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@ =] I’m surprised you don’t watch 24; but there might be other reasons why you read through the webs commentaries on a somewhat political show like 24. Thanks for your answer. While currently watching old Kiefer Sutherland-films , I wonder how season 6 will open. The audience doesn’t seem to have appreciated season 5s brutal ending that much.. is there an end of what people can take? and is there an end of what the Bauer-character can convey? work won’t become easier for the writers. The more skilful they become by experience, the more complex and difficult their task develops too.

i’m amazed at how articulately you voiced your opinion. =] very well written
i don’t watch 24 .. but i’m convinced

a reader =]

Thankyou very much for rescuing “24” from alleged parallels to the current US Government. Only read your article now here in Europe, Germany.
We cannot talk much around it: “24” is not exactly a non-patriotic show. Maybe for me as a european this is even clearer than to americans. But you know what: I dislike bush, but I do like Bauer. I can accept an American like Bauer, very much so, and would definitely support him, whereas I wouldn’t with bush.

Though I do think that some of the writers are strongly conservative, they are still good writers in the first place. And that means they have an imagination about people and personalities. And Kiefer can convey that, if not more so: produce it in the first place, if the writers had forgotten about it temporarily. I’m sure about that.

Kiefer plays Jack Bauer much too dark, subtle and differentiated - usually with a few looks and even less words. How could we love a guy who would just torture and kill for any given government no matter what they stand for? that’s not what we are watching in “24”. Jack Bauer has a lot of contradictions in himself. Kiefer is able to show those. Jack goes beyond the president or any presidency, just like he goes beyond himself. And he suffers the consequences of what he feels needs to be done. He’s not free from guilt, definitely. A guilt the conservatives wouldn’t accept to be there at all. But it is in the show and in the character Jack Bauer, and that’s part of what transcends this show.

hi
I like your show. i like the action in it. I wach it all the time.

I’m a big fan of 24 but I think you have to realize that it’s really a story about a secret agent.  I think it’s both well written and well acted and I’ve noticed that every instance of torture is when there are thousands of lives at stake hours or minutes from the terrorist threat.  Has a refreshing tone, nice guy just trying to get the job done and lots of action but it also gives equal coverage of the damage which happens when people go off on their own ideology with secrets and aliances.  Part of that is “President Logan,” and the story goes that most of the terrorism in the story began with a wild plan by our own administration.  Now that ought to attract any Bushbasher to Monday night on Fox channel.

Exceptionally well-written work, Adam.

Adam, this was an amazingly well done article.

I wonder if Pat B. also picked up that 24’s bumbling, and corrupt idiot of a president mirrors a real life president?

God save us all from these clowns!

“Torture in real life is not as effective as the administration, its apologists or Buchanan would have us believe.”

But it works in movies!

This is so telling. It tells of the fantasy world generated by fiction that many people hold in their heads.

How many, do you think, in the Administration, in Congress, in the general public, actually read non-fiction? Books on history, law, philosophy, science?

How many of the same do you think read from more an one or two news sources? Watch one or two news stations? Listen to more than one or two radio shows?

We know that many of the compelling issues before us all are very complex and complicated. To understand something as complex as war, how it effects fighter, commander, enemy, community, culture… one MUST read and study a myriad of sources. We can not just go through life reading a few headlines a few hundred words, watching an hour or two on sunday morning.

Yet, many, oh so many, watch HOURS and HOURS every week watching TV and MOVIES and read Grishim and Patterson and whomever is on the NYT bestseller list. And every hour spent there is contributing to the immense stupidity of the American Poeple.

“Jack Bauer” is a fictionalized character. He was dreamed up in a writer’s head. His words have been written form him by a WRITER whose qualifications for understanding war is, need I say?, other WRITER’S words.

Sure, some fiction writers are from the “real world” before becoming writers, and some TV shows hire consultants, but overall, IT IS FICTION.

What a well written, thoroughly analyzed piece.  Cool!

