24 (TV Milestones) [Illustrated] 0814338674, 9780814338674

Citation preview

24 Dn-rqq-jfl CU.UJ.D I

John McCullough

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MILESTONES

SERIES

24

TV Milestones Series Editors Barry Keith Grant Brock University

Jeannette Sloniowski Brock University

TV Milestones is part of the Contemporary Approaches to Film and Media Series. A complete listing of the books in this series can be found online at wsupress.wayne.edu General Editor Barry Keith Grant Brock University Advisory Editors Robert J. Burgoyne University of St. Andrews

Frances Gateward California State University, Northridge

Caren J. Deming University of Arizona

Tom Gunning University of Chicago

Patricia B. Erens School of the Art Institute of Chicago

Thomas Leitch University of Delaware

Peter X. Feng University of Delaware

Walter Metz Southern Illinois University

Lucy Fischer University of Pittsburgh

24

John McCullough

TV

MILESTONES SERIES

Wayne State University Press Detroit

© 2014 by Wayne State University Press, Detroit, Michigan 48201. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced without formal permission. Manufactured in the United States of America. 18 17 16 15 14

54321

ISBN 978-0-8143-3867-4 (paperback) ISBN: 978-0-8143-3868-1 (ebook) Library of Congress Control Number: 2013954415

For Marnie, Aki, and Billy

Contents

Acknowledgments ix

Introduction 1 1. 24 and Cultural Forms 15 2. 24 and Style 47 3. Themes and Meanings 77 Conclusion 99 Notes 105 Bibliography 117 Index 121

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would like to extend my appreciation to the editors of the TV Milestones series, Barry Grant and Jeanette Sloniowski, for their enthusiasm, encouragement, and insight. At Wayne State University Press, I owe an enormous debt to Kristina Elizabeth Stonehill for her consistent leadership, Maya Whelan for her design suggestions, and Eric Schramm for his thoughtful and thorough copyediting. Along the way, I had the privilege of receiving incisive feedback from Scott Forsyth, Marnie Parrell, and the anonymous manuscript readers, all of whom took time from their own work to help me with mine.

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or eight seasons, between November 2001 and May 2010, 24 became one of the most popular shows in primetime, averaging about 10 million viewers per episode.1 Its style and themes have exerted a powerful influence on the television industry and popular culture generally. Its distinguishing characteristics include its formal design, its visual style, and its compelling fictional account of the War on Terror (WOT). Its principal structural innovation, and what remains its unique contribution to the history of television drama, is its real-time premise in which each hour-long episode represents an hour of story time; thus its twenty-four-episode season depicts a single day in the life of its characters. The series’ structure thus simulates a live broadcast. Borrowing techniques from action news, reality television, and sports coverage, 24 mimics aspects of a live broadcast in order to intensify audience engagement, encouraging a viewing experience that many commentators described as addictive. For instance, conservative pundit Rush Limbaugh described how he got hooked on 24 on a flight to the United Arab Emirates: “Sixteen hours later we landed in Dubai, having watched 18 episodes of Season 1. We did not sleep. . . . The only reason we stopped is because we landed in

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Dubai, and the whole week we’re in Afghanistan we can’t wait to get back to finish the final six episodes of Season 1 and watch Season 2 on the way back.”2 While the series’ innovative plotting captured viewer attention, its cinematic style evoked the prestige of “quality TV.”3 A category of programming subject to extensive debate in the field of television studies, “quality TV” broadly refers to television entertainment that is relatively refined aesthetically and is driven by socially relevant themes. Certainly, threats of terrorism made 24 relevant, and it was not the only television series to tackle terrorism in primetime. In the autumn of 2001, it joined the third season of Third Watch (John Wells and Edward Allen Bernero, 1999–2005) and the premieres of The Agency (Michael Frost Beckner, 2001–2003) and Alias (J. J. Abrams, 2001–2006) to establish terrordrama as an increasingly popular entertainment option. These series’ success no doubt contributed to a “culture of fear,” and they inspired a wide variety of espionage and action-adventure programming, including MI-5 (aka Spooks) (David Wolstencroft, 2002–), Threat Matrix (Daniel Voll, 2003–2004), NCIS: Naval Criminal Investigation Service (Donald P. Bellasario, 2003–), Sleeper Cell (Ethan Reiff and Cyrus Voris, 2005–2006), Prison Break (Paul Scheuring, 2005–2009), Jericho (Stephen Chobsky, Josh Schaer, Jonathan E. Steinberg, 2006–2008), The Unit (David Mamet, 2006–2009), The Kill Point (James Demonaco, 2007), Damages (Glenn Kessler, Todd A. Kessler and Daniel Zelman, 2007–), Generation Kill (Ed Burns and David Simon, 2008), The Border (Peter Raymont and Linda Lee Tracey, 2008– 2010), and Hatufilm/Prisoners of War (Gideon Raff, 2009– 2012). Even series that appeared after 24’s run, such as Falling Skies (Robert Rodat, 2011–), Homeland (Alex Gansa and Howard Gordon, 2011–), Touch (Tim Kring, 2012–), Nikita (Craig Silverstein, 2010–), and Person of Interest (Jonathan Nolan, 2011–), for instance, continued to mobilize many of its formal and aesthetic strategies in order to popularize themes of fear

