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sister_luckI think I need a new lay-out, because the very basic one I'm currently using doesn't give easy access to all my tags. Something to sort out over the weekend - any tips or hints are welcome.
Against my better judgement and due to a weird mix of masochism and the desire to 'know thine enemy' I've started with the new season of 24 which somehow found its way to me. If you follow the brandnew 24 tag, you'll find two earlier ranty posts about Day 4. I knew that watching this would get my blood pressure rising, but there's also the joy in making sarcastic comments about this mix of car commercial and blatant, yet entertaining and thus probably effective propaganda. To keep myself from throwing my glass of wine at the tv, I scribbled down my thoughts and voiced quite a lot of them. Believe me - we're usually fairly silent watchers and don't like the people who comment on everything, but with 24 the rule is different. Snarky remarks are necessary and encouraged. I filled about 14 pages in my notebook even though I abandoned writing down things midway through the fourth episode.
The worst thing is that while 24 is clearly fictional - what with a different president and no mention of Iraq or Osama Bin Laden - it is still grounded in reality and I'm scared that a huge part of the audience believes that what they're seeing on the screen is not just a possible scenario, but also a probable one. No, scratch that, the fact that it is quite entertaining and has now even managed to add some real vulnerability to its hero is much worse.
I'm not going to write up all my notes - half of them don't make sense. Also, there was a lot of plot in those four episodes!
Okay, we started with the little prequel sponsored by Toyota - and about half of it was a car commercial showing some SVU model racing through what was supposed to be Chinese territory. There were the usual bad Americans - this time it was type A: mercenaries. Type B are liberals, or as one character who appears later says: "I'm not a flagburning idealist". Though the link between flagburning and idealism seems rather weak.
Karma is a bitch for payback and the Chinese are torturing Jack. It's amazing how much he looks like Murat Kurnaz though not in this picture. He doesn't speak the whole time and once he's got a haircut and a shave there's only a tiny bit of trauma left. See, torture isn't that bad, even if the bad guys are doing it to you.
We're in the first episode by now and there's a FOX news report on tv: "America has been victimised again" - there are suicide bombings all over the place and what is the new President Palmer about to do? (Wow, another Black president? Next season it might be a woman! Maybe even Palmer's sister? More about her later....) He's bought Jack from the Chinese and wants to sell him to some terrorist guy, whose "brother died while Jack was interrogating him". In the civilised world, we call that murder by torture, but yeah, Jack was only doing his patriotic duty.
Oh, and in return terrorist guy has promised to shop his boss. It's their 'only way out of this crisis' and President Palmer talks on the phone to Jack how it's a noble sacrifice, a 'desperate measure and a measure of our desperation' or as his advisor later tells him: "It isn't right. It isn't wrong. It's our only option."
This new advisor guy - played brilliantly by Peter McNiccol - is also advocating detention camps for suspicious people, presumably all American Muslims. Palmer's national security advisor, formerly CTU head bitchy woman whose name I don't want to look up, is against it citing the historical example of the detention of Japanese Americans during WWII which according to her is today regarded as wrong by historians and other learned folks. Peter McNiccol's character has the gall to say that yeah, maybe they are just not seeing the big picture and the Americans might have prevented attacks by it, so it was actually a good idea.
There is also an all-American family with a Muslim neighbour next door who is arrested by the FBI. All-American dad comes to the help of son Ahmed who is friends with his own all-American son. As it turns out, Ahmed is actually one of the bad guys - so, keep that in mind Americans, and don't help your Muslim neighbours - they might kidnap your family and force you to collect a package in the process of which you have to kill a terrorist-collaborator computer nerd who wants more money in exchange for some technical thingy that will re-programme a suitcase bomb and nuke LA.
Selling Jack to terrorist guy al-Fayed was actually a bad idea, because HE is the mastermind and that other guy who the Americans believe to be behind the bombings actually wants to stop him. Hey, a reformed terrorist! (Like Gaddhafi?) Of course, Jack manages to escape from the clutches of Fayed and his henchman by going vampire on a guard and escaping through the sewers. He then proceeds to save ex-terrorist Assad and works together with him - nearly preventing a suicide bombing in the subway (bomber dies, everyone else survives), but he can't stop the nuke from going off, because President Palmer has made a deal with the bad guys and has released a group of inmates from a Guantanamo style 'enemy combattant' prison. If they hadn't freed the inmates, that nuke wouldn't have gone off, because one of the prisoners was a real terrorist and expert in nuclear weapons and was instrumental in reprogramming the device.
