I Need A Favor From Jack Bauer

Kiefer, can I call you Kief?

I know you and I have had our disagreements, mostly about the fact that I think your show, 24, is hurting America. But I have a favor to ask and if you do this all will be forgiven.

I need you to endorse, as Jack Bauer, any democratic candidate. Seriously, pick any of them, even Dennis Kucinich.

Because if Huckabee doesn't look ridiculous with this ad then I think we need to get Jack Bauer's endorsement. I mean, he's been cited so much by Republicans I think it means they think Bauer votes Republican.

But I think you know better. I think you know that Bauer was actually a Democrat. After all, wasn't President David Palmer basically a dem in disguise?

So Kief, think about it. I know you probably figure America doesn't need to know what some actor thinks about president politics. But clearly that's not the case.

Jack Bauer Is Loved Outside of US? God Help Us

Another in my continuing series of posts of how 24-is-hurting-America, Amar C. Bakshi, has an interesting column in Newsweek PostGlobal musing how other countries view the 24 series and its hero.

As Australian journalist Antony Loewenstein writes, Bauer’s use of “torture and the whatever it takes mentality is precisely why the U.S. is so despised right now.”

From India, student Akshay Bawa writes: “Jack Bauer is James Bond on coke.” The cool, cosmopolitan imperialism of Britain’s 007 is replaced with the brutish patriotism of Bauer.

I think of Bauer as the new Rambo essentially. And Rambo was not originally meant to be a hero, more of anti-hero. But eventually even the name became synonymous with American Jingoism. To call someone a Rambo is to call them a testosterone-fueled asshole basically.

I remember when the New Superman movie came out I had a lively discussion with my comic-book loving officemate about why I couldn’t enjoy Superman perhaps because he seemed like a cartoon version of all the things about America I didn’t like, namely the concept of America’s ego-oriented assertion that whatever it did it’s heart was always pure. But Superman is practically effete compared to Rambo, let alone Bauer.

"Superman’s weakness is Kryptonite; Jack Bauer laughs at Superman for having a weakness…”

Hee!

But oddly enough Bauer/24 doesn’t seem to be seen as a symbol of American oppression outside of the U.S. viewing audience.

Within America, minorities need image-rehabilitation, Maz says, but the case for reshaping the standard villain is a bit less clear when we step outside U.S. borders. “It’s strange,” says Maz, but Chuck Norris and Jack Bauer are “immensely popular in the countries where they’re kicking ass. My grandfather loves Chuck Norris,” even though Chuck wrecked Maz in the made-for-TV movie The President's Man.

I wonder if the issue is that the action in the 24 series mostly takes place in the United States. Sure there are occasional jaunts to Mexico and a few outside-the-U.S. scenes, but the action is has always been in the Los Angeles area. So Bauer isn’t actually invading foreign countries to kill their bad guys. Meanwhile, with the exception of the first movie, Rambo was killing foreigners on foreign soil.

So is it easier to enjoy an action hero if you perceive that he’s not actually invading your homeland? I would suspect so. But I also think Bauer is probably just appreciated in cultures that are heavily favored by machismo anyway.

Jericho: The Anti-Torture Show

Proof that some people in Hollywood have been paying attention to all the hoopla about the torture on 24, a line on last night’s Jericho:

What works is the fear of torture. Real torture – that only works in the movies.

It’s kind of a nice rejoinder to 24’s break-limbs-first-ask-questions-later methods. My only quibble is that, legally and ethically, threatening someone is mental torture, which is still torture.

More On Torture And “24”

The American Prospect has written about another event involving the writers of “24” and real live (former) torturers getting together. Although actually the article doesn’t really talk much about “24.”

Tony Lagouranis is a 37-year-old bouncer at a bar in Chicago's Humboldt Park. He is also a former torturer. That was how he was described in an email promoting a panel discussion, "24: Torture Televised," hosted by the NYU School of Law's Center on Law and Security in New York on March 21. And he doesn't shy away from the description.

One nugget is that the article ends up damning The Atlantic Monthly as more responsible for promoting torture than “24.”

Back during the NYU event, Lagouranis had sat behind a long table on a stage with his sleeves rolled up and his arms folded across his chest. Toward the end of the discussion, he leaned forward and told the audience that, ultimately, the abuse of prisoners could not be blamed on shows like 24. "I'm from New York City. I'm college-educated," he said. "But you put me in Iraq and told me to torture, and I did it and I regretted it later."

