From that description, it sounds like the guy advertising torture and genocide is the bad guy. They're comparing him to Goebbels, for crying out loud. Obviously the message of this season is going to be exactly what you want: that while torture might be justified in rare ticking-bomb scenarios, it is all too easy to start using it more casually, and slide down the slippery slope to fascism.

I'm pretty sure that just as it's impossible to make an anti-war war movie, it's impossible to make an anti-torture torture movie. I wouldn't be surprised if the show's producers had good intentions, but it doesn't matter. No, I won't be swayed by perceived counterexamples.

I've never seen an episode of 24. I'm starting to feel like a sucker paying as much as I do for cable, and only using it to watch sports and Sesame Street.

But...but...but...it's The Biscuit.

Ogged says he won't be swayed by perceived counter-examples, but for anyone with a more open mind, I submit that Full Metal Jacket is a successful anti-war war movie.

apo, you'll feel doubly like a sucker once you discover 24 is on broadcast TV

Would I be able to persuade anybody that the concept of torture on tv is merely a subject-matter change from portrayals of sexuality, incompetent fathers, drugs, etc.

I'd like to argue that if I or others can make a distinction between sex, incompetency or whatever as entertainment, then why should I worry about (dare I say it) torture as entertainment?

That is, if I truly believe that the public doesn't take life lessons from sitcoms or Gray's Anatomy, what makes the situations on 24 any different? If I do, it would be because I find torture to be repugnant.

But I laugh at those prigs who feel sex, drugs and doofus dads on tv are bringing down western civilization. Should I be consistent?

Rich

24 is on Fox, so don't feel like a sucker for cable on account of it.

Pretty much agree with the post. They were mildly better about it last season, but there's a very strong Jack-Bauer-is-a-good-guy-therefore-Jack-Bauer-breaks-fingers-to-save-the-world vibe in season four, where 'Amnesty Global' shows up as a bad guy.

Plus, it's not really all that entertaining. Ho-hum, fifty minutes of running around L.A. Bet Jack Bauer's going to beat someone up in the last ten minutes, and we'll go to black at the end of the hour just as the Important Thing has been revealed.

Pretty much agree, but last season we had a lying cowardly traitorous murdering President who we were all hoping would use his gun on himself.

I liked that part.

anti-war war movie

There are many -- Catch-22 springs to mind, also M*A*S*H -- though that is less substantial of a movie, I don't think its anti-war point is missable. Suicide is painless.

(And hey, M*A*S*H is also on Fox, or was last I looked, in late night reruns, to come full circle for once.

)

Zadfrack, here's the bit that brought me around to the "it's impossible" opinion.

I'll never forget escorting the late Samuel Fuller, the much-decorated World War II hero and maverick filmmaker, to a multiplex screening of Full Metal Jacket, along with another critic, Bill Krohn, 11 years ago. Though Fuller courteously stayed with us to the end, he declared afterward that as far as he was concerned, it was another goddamn recruiting film--that teenage boys who went to see Kubrick's picture with their girlfriends would come out thinking that wartime combat was neat. Krohn and I were both somewhat flabbergasted by his response at the time, but in hindsight I think his point was irrefutable.

We can't prove this one way or the other, obviously, bu it seems to me that Fuller is totally right. We might be able to tell what the "message" of the film is supposed to be, but that's always going to be swamped by images of travail ("could I stand that?") or aggression ("cool!"). I think it's important that Fuller says that teenage boys will take it as a recruiting film; they're the audience we should keep in mind.

My relatives are all addicted to this....The "Amnesty Global" thing, and even more, the account of the convention at which various Bush administration officials came & discussed how it portrayed the "tough choices" they face, prevented me from wanting to watch. Unfortunately, there seems to be a higher correlation between government officials watching 24 and deciding that torture is justified than there is between 14 year olds playing Grand Theft Auto and going on carjacking sprees.

(I don't think there's anything wrong with watching, as long as you understand that it's a fucking TV show. I just thought all the baggage would make it not very enjoyable. And truthfully, I wonder how much 24 is a cause of the hold the stupid ticking bomb scenario has over the country's imagination and how much it's a symptom. Can't have helped though.)
This articles is interesting though.