Jack has lost his stomach for torture and he declines to keep on 'interrogating' the guy who betrayed Assad, because he can see in his eyes that he won't talk. Well, after a bit of pressure from Assad, he does talk. See - torture works and Jack is reassured by someone (can't remember who exactly) that he'll remember when he says that he 'doesn't know how to do this anymore'.
There's another subplot that focuses on President Palmer's sister who is the lawyer for Walid, the head of a Muslim Civil Rights advocacy group and the FBI wants their files - without the proper warrant, but hey, like the one good American Muslim says: "We have nothing to hide. Maybe we have to sacrifice a little privacy." Both end up in prison, because Sandra Palmer deletes the personnel records, and in there Walid finds out that there are four more suitcase nukes around.
Morals to be gleaned from this story:
Don't trust your Arab neighbours - ever.
Presidents who negotiate with terrorist allow themselves to be blackmailed.
Torture has results, unless it's Jack Bauer who will remain completely silent for 18 months.
If the Americans release a bunch of enemy combattants, something terrible will happen.
What angers me most is that this is never about the reasons behind terrorism, it's just a case of them against us. There are some hints that some people are against torture and the further erosion of human rights, but I fear they may turn out to be wrong in the end. Having someone propose detention camps for American Muslims and having people voice criticism of that, but not commenting on the use of torture or the detention of enemy combattants makes these things look completely acceptable and normal by comparison. And that's exactly where the evil of propaganda lies - the audience is clever enough to know that Jack Bauer doesn't exist, but these are real issues and the moral judgements made or implied by the series will affect the viewers. Either they believe that yes, it's right to use torture or to lock up people for five long years without charge OR their belief is confirmed that the United States is about to protect its constitution by destroying it.
Against my better judgement and due to a weird mix of masochism and the desire to 'know thine enemy' I've started with the new season of 24 which somehow found its way to me. If you follow the brandnew 24 tag, you'll find two earlier ranty posts about Day 4. I knew that watching this would get my blood pressure rising, but there's also the joy in making sarcastic comments about this mix of car commercial and blatant, yet entertaining and thus probably effective propaganda. To keep myself from throwing my glass of wine at the tv, I scribbled down my thoughts and voiced quite a lot of them. Believe me - we're usually fairly silent watchers and don't like the people who comment on everything, but with 24 the rule is different. Snarky remarks are necessary and encouraged. I filled about 14 pages in my notebook even though I abandoned writing down things midway through the fourth episode.
The worst thing is that while 24 is clearly fictional - what with a different president and no mention of Iraq or Osama Bin Laden - it is still grounded in reality and I'm scared that a huge part of the audience believes that what they're seeing on the screen is not just a possible scenario, but also a probable one. No, scratch that, the fact that it is quite entertaining and has now even managed to add some real vulnerability to its hero is much worse.
I'm not going to write up all my notes - half of them don't make sense. Also, there was a lot of plot in those four episodes!
Okay, we started with the little prequel sponsored by Toyota - and about half of it was a car commercial showing some SVU model racing through what was supposed to be Chinese territory. There were the usual bad Americans - this time it was type A: mercenaries. Type B are liberals, or as one character who appears later says: "I'm not a flagburning idealist". Though the link between flagburning and idealism seems rather weak.
Karma is a bitch for payback and the Chinese are torturing Jack. It's amazing how much he looks like Murat Kurnaz though not in this picture. He doesn't speak the whole time and once he's got a haircut and a shave there's only a tiny bit of trauma left. See, torture isn't that bad, even if the bad guys are doing it to you.
We're in the first episode by now and there's a FOX news report on tv: "America has been victimised again" - there are suicide bombings all over the place and what is the new President Palmer about to do? (Wow, another Black president? Next season it might be a woman! Maybe even Palmer's sister? More about her later....) He's bought Jack from the Chinese and wants to sell him to some terrorist guy, whose "brother died while Jack was interrogating him". In the civilised world, we call that murder by torture, but yeah, Jack was only doing his patriotic duty.