Introduction

24: Representing a culture of fear.

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and paranoia. Yvonne Tasker argues that what she calls “terror TV” also influenced the narratives of detective and crime series in the period, and Stacy Takacs’s analysis of television post9/11 reveals the influence of the theme of terrorism across a vast range of television formats, including teen fantasy, reality TV, and family dramas.4 Influential as a popular hit, 24 also garnered critical accolades, winning several important awards including twenty Emmy awards and two Golden Globes (for best lead male performance in 2002 and best drama in 2004) while receiving multiple nominations in a variety of categories and competitions. It also served as the source material for an assortment of merchandise including action figures, sound tracks, a video game licensed to Playstation 2, and a vast array of print media including the novelizations entitled 24 Declassified.5 The success of the series’ paratextual elements, including webisodes, prequel teasers and social media, and innovative scheduling, also helped define the series as exemplary cutting-edge television in the period.6 In addition, of course, the series often found itself at the center of debates about the negative impact

Introduction

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of mass media, and it was regularly singled out for criticism of its extreme violence, use of Muslim stereotypes, and its apparent endorsement of vigilantism and conservative social values. Throughout its run, 24 maintained a high level of recognition in the public sphere and, in conjunction with the revelations in 2004 of abuses at Guantanamo and Abu Ghraib, the series inspired several commentators to draw links between popular culture and politics. For instance, the Heritage Foundation, a right-wing think tank, hosted a 2006 panel on the series’ depiction of violence and torture, while, at the other end of the political spectrum, the progressive media journal Jump Cut featured discussion of torture as a fundamental component of the American social imaginary.7 Though most military and political experts ridiculed the idea that the series realistically reflected the WOT, its influence on public understanding of government policy was considered substantial. Thus, given its formidable presence in popular culture and discourses of the time, 24 can be understood as one of the ur-texts of the first decade of the third millennium and, as such, stands out as a TV milestone. In this book, I discuss 24’s form, style, and themes as not only unique and trendsetting but as complex creative responses to the series’ historical context: on the one hand, the changing nature of the global television industry and, on the other, the emergence of the geopolitics of terror and counter-terrorism. The stories that the series tells are overtly about the first ten years of the twenty-first century as seen from the global North. Consequently, it is driven by topics such as challenges to American sovereignty, the place of democracy in world affairs, the conflict between homeland security and the security state, the social role of families and communities, the meaning of patriotism and citizenship, the rise of nonstate warfare, and ultimately the meaning of redemption in the wake of the events of September 11, 2001.8 But the show is also a response to television culture in the “post-network” age, characterized by reality TV’s populist appeal and visceral content, on the one

Introduction

Post-9/11 television: innovative style, terror around the clock, and product placement.

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hand, and sophisticated boutique cable programming (“quality TV”), on the other.9 Produced by the Fox Network, 24 was part of a trend that saw the major networks invest heavily in highconcept primetime dramas, the most notable of which include Desperate Housewives (Marc Cherry, 2004–2012), the CSI franchise (Jerry Bruckheimer, Ann Donahue, and Anthony Zuiker, 2000–), and Lost (J. J. Abrams, 2004–2010). While these series were rarely among the most watched network programs (an honor typically achieved during the period by American Idol [Simon Fuller, 2002–], with approximately 30 million viewers), they nonetheless captured a valued demographic that had drifted away from the networks in the 1990s to other formats and distribution choices, including cable TV, TV on demand, and DVD. Thus 24 is not only an important series because it engages with the most pressing issues of world history and politics of its time but, on the strength of its form and style, it also represents significant global trends in television culture.10 24’s consistent style and thematic content can be attributed to centralized creative control and the long-term contributions of the creative departments. Initially planned as a mini-series, it