But he says a 2003 article from Atlantic Monthly had a huge impact.

Some of the soldiers and officers had been influenced by Mark Bowden's October 2003 Atlantic Monthly article, "The Dark Art of Interrogation," which describes techniques that, in the author's words, are "excruciating for the victim" yet "leave no permanent marks and do no lasting physical harm."

"It seems to me Bowden was advocating what he calls 'torture lite,'" Lagouranis tells me. "That made an impression on a lot of people. The feeling was that what we had been taught about the Geneva Conventions was not going to be followed anymore. We would be following a new set of rules -- and that was what Bowden was talking about."

I’ve noticed in some op-eds there’s kind of a pat saying that torture ends up harming the torturer more than the victim. At least psychologically, the victims can recover, but the torturers are scarred for life. Maybe that’s true, but it’s clearly not true in all cases.

I remember when Sister Dianna Ortiz published her memoir of her was abduction, rape and torture in El Salvador. She was one of the four infamous American nuns who were, almost accidentally it seems, victims of the civil war in 1989. (The big deal was when Americans nuns were picked up suddenly the American media started paying attention to the violence in the region). I have not read her memoir, but in reviews I read one of them commented that Ortiz says herself that she is not quite whole from her experience.

It struck out at me at the time because you often don’t read narratives where the ending is “Yes I am still kind of broken by the experience. It didn’t kill me but it didn’t make me stronger either.”

The Buddhist part of me wants to say the only way Lagouranis can recover is if he devotes his life to undoing the harm that he has done. He can’t erase his crimes but he can make up for them. He doesn’t need counseling to “get over” what he did. He needs to help his victims.

Jack Bauer Live And In Person

Is a really skinny dude. Seriously. His legs are like sticks. Highly coincidental of my constant recent musings on how 24 is hurting America suddenly I was thrust into a room with Kiefer Sutherland. Or rather I volunteered for a week at the DC International Film Festival with the prospect of just such a meeting.

Okay I didn’t actually tell Kiefer that his show is hurting America. Mostly because I didn’t want to piss off the people I was working for. But really, I also got the sense that this guy is not a deep thinker. Of course it's possible it just wasn’t his night. Or maybe my impression was partially formed from the movie he was there to promote, “I Trust You To Kill Me”. But even at age 40, Kiefer Sutherland is still quite the male adolescent.

Personally pleasant to be sure. Book him for your event, y’all. He doesn’t disappoint or get grumpy. As a professional hire, I see no room for complaint. But as an added psychological observation; at age 40 he doesn’t give off a sense of someone who knows what it’s like to be an adult and not an overripe 20-something. (The best approximation is that he’s like’s Paul Giamatti’s actor friend in Sideways, only not desperate because Kiefer actually has professional success. Charming, but shallow and somewhat self-destructive.)

I Trust You To Kill Me is ostensibly a “band road trip” documentary but really its all about Kiefer rather than about the band, Rocco DeLuca (which every time I heard his name I kept recalling Rocco of The Restaurant). I give Rocco DeLuca and the Burden credit for actually being really, really good. Good enough I’m going to try to find their CD. But in a way they are diminished by their association with Kiefer. His stardom blocks their talent. Basically Kiefer is more interesting to watch than Rocco.

Update: Okay after finding stuff like this I feel a little bit shitty calling the guy shallow. I stand my evaluation of his nature, but that doesn't mean he can't be a perfectly decent person. Some adolescents are.

Joel Surnow loves Joe McCarthy?

The Washington Post has an interesting push-back on that New Yorker article about torture on 24. The Post’s Peter Carlson just rolls his eyes that ANYONE could ever possibly take their cues from television.

Am I crazy or is attacking torture by lobbying the producers of "24" almost as ridiculous as trying to make nuclear power plants safer by urging the producers of "The Simpsons" to stop letting Homer play with plutonium in the lunchroom of the Springfield nuke plant?

Yes because we know TV is not an influential medium at all. Even though the people who teach at West Point have said, directly, 'people are looking at 24 and thinking it represents a rational line of thought.' Yes it’s “art” but there is a saying “life imitates art” for a reason.