Jack is also going after the President who had clearly broken the law, not protecting or making excuses for him.  Despite Jacks flaws (torturer, murderer, etc) at least he is honorable.

The “Republicans” who ask, “WWJD?” (what would Jack do?) reveal their simplistic attempts at thinking, their shallow conception of art and their willingness to grab any symbol and wave it to further their ideological ends, even when their actions are ludicrous to people “outside the loop.”.

One of the main points of “24” is to show that “extremism in the pursuit of liberty is no vice” leads inevitably to abuse of power.

Jack Bauer has shot an innocent woman, half-strangled his ex-wife, killed an ex-lover, viciously punched his close colleague, tortured innocent people… The “president” was involved in the plot which shot down Air Force 1, put the real President into a coma and thus manipulated himself illegitimately into the presidential seat, arranged for terrorists to gain control of nerve gas and is teetering on the edge of killing his own wife. The vice-president is involved. Military defense contractors are involved. The DHS is involved.

All these men are claiming their actions “are in the best interests of the American people.” When their actions are finally analysed, they are seen to be nothing more than raw attempts to seize power.

“24” is a metaphorically-viable examination of the very policies, distortions, illegalities and betrayals we see every day in the press and television. These current (mis)Administration policies are being mocked, disassembled and shown to be mere justification and sophistry for fanatic paranoids.

It’s hilarious that the very men whom this show is mocking take the lead character as a hero.

“What would Jack Bauer do?” Shoot the President, of course! And shoot anybody who got in the way of his ideological conclusions.

Come to think of it… Jack is the ultimate neo-con!

I am beginning to think that the problem with U.S. today—the neo-anti-intellectualism as it can be called but it is as old as the era of the “American Century”—is directly proportional to the amount of fictionalized American Culture.

Children were brought up by an “American Reader” in school that tells stories of George Washington and “the cherry tree” and how the Founding (Christian) Fathers fought for a country where “all men are created equal.” And that is the first lie for a country was created that was decidedly not equal in its laws however equal they wanted to be philosophically. (Some did know that more battles were to be fought by future generations.)

Skipping all of history to the present day we still have children being brought up on the stories of America rather than the history of America, where all attempts to bring truer, more factual history to our schools results is cries of “Liberal” and “Multiculturalism” and “Values under attack” and “War on Christianity.”

So, grown up on history as stories, with many lacking any real sense of real history in which the “American Hero” is actually not always a hero but your everyday, run of the mill guy fighting with his neighbors over natural resources, Americans naturally see MOVIES and TELEVISON as reflections of REALITY.

No box-office-block-buster-movie about the CIA or other American agency forays into foreign soil are accurate portrayals of American history.

All television show—CSI, Law & Order, ALIAS, 24, ad nauseum—are HORRIBLY WRONG in their portrayal of REALITY.

CSI is world where one can “zoom and enhance” on images of low resolution, and where magnets pick up lead. They can’t even get PHYSICAL REALITY correct much of the time.

Here is something to stick in your craw:

As children, we all learn that when you see a lightning flash, you count—one one thousand, two one thousand, three one thousand… before the BOOM!

Yet, NEVER, EVER, will you see a film portray that basic part of nature accurately. ALWAYS there is a simultaneous FLASH BOOM!

In film, swords always “shing” even going in and out of flesh; lead bullets always cause sparks; light bulbs always break in an array of sparkles; bullets always spray smoke and blood in entrance wounds; ... the list goes on and on.

Do you think for one second that the portrayal of American History in TV and FILM are any more accurate than the portrayal of physical reality?

TV and MOVIES are a GIANTIC FRAUD being foisted on and illtellecually-challanged American Populous.

There are some exceptions, of course. But they are rare and, worse, rarely seen.

Adam,
Robert sent me this in an email.  It is very interesting and articulate.  I hope that many will read this.

Your fan,
Jamie

George Bush is to Jack Bauer as I am to Jesus.

well done….thoughtful.  difficult issues for our time…..no easy answers….but the discussion and thought process are very important.

You are right on.!
Very good article.