. Specifically, the show's depiction of torture, some say, may have helped inure squeamish Americans to such tactics.

But, says Gordon, "We are far more sensitive to it as a narrative device, particularly with the likes of Abu Ghraib and Guantánamo. We've been in touch with the dean of West Point, who pointed out that, in his opinion, `24' has influenced some of their interrogators. We don't want to be handmaids for tolerance of torture."

To defeat Peter MacNicol or anyone allied with him, one simply needs to play Higher and Higher.

teenage boys who went to see Kubrick's picture with their girlfriends would come out thinking that wartime combat was neat

Have not seen Full Metal Jacket so I can't speak to this, but I don't think such a response to Catch-22 is possible.

but that's always going to be swamped by images of travail ("could I stand that?") or aggression ("cool!").

All that means is that teenage boys have strong tendencies to favor war. Similarly, it would probably be impossible to make a successful anti-sex movie.

But I laugh at those prigs who feel sex, drugs and doofus dads on tv are bringing down western civilization. Should I be consistent?

No, you shouldn't make analogies, which are BANNED! The difference is that sex and family roles (and drugs, to a lesser extent) are things that we all negotiate our relationship to every day, such that the nature of our relationship to them is is more firmly fixed within the context of who we think we are, what we think is right, etc. But most of us don't have firsthand information or impressions of torture, so even if there's a "message" that torture is bad, the impression that's fixed in our minds is "pain leads to spilling the beans." This will be the impression even if the info turns out later in the show to have been false. And even this is too abstract; there will still always be the fascination with inflicting pain, and the curiosity about whether one could stand it.

Caught an advance of the season premier recently, and was very surprised to see that the torture portrayals in it (and there are plenty) were uniformly and unambiguously negative for a change (though I suspect for plot-driven reasons, rather than a change in outlook--don't want to spoil by saying more). Also what looked like a thinly-veiled swipe at U.S. detainee policy, but I may be projecting on that one.

The rest of the episode looked like the same tired formula. And some really bad casting.

But I laugh at those prigs who feel sex, drugs and doofus dads on tv are bringing down western civilization. Should I be consistent?

If you want to. But when you're being consistent, consider that portrayals on TV do reflect and change societal attitudes. CSI is a good example, because the idea that crime labs can Get Their Man every time has affected the advice judges give to juries, viz., "Remember the rules of evidence aren't like they are on television shows." Or how portrayals of extremely thin actresses as beautiful leads otherwise normal women to diet.

No one's calling for censorship. But the 101st Fighting Keyboardist types are fond of fantasy and flights of the imagination, and something like 24 does that.

it would probably be impossible to make a successful anti-sex movie

Or maybe not.

Portrayals of torture and sex are always gonna be porn regardless of the message that's tacked on. Maybe with sex porn, the basic activity is at least value-neutral so the context can make it better or worse (violent, exploitative vs sex-positive). But with torture porn, the basic activity is evil even if (claimed to be) justified. Shake your finger at the bad torturers all you want, your lizard brain still thinks it's watching Hostel.

The thing that made 24 unwatchable to me, besides the sickening torture porn, was the ridiculous high-school interpersonal dynamics between the characters. Fer pity's sake, there's a nukular bomb in the city and y'all are talking about who's such a bitch...

I've only seen a couple of episodes of 24, and those were late in the franchise, but, jesus, the terrorists' motivations were poorly written.

Too stupid; I couldn't enjoy it.

My sister works for an organization that represents Guantanamo detainees, and which does general anti-torture advocacy besides. I guess they're pretty clever, because they figured out that television depictions of "ticking time bomb" torture were a problem for the public perception reasons a few of you already mentioned.

So they set up some meetings with some writers (TV show unspecified by her), and brought in an actual non-torturing professional interrogator to explain why their depiction was unrealistic and bad. Then he explained some actual interrogation techniques that were both innovative, drama-worthy, and undeniably non torture. She said the writers were scribbling notes and asking lots of questions, but we'll see.