Oh, and in return terrorist guy has promised to shop his boss. It's their 'only way out of this crisis' and President Palmer talks on the phone to Jack how it's a noble sacrifice, a 'desperate measure and a measure of our desperation' or as his advisor later tells him: "It isn't right. It isn't wrong. It's our only option."
This new advisor guy - played brilliantly by Peter McNiccol - is also advocating detention camps for suspicious people, presumably all American Muslims. Palmer's national security advisor, formerly CTU head bitchy woman whose name I don't want to look up, is against it citing the historical example of the detention of Japanese Americans during WWII which according to her is today regarded as wrong by historians and other learned folks. Peter McNiccol's character has the gall to say that yeah, maybe they are just not seeing the big picture and the Americans might have prevented attacks by it, so it was actually a good idea.
There is also an all-American family with a Muslim neighbour next door who is arrested by the FBI. All-American dad comes to the help of son Ahmed who is friends with his own all-American son. As it turns out, Ahmed is actually one of the bad guys - so, keep that in mind Americans, and don't help your Muslim neighbours - they might kidnap your family and force you to collect a package in the process of which you have to kill a terrorist-collaborator computer nerd who wants more money in exchange for some technical thingy that will re-programme a suitcase bomb and nuke LA.
Selling Jack to terrorist guy al-Fayed was actually a bad idea, because HE is the mastermind and that other guy who the Americans believe to be behind the bombings actually wants to stop him. Hey, a reformed terrorist! (Like Gaddhafi?) Of course, Jack manages to escape from the clutches of Fayed and his henchman by going vampire on a guard and escaping through the sewers. He then proceeds to save ex-terrorist Assad and works together with him - nearly preventing a suicide bombing in the subway (bomber dies, everyone else survives), but he can't stop the nuke from going off, because President Palmer has made a deal with the bad guys and has released a group of inmates from a Guantanamo style 'enemy combattant' prison. If they hadn't freed the inmates, that nuke wouldn't have gone off, because one of the prisoners was a real terrorist and expert in nuclear weapons and was instrumental in reprogramming the device.
Jack has lost his stomach for torture and he declines to keep on 'interrogating' the guy who betrayed Assad, because he can see in his eyes that he won't talk. Well, after a bit of pressure from Assad, he does talk. See - torture works and Jack is reassured by someone (can't remember who exactly) that he'll remember when he says that he 'doesn't know how to do this anymore'.
There's another subplot that focuses on President Palmer's sister who is the lawyer for Walid, the head of a Muslim Civil Rights advocacy group and the FBI wants their files - without the proper warrant, but hey, like the one good American Muslim says: "We have nothing to hide. Maybe we have to sacrifice a little privacy." Both end up in prison, because Sandra Palmer deletes the personnel records, and in there Walid finds out that there are four more suitcase nukes around.
Morals to be gleaned from this story:
Don't trust your Arab neighbours - ever.
Presidents who negotiate with terrorist allow themselves to be blackmailed.
Torture has results, unless it's Jack Bauer who will remain completely silent for 18 months.
If the Americans release a bunch of enemy combattants, something terrible will happen.
What angers me most is that this is never about the reasons behind terrorism, it's just a case of them against us. There are some hints that some people are against torture and the further erosion of human rights, but I fear they may turn out to be wrong in the end. Having someone propose detention camps for American Muslims and having people voice criticism of that, but not commenting on the use of torture or the detention of enemy combattants makes these things look completely acceptable and normal by comparison. And that's exactly where the evil of propaganda lies - the audience is clever enough to know that Jack Bauer doesn't exist, but these are real issues and the moral judgements made or implied by the series will affect the viewers. Either they believe that yes, it's right to use torture or to lock up people for five long years without charge OR their belief is confirmed that the United States is about to protect its constitution by destroying it.
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no subject
Date: 2007-01-12 09:18 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-01-14 02:47 pm (UTC)I haven't got a clue how to work with CSS - I think there's only one layout available to me that has a tags list, but it is difficult to see on the preview pages.
no subject
Date: 2007-01-15 06:44 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-01-15 04:18 pm (UTC)You're right - the past seasons have clearly shown this. But what about Sarah Palmer? For me, she's on the civil disobedience list which is probably bad enough, but she hasn't done anything evil yet...