I even pulled out this old quote from Chris Matthews (from the Washington Post) where here’s a life-imitating-art-imitating-life.

"You know what I find sometimes when I am drifting sometimes on this show, and we do five hours a week? I can't really assume a spontaneous attitude about a guest, so I find myself locking into you. I find myself doing Darrell Hammond doing me, because it's sort of comfortable to get into that sort of slipstream of the way you do me. Isn't that weird?"

-- "Hardball" TV commentator Chris Matthews to his "Saturday Night Live" impersonator, Darrell Hammond. "Yes, that's weird," Hammond agreed. Washington Post February 9, 2004

Anyway the most interesting nugget from Carlson’s article is that Sunrow, who is totally cozy with neo-fascist Ann Coulter, is now collaborating with her on what Surnow describes as “a movie that depicted Joe McCarthy as an American hero.”

I thought Ann had abandoned her crazy line of thinking that people were going to start lining up with Joe McCarthy again but clearly she’s been able to entice others into her way of thinking. And it doesn’t surprise me she picked the most fascist artist of the moment.

Torture on 24: Where Art Meets Reality

One of the issues I’m fascinated by is how TV influences real-life. Not just “serious” TV such as news (which ideally is supposed have influence) but entertainment. So I was super-fascinated to see this New Yorker article “Whatever it Takes” which reported on how the military has responded to the torture depicted in the series 24.

First of all, Human Rights First, had a pretty ingenious idea of setting up a meeting between real Army interrogators and Pentagon officials and the writers of 24. I so want to give props to them for that because you can write a 100 op-eds denouncing something on TV, but actually guilting a writer in person by the real-life people who do the jobs they depict is going to have an impact.

In fact, [U.S. Army Brigadier General Patrick Finnegan, the dean of the United States Military Academy at West Point] and the others had come to voice their concern that the show’s central political premise—that the letter of American law must be sacrificed for the country’s security—was having a toxic effect. In their view, the show promoted unethical and illegal behavior and had adversely affected the training and performance of real American soldiers. “I’d like them to stop,” Finnegan said of the show’s producers. “They should do a show where torture backfires.”

Of course the show’s producer, self-described “right wing nutjob” (he really did call himself that!) bowed out for bullshit reasons.

Several top producers of “24” were present, but Surnow was conspicuously absent. Surnow explained to me, “I just can’t sit in a room that long. I’m too A.D.D.—I can’t sit still.”

Yeah right. More like “I completely don’t respect Human Rights First and don’t want any real facts from people in the know to change my political viewpoints about anything.”

Before the meeting, Stuart Herrington, one of the three veteran interrogators, had prepared a list of seventeen effective techniques, none of which were abusive. He and the others described various tactics, such as giving suspects a postcard to send home, thereby learning the name and address of their next of kin….

I didn’t find it surprising that the show’s head writer admitted that while he’s got some old CIA interrogation journal from 1963, most of the ideas for how to torture people he pulls right out of his ass. Because the show runner, Howard Gordon, isn’t an interrogation expect. He knows that pain scares him and assumes it scares other people. Very interestingly he knows how to create tension visually with a camera, but doesn’t know how to create tension with a suspect who’s being interrogated. It’s not unlike someone who isn’t a doctor or isn’t a lawyer writing a script for what they think those jobs look like. They’re probably convinced they know what it’s like but the reality is going to be incredibly different from a writer’s imagination.

At other moments, the discussion was more strained. 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.”

Gary Solis, a retired law professor who designed and taught the Law of War for Commanders curriculum at West Point, told me that he had similar arguments with his students. He said that, under both U.S. and international law, “Jack Bauer is a criminal. In real life, he would be prosecuted.” Yet the motto of many of his students was identical to Jack Bauer’s: “Whatever it takes.” His students were particularly impressed by a scene in which Bauer barges into a room where a stubborn suspect is being held, shoots him in one leg, and threatens to shoot the other if he doesn’t talk. In less than ten seconds, the suspect reveals that his associates plan to assassinate the Secretary of Defense. Solis told me, “I tried to impress on them that this technique would open the wrong doors, but it was like trying to stomp out an anthill.”

So here are the real people who do this job. And more importantly the teachers who are addressing the next generation who will be interrogating. And what are they saying? Look people are mimicking what they see on TV. The show’s writers basically say “well people know the difference between TV and real life.”