Introduction

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was conceived by Joel Surnow and Robert Cochran, whose Real Time Productions co-produced the series with Imagine Entertainment, a company run by Ron Howard and Brian Grazer. Film director Stephen Hopkins (Lost in Space [1998], Blown Away [1994], Judgment Night [1993]) directed half the episodes in Season 1, including the pilot and the finale, and made a wide range of contributions to the series, including suggesting Kiefer Sutherland for the lead role. His influence is credited with giving 24 a distinctly cinematic visual style, and he is also acknowledged as having suggested the use of multiple-frame compositions to heighten the “live” experience of the story, showing parallel actions simultaneously.11 Surnow and Cochran began to work together as writers on the primetime soap Falcon Crest (Earl Hamner Jr., 1981– 1990). Surnow had already worked as a writer and story editor on the acclaimed television series St. Elsewhere (Joshua Brand and John Falsey, 1982–1988) and Miami Vice (Michael Mann, 1984–1990) and, on the strength of his work on the latter, he became the show runner for The Equalizer (Richard Lindheim and Michael Sloan, 1985–1989). Cochran had written two episodes of L.A. Law (Steven Bochco, 1986–1994) before joining Falcon Crest. Throughout the 1990s the two worked together on several projects and, just prior to 24, they produced and wrote the television series La Femme Nikita (1997–2001) based on Luc Besson’s 1990 spy thriller film of the same name. While shooting that series in Toronto, Cochran and Surnow began working with the Canadian director Jon Cassar (director of the pilot episode of La Femme Nikita), who would eventually direct fifty-nine episodes of 24, the most of any director on the series. Another Canadian, Brad Turner, directed forty-six episodes of 24, second only to Cassar, and he too met Surnow and Cochran on La Femme Nikita, as did producer and writer Michael Loceff and composer Sean Callery. Rounding out 24’s upper echelon of creative talent were series star Kiefer Sutherland, who defined the iconic character of

Introduction

Jack Bauer and also produced 171 episodes, and the show runner Howard Gordon, whose resume included work on Spencer: For Hire (William Robert Yates, 1984–1988), Beauty and the Beast (Ron Koslow, 1987–1990), The X-Files (Chris Carter, 1993–2002), and Buffy the Vampire Slayer (Joss Whedon, 1997– 2003). Notably, after 24, Gordon and another ex-24 staffer, Alex Gansa, produced Homeland to much acclaim. Although other writers and directors made substantial contributions, this small group dominated and created the look and feel of 24. The world of the series was established during the first season and remained essentially the same throughout its run. Even after attacks on counter-terrorist headquarters that required building new sets, changes of setting from Los Angeles to Washington and finally to New York, and the departures of Surnow halfway through Season 7 and Cochran at the end of that season, the world of the series remained essentially as it had been designed in early 2001. As well, the consistently high quality of the series was ensured by the long tenures of the production department heads, including composer Callery (195 episodes), cinematographer Rodney Charters (186 episodes), editors David Latham and Scott Powell (129 episodes), casting director Debi Manwiller (195 episodes), production designer Joseph Hodges (170 episodes), set decorator Cloudia Rebar (193 episodes), costume designer James Lapidus (195 episodes), and special effects supervisor Stan Blackwell (195 episodes).12 The “real time” concept was initially suggested by Surnow and rejected by Cochran, who could not imagine how to interest audiences in a single day of storylines presented over twenty-four episodes. But the theme of terrorism enabled the pair to develop a story that, as Cochran put it, “justified keeping the characters up for twenty-four hours. Full speed. On the edge.”13 They pitched the project to David Nevins at Fox, who was impressed enough to buy the pilot, which was shot in March 2001 on a budget of $4 million. After enthusiastic test audience and critical responses to the pilot, Fox greenlighted

