February 28, 2007

US Army to Fox's "24": Just Stop with the Torture Scenes Each season of “24,” which has been airing on Fox since 2001, depicts a single, panic-laced day in which Jack Bauer—a heroic C.T.U. agent, played by Kiefer Sutherland—must unravel and undermine a conspiracy that imperils the nation. With unnerving efficiency, suspects are beaten, suffocated, electrocuted, drugged, assaulted with knives, or more exotically abused; almost without fail, these suspects divulge critical secrets. . . . Earlier this month, Brigadier General Patrick Finnegan visited the set of 24 to urge its makers to cut down on torture scenes. He told the show's producers, "I'd like them to stop. They should do a show where torture backfires. The kids see it and say, 'If torture is wrong, what about 24?'

Also: TV affects the way people behave. Um, but that's not specifically in the linked articles.

posted by petebest 17 years ago
  • The New Yorker on the politics of the man behind "24." The writer of that NYer article analyzes clips from the program. In the show's defense, it's been pretty consistent about making the hard-line neocon types out to be bad guys. But its take on torture? Not so good.
  • Thanks HWingo, that New Yorker article was my second link but I . . er, didn't link it. “People in the Administration love the series, too,” he said. “It’s a patriotic show. They should love it.” . . Surnow, a cigar enthusiast, has converted a room down the hall from his office into a salon with burled-wood humidors and a full bar; his friend Rush Limbaugh, the conservative talk-radio host, sometimes joins him there for a smoke.
  • Yes, TV affects the way people behave, as do video games and song lyrics. Now what do you think should be done about it?
  • Warning stickers. Caution: winning a war is not as easy as is portrayed in this video game. Do not attempt to extrapolate this video game fantasy to real life.
  • Stop watching it. It sucks.
  • 'The Devil Jack Bauer made me do it' - a Bad Apple. And yes, that show grew sour very fast for me. Besides the obvious (hey, it's a TV show, right?) leaps of plot plausibility (traitors and moles everywhere, Jack is framed and fired and crossed every minute, it seems), the use of torture as trump card is quite disturbing.
  • But...but...but, Americans LIKE torture shows! What's wrong with a little torture? Especially if they're the BAD guys.
  • What's wrong with a little torture? The problem is when someone doesn't honor the safe word.
  • Oh, I get it. Torture is something that happens because a bunch of West Point cadets saw it on TV, and thought it would be fun to try it, and somehow their commanding officers were powerless to influence their behavior without the aid of Keifer Sutherland. It's nothing to do with the POLICIES of the US government. It's nothing to do with extraordinary rendition, or Cheney sticking up for waterboarding, or Bush wiping his ass with the Geneva conventions. It's not coming from the top down. It's all because of 24. If only Wesley Snipes or Steven Seagal or somebody was available to talk to these guys, we could get our country back on the path of righteousness.
  • I notice from the "more news" bit on the main link that Posh Spice has a reality show confirmed. It appears the Empire formely known as British has a sting in its tail. Though seriously, and with respect, what Stan the Bat said. Shame that White House toilet paper runs to the constitution as well.
  • Yes, it's coming from the top down. But a nation of voters who've been fed galmorized misconceptions about torture and its efficacy might not be so quick to stand up the the officials they've elected and say, "Hey, this is wrong and it doesn't work; don't do it."
  • I don't know- I see where you're coming from, but I'm afraid I'm gonna have to put my foot down and require that adults be able to distinguish between reality and fiction. Call me a crazy dreamer, but- "glamorized misconceptions about torture"?!?!111 IT'S TORTURE FOR FUCK'S SAKE! Is your Nation Of Voters really confused about whether or not it's wrong to kill people with pool cues and take their cars in real life, because it's okay in Grand Theft Auto? I'm just not buying it.
  • Worst - show - ever. Lowest common denominator - valium for the masses.
  • I think it's a two pronged sword. Some of us keep feeding violence to children (and 18 year olds are still children) in games like GFA, which I believe desensitize them to the real life effects of all that violence. Then we get blasted with the torture done in the name of our government in Iraq and detention centers, which kinda makes torture officially approved. I don't think our whole nation of voters is confused, but I do think the message to the immature is that torture and violence are ok. And, those who are immature today will possibly grow up thinking that "others" aren't real and that the violence done to them is just a game. I live in a place where gang violence is rife. Just being a child of norteno Mexican Americans is enough to get you killed by those who originated in the south. Drive-by killings happen almost weekly, (and often take out small children who just happened to be in the way) with no apparent personal antoganism. Wearing the wrong colors can get them killed. Certainly, the "others" aren't "real" to the drive-by killers. They were trained to be desensitized. The games scare me even more. Everyone in them is up for the kill, and I'm not confident that the kids who play them are coached to understand that this has nothing to do with real life, or that any real people who might fit the targets are real people. It seems to me that the games spread gang thinking to kids who have no gang affiliations.