Actually, with discussion I’m sure they do but that involves actually engaging the brain in cognitive thought. But one aspect of TV is that is “normalizes” life. That’s why people are so eager to see themselves reflected back on TV. In Stephanie Coontz's “The Way We Never Were” she talks about why those corny 1950s “family-centered” programs were so addicting. Because they showed how “normal” families were supposed to act.

It’s natural for people to want to see how their actions follow an accepted practice. We are social creatures. One of the lines I really liked in the movie Kinsey was when Alfred Kinsey talks about how his students are desperate to know whether their sexual practices are “normal.” I’ve even caught myself in my own life thinking that because I saw something reflected on Sex in The City what I’m thinking of is an acceptable practice.

And this “normalizing” function isn’t just true for observing guidelines for sex and family life. It’s true for young officers and cadets learning what is acceptable behavior in treating prisoners. It’s fucking scary how the power of “art” has on real life actions sometimes. People love to mimics scenes from “glamorous” TV.

Lagouranis said to me, “People watch the shows, and then walk into the interrogation booths and do the same things they’ve just seen.” He recalled that some men he had worked with in Iraq watched a television program in which a suspect was forced to hear tortured screams from a neighboring cell; the men later tried to persuade their Iraqi translator to act the part of a torture “victim,” in a similar intimidation ploy. Lagouranis intervened: such scenarios constitute psychological torture.

I won’t even go on about the fact that so many lay-men don’t even get the fact that the “I’m not touching you” defense doesn’t mean you can threaten people with rape, death, death of family, or torture, even if you don’t go through with it. IT’S STILL ILLEGAL TORTURE.

So here are people who do the job that 24 writers portray and they say “yeah torture doesn’t work.”

…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.”

Moreover part of the issue in 24 is that the writers continue to set up situations where the audience and Jack Bauer absolutely know that who they have is guilty of something and, perhaps more importantly, they know what information their suspect has. That’s a key detail. In real life in Iraq or other places with the U.S. treads more often or not they simply have someone they suspect might be associated with something, but they don’t know exactly what. They don’t know what information the suspect actually has. I take that from this statement by the other interrogators. Just applying pain and hoping they start sprouting information that is new to the integrators is unlikely because the suspect wouldn’t know what you know about them.

“In Iraq, I never saw pain produce intelligence,” Lagouranis told me. “I worked with someone who used waterboarding”—an interrogation method involving the repeated near-drowning of a suspect. “I used severe hypothermia, dogs, and sleep deprivation. I saw suspects after soldiers had gone into their homes and broken their bones, or made them sit on a Humvee’s hot exhaust pipes until they got third-degree burns. Nothing happened.” Some people, he said, “gave confessions. But they just told us what we already knew. It never opened up a stream of new information.” If anything, he said, “physical pain can strengthen the resolve to clam up.”

But the show’s producer STILL insists that sometimes torture is necessary.

Cochran, who has a law degree, listened politely to the delegation’s complaints. He told me that he supports the use of torture “in narrow circumstances” and believes that it can be justified under the Constitution. “The Doctrine of Necessity says you can occasionally break the law to prevent greater harm,” he said. “I think that could supersede the Convention Against Torture.” (Few legal scholars agree with this argument.) At the meeting, Cochran demanded to know what the interrogators would do if they faced the imminent threat of a nuclear blast in New York City, and had custody of a suspect who knew how to stop it. 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.

I find that that attitude of Joel Cochran’s irritating. Here his is confronted with evidence that his belief is incorrect, torture doesn’t work, the situation he imagines it might work doesn’t happen ever, and more importantly if it ever did it still wouldn’t work, but he continues to stress he believes torture is sometimes necessary.

Beliefs are hard things to go away even with counter-evidence. In fact when given evidence that counters a belief people will often cling stronger to their assertion. Overtime, they might be willing to let go and allow the new facts to be processed. But often the brain will simply start screening out the new facts so as to keep the old belief.

Anyway I’m glad to hear that Kiefer Sutherland is growing concerned about the impact of torture. Even if he didn’t come to the meeting (which I wish he had) he’s clearly going to hear about it if not read that article. Other than the writers, he’s one of the “artists” in charge of 24 that can actually make a difference in the crafting of the show.