began airing after the attacks on New York and Washington, was about a threat to assassinate the first African American with a serious chance to become president, a youngish, idealistic-sounding basketball aficionado named David Palmer, played by the estimable Dennis Haysbert. Jack Bauer's mission, after some early confusion, was to protect Palmer -- who oddly prefigured Barack Obama before any of us had ever heard of Barack Obama, then a state legislator -- from assassination on the day of the California presidential primary.

In season two, Bauer's mission was to protect Palmer again, as Palmer struggled to prevent a war with an unnamed Arab country that was secretly fomented by a cabal of oil traders and arms dealers.

In fact, the bad presidents on 24 have been Republicans. The good presidents have been African American Democrats, first David Palmer, then his brother Wayne, who after playing RFK to his brother's JFK, worked for peace with a former Islamic terrorist.

The worst president was a fellow named Charles Logan (played memorably by the Emmy-nominated Gregory Itzin), a vaguely Nixonian weasel who had David Palmer assassinated and conspired to create a fake terrorist attack in order to gain more power over the country and serve shadowy business interests.

This season, the show has another new president -- presidents don't tend to last long on 24, what with all these constant mega-crises -- a resolute, idealistic-sounding Hillary-like figure. You could say the producers guessed wrong there. Or that they'd already had not one but two Obama figures in the White House.

Does the show still have relevance in the new age of Obama? Sure. It's still a dangerous world, though not as dangerous as the ideologues pushing the strategy of constant hysteria would have us believe. Plus, the show, in its own way, prefigured Obama by presenting an African American president who was every bit as credible -- in the context of TV -- as The West Wing's Jed Bartlett. The ratings are down, but commensurate with all TV ratings being down. The old ratings system doesn't factor in time-shifting, online viewing, or DVDs.

Besides, the show looks entertaining again. As long as people understand that torture is a very unreliable means of getting information -- and an extraordinarily foolhardy national policy -- as 24 fan Bill Clinton has pointed out.

And check things out during the day on my site, New West Notes ... www.newwestnotes.com

Comments

[Joseph A. Palermo - Huffpost Blogger]

Yes, I didn't realize how influential 24 is as a justification for torture until I discussed the issue with my right-wing Christian fundamentalist in-laws in Wyoming who love the show and believe you must torture people to save people. Sutherland should be ashamed for what he has done -- I know it's just a gig, but come on, he has helped sell torture as a legitimate policy.

[samiam4285]

It's funny: I am a huge 24 fan, and yet in real-life I am a huge anti-torture proponent. But, that's because I don't watch the show for the torture, I watch it for the twisting storylines, the fast pacing, the action, and Chloe (since she is hilarious). The problem with 24 is that obviously some viewers DO buy into the way torture is portrayed, the same way that probably the majority of the viewing audience for CSI buys into the way forensic science is portrayed, which is to say in both cases, completely inaccurately.

I'm sure someone out there will call me hypocritical, but to me, 24 is in no way an accurate depiction of real life, and I merely accept the show at face value for pure entertainment.

[William Bradley - Huffpost Blogger]

It is. And it isn't ...

[RRonin]

I tried to watch the first season of "24" but it failed my "first three episode" test. Right off the bat it depicted the CIA violating it's charter by operating within the U. S. I know, it's fiction, but that killed the plausibility of the whole premise for me. Then most of the "action" consisted of people screaming into cell phones. So after viewing the third episode, I quit watching it. In retrospect, I can't help but wonder that the primary purpose of the show was to inure viewers to what would become future (very NEAR future) policies of the Bush administration; in short, it's Rupert Murdoch's Fox propaganda machine in full cry.

[William Bradley - Huffpost Blogger]

In other words, you ... don't really know much about the show.

[Proletarian101]

We as a nation need to be careful about blurring the line between fantasy and reality. We should not be using 24 (fantasy) as a justification or even a reference for intelligence gathering technique.

[William Bradley - Huffpost Blogger]

Correct.

And yet, it is a key cultural touchstone.

[Aaror]

If 24 were like real life:
Jack Bauer successfully tortures the location of the bomb from the terrorist, and agents swarm the location, only to discover-NOTHING!
Then the nuke goes off, destroying Dallas, TX, because the terrorist was willing to give false info knowing he only had to hold out another hour (or he gave false info cause he didn't know and folks will tell a torturer anything they want to hear!)

[William Bradley - Huffpost Blogger]

... As I said.

[BottomLine2008]

I like that German trailer for the first season!

[William Bradley - Huffpost Blogger]

It's elemental for those of us who don't speak German.

[BottomLine2008]

Ha ha.

[BottomLine2008]

Elemental, I like that.

[BottomLine2008]

It's funny how Bill Clinton contradicts himself in the interview with Tim Russert. First he's for a an "exception" for torture in certain circumstances. Then he says that agents need to do what's necessary, like Jack Bauer, and hope for the best.

[William Bradley - Huffpost Blogger]

Bill Clinton rather flexible. Although, to be fair, he has always had a penchant for wanting to amend his initial reactions.

[BottomLine2008]

As well he should.

[BottomLine2008]

Obama looks and sounds very good in that footage with new CIA director Leon Panetta and Adm. Blair. I liked it when you used it before in one of your CIA articles.

[William Bradley - Huffpost Blogger]

Well, it's a classic Obama press conference on the topic ...

[BottomLine2008]

The CNN story on "Jack Bauer" promoting torture is compelling.

[BottomLine2008]

The new season trailer for 24 is almost a rationale for torture, isn't it?

[William Bradley - Huffpost Blogger]

It starts out that way.

Remember that TV shows are about making money, and there is a hardcore "24" audience that thinks very reflexively about these things.

[BottomLine2008]

I liked the season premier. It was good. And a good return to the pace and smarts it didn't have in its last season.

[William Bradley - Huffpost Blogger]

It did not disappoint from an entertainment standpoint.

[laocoon]

Somehow I suspect the world as just as dangerous as the people who run it want it to be.

[BottomLine2008]

Ooh, conspiracy. You must be a fan.

[BlackWidowPilot]

A street cop's definition of *conspiracy* is that two or more people get together and agree to do something illegal. People in this country are convicted *daily* for *conspiracy to commit a crime,* which IIRC is a felony on most states.

To deny that conspiracies do indeed take place in the halls of governments the world over, is to deny several thousands of years of recorded human history, as surely as to assume conspiracy afoot behind every closed door in the halls of government is to engage in equally counterproductive paranoia.

Best we keep our perspective, neh?

Leland R. Erickson

Citizen

[William Bradley - Huffpost Blogger]

He certainly is ...

[William Bradley - Huffpost Blogger]

Reality is a bit more random than that, I'm afraid ...

[William Bradley - Huffpost Blogger]

THIS is the definition of the conspiracy theory approach to politics ...