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the series for thirteen episodes, and production began in July; several episodes were completed prior to the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. In order to avoid controversy that might come from association with 9/11, the first episode was slightly edited to omit images of an exploding plane, and the premiere was postponed from October 30 to November 6, less than two weeks after the USA PATRIOT Act was passed by Congress and signed into law by President George W. Bush on October 26. The law’s title is an acronym; its complete name is worth considering as a précis or story guideline for 24. The Uniting (and) Strengthening of America (by) Providing Appropriate Tools Required (to) Intercept (and) Obstruct Terrorism Act of 2001 inevitably created widespread debate about the state’s newly legislated ability to suspend the rights and freedoms of citizens. 24 routinely took such real crises in democratic rule as story fodder and created endless scenarios in which the safety and security of its characters were seemingly probationary, never guaranteed by citizenship or human rights considerations. Hour after hour, everyone from alleged terrorists to staff at the government’s Counter Terrorist Unit (CTU) to family members were stripped of their rights and subjected to interrogation and often tortured. The series’ emphasis on “no time and no choices” not only inspired a breakneck pace in the action but also endorsed unilateral and decisive political behavior, provocatively implying that consultation and compromise were signs of weakness. In every season, various presidents of the United States are challenged by their political adversaries to show strength by taking decisive action. And in Season 5, a clever story element includes President Charles Logan (Gregory Itzin) intentionally misleading the country and aiding terrorists by behaving in an ambivalent fashion that is misrecognized as symptomatic of his weak personality. In fact, in characterizing diplomacy as a weakness, the series seemed to be implicitly endorsing the Bush administration’s reputation for “cowboy”

Introduction

Leadership in crisis: in order to aid terrorists, President Logan pretends to be his typical self—indecisive and threatened.

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diplomacy. Throughout this book I take the opportunity to look at such correspondences between reality and fiction in the series, because it was the close relationship between the two that regularly made 24 the topic of conversation at the water cooler and in the halls of power in America. The formal title of the PATRIOT Act also provides insight into the meaning of one of the show’s most valued assets— Jack Bauer. Played by the Canadian Kiefer Sutherland, Bauer exhibits behavior that reflects the sweeping privileges the PATRIOT Act gave to law and order agencies. Bauer is an emblematic twenty-first-century hero, operating outside the law and gaining great notoriety for his enthusiasm for torture in the course of investigations. One of the signs of the ideological complexity of the series is that, even while we recognize Bauer’s privileged place of power, the plots routinely situate him as an outsider and as an instrumentalized hero, one of the PATRIOT Act’s “tools required (to) intercept (and) obstruct terrorism.” It is important for 24 that Bauer be treated like a pawn in a game, or a cog in a machine, because this helps audiences empathize with a hero who shares their status as outsiders to geopolitics.

Introduction

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But Bauer can also be situated in a tradition of detectives and secret agents who fight crime and terror on the edges of society. This liminal identity, of course, also engenders fear and terror. For W.J.T. Mitchell, this has the potential to contribute to a syndrome that he calls “cloning terror,” which he describes as “the process by which the war on terror has the effect of increasing the number of terrorists, and spreading terror as the image of an invisible and omnipresent threat.”14 In Chapter 1, I discuss the form of the show, including the genre, narrative, and character conventions that it privileges, and I argue that the series is an example of the melodramatic mode in American popular culture. This cultural form typically encourages complex relationships between story time, narrational time (or the time that it takes to tell the story), and historical time. In this regard it is important to recall that the realtime structure of each season (what Bauer called “the longest day of my life”) could barely keep up with the temporality of real events. When storylines lagged behind real history, there emerged significant elisions that are notable in a show that so clearly valued a sense of the real. For instance, while the show’s horizon of meaning was effectively the WOT, 24 proceeds without making reference to the War in Afghanistan that started on October 7, 2001, and which continued throughout the series’ run. And there is also no mention of the Iraq War that began on March 20, 2003, although a variety of references to weapons of mass destruction, biochemical attacks, and “dirty bomb” warfare kept the specter of Saddam Hussein’s regime in mind. It was in these instances that the relationship between the forms of commercial television and the content of history became highly strained and it was clear that, as much as the series was recognized for its realism, it also regularly elided reality. In playing to a broad popular audience, 24 was in the business of trading in populist fantasies, and it is worth considering its basic formal structure—the “ticking bomb” scenario— as consistent with the culture of fear that emerged post-9/11.

Introduction

This cataclysmic event has had enormous influence on cultural production, and the effects are seen not only in the themes of paranoia, vengeance, and patriotism in television programming, movies, books, comics, and video games, but also in the aesthetic form and style of entertainment.15 In 24, for instance, the crisis scenarios, and especially the plot device of torture, are not entirely unique or random design choices but understandable extensions of the fear and confusion that the show’s audiences were attempting to negotiate after 9/11. As regards the increased interest in torture, for instance, the Parents Television Council reported that depictions of torture had spiked between 2002 and 2005. Not surprisingly, 24 was the primary offender with a documented sixty-seven scenes of torture over the first four seasons—sixty-seven instances of torture over four days, if we apply the real-time logic of the series. Consequently, 24 was seen as exemplary of the popularization of “torture porn” in the period, a form that was reflected in other television series as well as espionage, action, and horror films.16 Even though the majority of these imaginings of a world of terror feature disasters, some have the progressive whiff of utopian longing. Season 2, for instance, provided a president who seemed to be the exact opposite of the real commander-in-chief at the time. In contrast to President Bush, the calm and compassionate Democrat David Palmer (Dennis Haysbert) not only countered the dominant and threatening image of leadership in the period but also, as a popular centrist African-American leader, seemed to open the way for imagining the 2008 victory of Senator Barack Obama. In such instances, 24 seemed to have the power to foretell future history. While it is clear that the series regularly refers to its contemporary moment and is overwhelmed by the WOT, its genesis prior to 9/11 suggests that it also represents a continuity with the more general political and cultural history of the last half of the twentieth century. In this sense, 24 is in conversation with a political milieu that features the Cold War, de-colonization, the

