Last week the the New Yorker featured an article that described how several military and human rights experts including the commandant of West Point took a trip to the set of "24" to have a little chat with it's stars and producers over the issue of torture.
They charged that the shows repeated depiction of extreme methods in order to obtain intelligence methods was causing confusion not only among the students and future officers at west point, but also among those already serving in Iraq.
Not long after that meeting executive producer Howard Gordon made an annoucement.
Fox's 24 will become less torturous, but not because the U.S. military, human rights groups and children's advocates want it to.
So Howard this decision has nothing to do with this statement from Brig General Patrick Finnegan?
Finnegan told the producers that "24," by suggesting that the U.S. government perpetrates myriad forms of torture, hurts the country’s image internationally. Finnegan, who is a lawyer, has for a number of years taught a course on the laws of war to West Point seniors—cadets who would soon be commanders in the battlefields of Iraq and Afghanistan. He always tries, he said, to get his students to sort out not just what is legal but what is right. However, it had become increasingly hard to convince some cadets that America had to respect the rule of law and human rights, even when terrorists did not. One reason for the growing resistance, he suggested, was misperceptions spread by "24," which was exceptionally popular with his students. As he told me, "The kids see it, and say, ‘If torture is wrong, what about "24"?’ " He continued, "The disturbing thing is that although torture may cause Jack Bauer some angst, it is always the patriotic thing to do."
Really now?
How about these statements...
The third expert at the meeting was Tony Lagouranis, a former Army interrogator in the war in Iraq. He told the show’s staff that DVDs of shows such as "24" circulate widely among soldiers stationed in Iraq. Lagouranis said to me, "People watch the shows, and then walk into the interrogation booths and do the same things they’ve just seen."
Instead of paying attention to what people who actually work directly with the troops and interrogators had to say Gordon instead doubts their claims.
Gordon is skeptical of the show's power over U.S. troops.
"The thesis that we are affecting our soldiers in Iraq in their treatment of prisoners is being exaggerated, I think. Hopefully, there are a lot of filters between their watching 24 and their work in the field."
I'm not going to claim I'm unsympathetic to Gordon's position. "24" is just a TV Show. It's drama. It's fiction. It's NOT REAL!
Ever since C. Delores Tucker began to speak out about so-called "Violent" Rap Music, the PMRC attempted to censor sexually explicit Rock, Ozzy Osborne and Judas Priest were sued for the subliminal messages and "backward masking" messages of suicide into their songs -- the impact of the entertainment media on our collective consciousness has been a hot button issue. I would say that it goes all the way back to the beginings of the entertainment industry - Chuck Berry and Elvis wiggling their hips on TV, the "Standards and Practices" offices at film studios, the "Comics Code Authority" which acted as defacto censor for that industry once Fredrick Wertham ridiculous screed "The Seduction of the Innocent" was published, which claimed that Wonder Woman was a "bondage babe" and Batman was a pedophile.
But at the same time Hollywood has often walked hand in hand with Washington propaganda, particularly during wartime. During WWII Hollywood created a veritable cottage industry of patriotic pro-war films, usually starring (Republican) John Wayne. Wayne continued this trend even during Vietnam with the frankly awful movie - The Green Berets. So it's not like Hollywood is completely independant of the political winds.
However, what I think is a far more dangerous tool for distortion and propaganda than any form of entertainment - is the News. Everyday we can turn on the local news station and usually the old adage - "If it bleeds - it leads" applies. Night after night our local and network news stations attempt to scare the bejeezus out of us with tales of murder, crime, disease and horror that is occuring right in our own neighborhoods. Or at least in somebodies neighborhood, somewhere.
White Chicks in PeriL has become a staple of many cable networks from CNN to MSNBC and Fox News. Jennifer Willbanks, Terri Schiavo and now the endless death of Anna Nicole Smith. Keeping us scared is big business for the News industry.
But when it comes to entertainment by an large I come down strongly on the side of the artists to express themselves in nearly all these causes. For example the arguement that Marilyn Manson was in anyway responsible for the Columbine Massacre is just plain goofy - especially since Dylan Kleibold and Eric Harris didn't like Marilyn Manson - they liked the band Rammstein who they couldn't even understand since they sing in German. Again the News distorts the facts in the interests of spreading fear.
Yet Manson was resoundingly condemned anyway.
With all this in mind it might be argued that Finnegan and Lagouranis are being a bit hysterical, but then again it might not - since they aren't talking about hypotheticals, they're talking about real impacts and viewpoints which come directly from the arguments justifying torture put forward by "24" (which are echoed loudly by the Bush Administration) and how it's making their jobs of teaching our troops to abide by international law more difficult. I don't think that something you can just brush off.
In nearly all these cases above there are other alternatives to look at and compare against. Someone who doesn't like Ozzy could listen to Amy Grant or Striper if they want to. But if you happen to enjoy a modern day action/drama that realistically addresses the issues of terrorism - where else can you go but "24"?
The only show I can think of is "Sleeper Cell" but that is on Showtime and not available to the same audience that Fox TV can reach. With it's enormous ratings the impact of "24", in the absense of other viable and equally well distributed alternatives can not be completely ignored.