Just the other day I heard 24 described as "facism porn," which seems both accurate and a neat summary of the comments thus far.

Ah, it was here.

Rousseau, you're making me twitch again.

I'm a rascal; I practice rascism.

Are you also a facist, one who discriminates on the basis of facial attributes?

I discriminate against those without faces.

Sonofa! Twenty years of education and I've actually never noticed that. Thanks!

(Your revenge is that now I'm twitching at the suggestion that you can wield something "at" somebody.)

Your revenge

Hmmm.

To be fair, not all governments that use torture and murder against their political enemies are fascist. Some are merely kleptocracies.

it would probably be impossible to make a successful anti-sex movie

Or maybe not.

Sex, hell -- that's anti-defecation, even trickier given biological necessity.

My nomination for an anti-sex movie is In The Realm of the Senses. 90 minutes of bad insanity, 10 minutes of bad sex.

24 is all kinds of interesting as a social phenomenon, if not as a TV program. They totally ran out of their schtick in the first or second season, and I enjoyed it before it became all world-epic instead of personal, and while the jumping-around multiple-angle thing was pretty new (but I liked Time Code, too). The institutional pressures to keep flogging that dead horse instead of coming up with a new idea is, of couse, a widely observed property of the entertainment industry.

I liked In The Realm of the Senses. And somebody requested the Brazilian scat movie get made. Hmm, maybe Ogged is right.

I've been thinking about this a bit in light of Rick's response. And there is another show that evokes the same sort of visceral reaction in me. I've only caught one or two episodes of Law and Order: Special Victims Unit, and it's utterly revolting.

Sure, they're catching the rapist or abuser. But not before we've been treating to titillating shots of the crime, and not before discovering that it wasn't really her older brother that was making her dress up in French maid costumes before sodomizing her, it was her older sister. Or it was a rainbow party. You get the idea. It's disgusting because it's glorifying very twisted things, before piously cutting them down at the end of the episode.

24 doesn't even call the torture bad, so the analogy's weak. (At least I don't think SVU has had the victims enjoy it.) But that's the closest one I can think of.

Totally agree about SVU; it's gross. Still love Hargitay, though.

I only watched the first season of 24, and it really bothered me for some reason. It was only towards the end of the season that I realized it was because every single female character in the show was either evil or stupid. Bar none. I'm glad I stopped watching before it devolved into torture porn.

I liked the first season of 24. It was smaller. It was pretty fantastic, but still was about one guy having a really bad day because his crazy work life invaded his family life. It wasn't about big issues, and I think it worked better that way.

Very secure.

Observe
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jpOZvpOflHc&eurl=

Roland Barthes (first essay on the page) can be construed to explain why there are no anti-war war movies.

13 gets it almost exactly right. The other thing, though, is that a *lot* of art works exactly this way: explore with great glee the amoral (or immoral) forbidden thing, then slap a didactic motive on it to make the audience feel better about their complicity in viewing it. Crime dramas love to dwell on rape stories; domestic novels spend a lot of time flirting with the dangers of seduction; action films adore exciting carnage. Yeah, sure, in the end the bad guy gets caught, the good girl gets married, and the hero saves the day--but that's only so that the audience doesn't have to admit to itself that we enjoy this stuff because of the scary content, not in spite of it.

In his review, Roger Ebert called Platoon an anti-war war movie.

What about Johnny Got His Gun? I never saw it; but the book is certainly very strongly anti-war. Does it hold up in the film?

Also, Megaforce.

Read the Barthes essay. Short version: Pointing out the awfulness and shortcomings of a thing, like war (or margarine), can in fact be an effective way to promote it.

This is more or less the reason I think "anti-smoking" ads help sell cigarettes.

Wow.

On 24, Jack Bauer just escaped from the massively evil terrorist who was torturing him by playing possum until a terrorist lackey came over to investigate, whereupon he bit him in the neck like a vampire, stole the handcuff key, and limped away.

It's already self-parody.