  • I just like that we can't show exposed breasts because we don't want out kids to learn about sex, but it is okay to have our kids watch people get murdered or tortured. Applying the same logic, I guess it is okay to have kids learn about murder and torture. A scene in the movie I will never make would involve a filmmaker presenting a rough cut of his film to the studio. He would show a scene wear a man approaches a woman, she unzips his pants, pulls out his penis, and gives him oral sex. At this point, the studio execs are freaking out. - You can't do that! - Why not? - You can't show a dick in a woman's mouth! - Why not? - It will be rated XXX! No one will carry it! - What if instead of sticking his penis in her mouth, he sticks a chainsaw in her mouth and cuts her face in half? - No dick at all? - None. - No problem! - So it is better if he kills or maims her than it would be if they have consensual sex? - Of course.
  • Well, maybe I'm just being naive. My experience suggests that in order for a guy to actually go out and hurt, much less for God's sakes kill, another person, he's got to be confused or damaged in a really profound way that can't be accounted for by video games. As crass and violent as video games often are, they're just not that deeply affecting to people who are connected to the real world in a reasonably normal way to begin with- again, in my experience. But gang violence isn't part of my daily experience, so I guess my acquaintance with human craziness is less intimate than it might be.
  • Sex is mundane; chainsaw violence is not. The mundane is always more dangerous than the extraordinary. It is strange that we (the cultural "we") have the sophistication to talk about plot devices in the abstract, but seem unable to see the fiction for fiction. How comically ironic that the US army complains about fictionalized torture!
  • Yes, Path, I'm with you. One of the saddest things I ever saw on the news was the arrest of a 16-year-old boy who had shot another boy because he was "pissed at him." His comment was "It wasn't supposed to be like that." What? No blood, no gore, no agonized crying, no repercussions? Nothing to clean up? Fortunately, the other boy lived--with half his stomach removed.
  • To avoid fainting, keep repeating "It's only a movie...It's only a movie. ...
  • Cooperation of the two most powerful and influential forces in America — government and the entertainment industry http://www.fortunecity.com/meltingpot/nebraska/1386/januaruy2000.html I guess someone should mirror this if they are interested. It's from Jan 2000
  • oops,,wrong link http://www.fortunecity.com/meltingpot/nebraska/1386/dopedupe.htm
  • Well, maybe if, as the general in the original article suggested, there were an equally popular espionage show/movie depicting torture being an unreliable method that a lot of reasonable people (not just bleeding-heart pablum-pukers) object to, it wouldn't be so icky. Yes, fiction is fiction. But the senseless violence in GTA and other venues is obviously presented as just that: senseless. It's also usually committed by people whose motives and moral integrity are portrayed as questionable at best. Jack Bauer is packaged as a moral hero whose every action is done for the noblest of purposes.
  • Perhaps 95% of the content presented on television IS torture. So I watch rarely and avoid shows that rely on humiliation, abuse or destruction to keep the masses entertained. Concepts like compassion, peace and understanding are apparently now outdated and "boring." I am especially disturbed by the parade of violent offerings and its effect on the impressionable, especially kids and the emotionally empty or unstable. Pop culture continuously ups the ante on how much violence is "acceptable" as entertainment--many of the games currently offered appear to be thinly-disguised simulator trainers for future assassins. Anybody remember the fall of Rome? The masses demanded ever-increasing levels of violence for their amusement, rightly seen by historians since as a key symptom of moral decay. With the Internet offering Youtube clips of random beatings etc., it seems that things really are spiraling faster than ever. What's to be done? Tough question. Legislation inevitably makes that which is prohibited more attractive, and drives those who profit therefrom underground. For things to change humans would have to rise above their own appetites and impulses. Can't really see that happening, at least not in my lifetime. Although the recent reported drop in rap music sales is rather interesting.
  • Hey! I know! Instead of trying to get it off TV, why don't we try to get the Government to stop actually doing it?