Gordon says he's open to working with outside groups, "but my bottom line is that this is a TV show and that's reality. I'm optimistic that most people are able to distinguish between the two."
Yes, most people can distingish between the two - when they actually have two equally well defined options to compare against. In this case - IMO - they don't. And that isn't neccesarily "24"'s fault - it's the News medias fault for failing to seriously address these issues in a responsible way and leaving us without a "fair and balanced" picture of the situation.
One "24" critic Dave Trotter puts it this way....
Here’s how the writers illustrate the concept: in episode 18 they make the distinction between torturing: (1) suspects who've been actually charged with a crime, and (2) suspects who haven't been charged but who still might know something.
They pose the question as an over-the-top ethical issue, and the Arab supervillain plays the system expertly, using an Amnesty International clone agency lawyer like an IED to sidetrack CTU's "hot on his trail" investigation.
So the lawyers advocating due process for the suspect are working for the terrorists! I knew it! (Dang you, Osama! Dang you, Zarqawi/Saddam/Goldstein!)
Just as Fox News new "1/2 Hour News Hour" would present the ACLU or Human Rights Watch - if you're not With us, You're Against us. If you dare criticize our policies, even when they don't work - you're doing the work of the terrorist for them.
The problem is that the writers linger on the distinction that Jack wants to torture a suspect but has insufficient evidence to charge him. By this point, Spring of 2005, most citizens had seen enough wild precedents in the four years since 9/11 to recognize that the "material support" hurdle of the Patriot Act is a low one indeed. They couldn’t charge this guy?
Somebody was trying to make a point.
You bet they were. And I think that someone is Joel Surnow, co-creator of 24, "the 1/2 Hour News Hour" and card-carrying Neo-Con Wacko!
But never fear – Jack Bauer knocks out a pawn-like Federal Marshall escorting the suspect and breaks every bone in one of the suspect’s hands until he talks, which of course renders exactly the information they need, just in the nick of time. Thanks, God, for Jack Bauer, who has the stomach and the temerity to pummel my face – or yours! – into concrete in the name of national security! Finally, a hero emerges!
Never mind that we've moved far afield, by this point, whether the predication for any of this executive activity is legitimate. We're in a damned fervor, here. We ain't got time for discernment!
It's easy to rationalize when the "worst-case scenario" mentality really takes root, too. It was that guy's hand or millions of innocent lives, right? How do any of us stack up against that?
How indeed? How do the rights of terrorist to a fair hearing and habeus corpus, or the right to protest these outrages stack up against the specter of an American City destroy by a nuclear dirty bomb?
Our current Attorney General says - in all seriousness - that obeying the law and the Constitution is a grave threat to our nation, yet hardly anyone blinks an eye. This might not be because so many people have become comfortable with Jack Baeur Justice ™, and then against it just might.
Time and time again this show indicates that the rights of the accused are insignificant and that doing everything in your power including breaking the law is acceptable as long as it's for "the greater good" - just as Jonah Goldberg argued in his very first LA Times Column that the President Bush lying us into a war with Iraq was just fine, since it was for the "greater good" or that the subsequent Iraq War was a "Worthy Mistake."
The Ends Justifies the Means, no matter what price - is their mantra and credo.
One last thing from Trotter...
During season 4, Walt Cummings, one of the traitorous villains working for President Logan, advises the president that the torture of the uncharged suspect would haunt the administration if he turns out to be innocent. Jack disagrees, of course, and after torturing the suspect illegally, Jack is vindicated when the suspect reveals pertinent information. In season five, to prove a larger point, Cummings is revealed to be a traitor in patriot’s clothing.
So in case you’re keeping score, that’s "good guys" who advocate torture and incarceration without criminal charges, 1, and "bad guys" who insist that charges and evidence should at least be a requirement for torture, nothing. And where’s the party advocating no torture under any circumstances, you ask? Good question.
Yes, that's a very good question - where are the News agencies and programs which display an alternative to "24"'s incessant use of violence to achieve it's ends? Where are the shows that point out that information gained through coercian is inadmissable in court and anything gained from that info is "fruit of the poison tree" and also inadmissable?
Where are the shows or even the News programs telling the American public the truth, that even during a "ticking time-bomb" scenario TORTURE DOESN'T WORK!
One interrogator said that he would apply physical coercion only if he received a personal directive from the President. But Navarro, who estimates that he has conducted some twelve thousand interrogations, replied that torture was not an effective response. "These are very determined people, and they won’t turn just because you pull a fingernail out," he told me. And Finnegan argued that torturing fanatical Islamist terrorists is particularly pointless. "They almost welcome torture," he said. "They expect it. They want to be martyred." A ticking time bomb, he pointed out, would make a suspect only more unwilling to talk. "They know if they can simply hold out several hours, all the more glory—the ticking time bomb will go off!"
With Gordon announcing this new direction for "24" that alternative might be the very same show that put forth the "by any means unneccesary" argument in the first place.
But somehow - I doubt it.
Vyan
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