  • Nick, you silly boy! Enough of this thinking!! Go watch a nice program or play your video game. Daddy George has business to attend to.
  • I really like "24." Apparently this makes me a spoon-fed idiot drone with terrible taste. I'm okay with that. I feel obliged to point out that I have yet to use a defibrillator in such a way as to void its warranty, take my boss out back and execute him with a shot to the back of the head, or kill someone with my ankles. But according to some of the articles and comments on this thread, I could at any moment. I watch TV. Ph34r m3.
  • So to your mind there's nothing at all wrong with a hugely popular TV show repeatedly showing torture to be effective when experts on torture claim that it's not, and to be justified when civilized societies typically take the position that it can't be justified? At the same time when the federal govt is trying to get society to buy into the concept that torture is justifiable? That's just fine and dandy, to you? Nobody's saying you're a potential torturer. But is it possible there are potential torturers (like 20 year old kids at West Point) who could be influenced to torture by this? And if so, isn't that worth discussing? Or should we all just join you in willfully making this a simple black and white issue? /rant by a fellow fan of 24, who currently comes down on the side of "it's just a TV show," but believes that this is not necessarily an "I'm right, you're wrong" argument //it's late and I'm a bit pissy, so forgive the tone, but still.
  • No worries, HawthorneWingo, and thanks for the disclaimer! It's been a long week, I hear you there. My problem is that this is the same argument that's trotted out about anything that strays from the socially accepted path. Whether they're burning great huge piles of "Catcher in the Rye," or getting sniffy about "24," the argument is the same. "I understand that it's just fiction, but it will cause other people to X." Where X = "abuse children," "go on a shooting rampage," "vote Republican," what have you. The proffered answer is to frantically sanitize everything, so that no one could possibly be offended or inspired to do something bad. Heaven forbid [random stranger I just invented] should get the wrong idea, you know? I get particular amusement from these threads by imagining how they would develop if "24" was a book. Everyone would be up in arms! You can't ban, censure, or censor BOOKS! TV, though, that's okay. I'm absolutely against people being tortured in real life. For the record, I'm also against alcoholism, police corruption, government cover-ups, throttling children, and beastiality. (However, I am strongly in favor of Kiefer Sutherland. Rawr!)
  • (Having just browsed a little farther than I did last night, I'm going to cross-comment with the thread directly above this one.) I am really uncomfortable with the idea of the United States military being allowed to tell a television show what it can and cannot depict.
  • But they're not commanding. They're asking. Big difference IMO.
  • I didn't use the word "command," but your point is valid. Edit that to read, "I am really uncomfortable with the idea of the United States military being allowed to give feedback to a television show regarding what it should and shouldn't depict."
  • I'm uncomfortable with the idea of anyone NOT being allowed to give feedback to a television show.
  • I agree with TUM. Why shouldn't the US military be allowed to give feedback, as much as anyone else?
  • Give me back my feed!
  • Whether they're burning great huge piles of "Catcher in the Rye," or getting sniffy about "24," the argument is the same. I disagree - it's quite a bit more graphic and violent and torturey. I appreciate that banning "Huckleberry Finn" and suggesting less televised graphic violence are in the same universe, but at some point the difference becomes less academic and more practical. I wish the irony of the US Army requesting less violence on TV wasn't so transparent. But there we go.
  • FINN and SAWYER Unite for one last time in a shower of bullets 'n' blood - to rescue the woman that BOTH of them love. "*****! A gut-churning, eye-popping tour de force!" --Vanity Fair "***** - Finn and Sawyer put the zippy in Mississippi". --The New Yorker DON'T MISS THE HIGH-EXPLOSIVE ALL-ACTION ADVENTURE THAT IS "UNCLE TOM'S CANNON" Starring Huckleberry Finn, Tom Sawyer and Linsay Lohan. Directed by James Cameron. Based on a story by Mark Twain and Mel Gibson.
  • I watched the first two seasons of 24. Loved the first one but found the second one was getting a bit tired. One big difference I noticed between the two was Jack Bauer's increased readiness to inflict pain on others in season two. This maybe just my impression, but I thought that the second season was much more violent and had a lot more emphasis on torture than the first season. I understood this at the time to be a reflection of changed post-9/11 attitudes in the U.S. I'm assuming that the first season was made in the spring/summer of 2001.
  • At its core 24 relies on one trope alone: Jack Bauer being out of breath at all times. My girlfriend and I have entire conversations in which we talk like Jack Bauer. It's awesome; you should try it.