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rise of neoliberalism, the fall of communism in Eastern Europe, and the viral spread of asymmetrical warfare. Additionally, this period is characterized by the increased presence of diverse emergent discourses about fundamentalism, multiculturalism, post-Fordism, glocalism, privacy rights, the mass media, and the increasing concentration of power and wealth in the world economy.17 The creators of 24 engage these discourses by drawing from a deep well of American popular entertainment. For instance, tropes from, and references to, disaster and conspiracy films of the 1970s, the “refighting Vietnam” films of the 1980s, and political thrillers of the 1990s and 2000s, such as JFK (Oliver Stone, 1991), The Peacemaker (Mimi Leder, 1997), Air Force One (Wolfgang Petersen, 1997), The Siege (Edward Zwick, 1998), Arlington Road (Mark Pellington, 1999), and The Sum of All Fears (Phil Alden Robinson, 2002), appear throughout the series. I conclude that one of the consequences of this tendency is that the series is peppered with conventional stories and aesthetic forms, including Manichean characters, gender and racial stereotypes, deadline driven narratives, and stories that equate personal and national redemption. So substantial is this mimicry of conventional forms that the series regularly reimagines scenes from popular television series and films, and I discuss these reimaginings as examples of 24’s use of pastiche. In Chapter 2, I consider the series’ style including visual elements, editing, sound, and performance. I discuss at length the multiple-frame compositions, location shooting, use of handheld camera, tight framing, and lush image quality. I also discuss the frenetic effect of the editing that emphasizes comparisons with action films and music videos. In these categories, 24 distinguishes itself from its competition through sheer excess, and I suggest that its aesthetic preference for hyperbole, cliché, and pastiche marks the series as exemplary of postmodern style. The creators’ lowbrow cultural aspirations are, in their own way, a clear indication of the series’ profound postmodernism.

Introduction

For instance, they have defended their work as “not good, never boring,” and this is evident in the series’ enthusiasm for ecstatic populism achieved through formulaic storytelling.18 While on deep levels the series is highly traditional and conservative, its superficial qualities (especially its visual design and plotting) do substantiate its reputation as unique and original. This is typical of the commercial culture that 24 participates in, and we see how the series mimics and colludes with commoditization and iterates, in the words of Fredric Jameson, “the cultural logic of late capitalism.”19 This has significant implications for our experience of the series and the meanings we take from it. In Chapter 3, I provide sustained analysis of the principal themes represented in the series. I apply the specific observations made in the chapters on form and style to several episodes, illustrating, for instance, how urgency, lawlessness, authority, conspiracy, paranoia, and heroism are typically depicted in the series. While it is disingenuous to defend the series, as Limbaugh and Surnow did, as “just entertainment,” it is equally misleading to assert, as several liberal and radical critics did, that it blindly reproduced State Department propaganda, of value only as CIA recruitment material. Ultimately, 24 is full of revealing contradictions, and its various crises in meaning were significant because, of all the television series that refer to the post-9/11 period, it was the one considered to have substantial and literal points of reference to the WOT. Across a wide ideological spectrum, the series was felt to have meaningful impact on viewers and politics, and thus the stakes in the debate about the meaning of 24 were high, with the tone of debate often excessively rhetorical and regularly including moral denunciations.20 While the lines of debate about 24 were fairly clearly drawn, not all advocates of the WOT supported the series. These critics reprimanded it for its excessive depictions of torture and conspiracies, fearing that the series provided counter-productive fantasies about illegal U.S. militarism and unconstitutional American politics that undermined military

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and political efforts that aimed to resolve global tensions.21 I argue that the value of 24, typical of postmodern culture, is not its ability to establish truths but its tendency to proliferate a pastiche of meanings that are shared by mass audiences. Consistent with postmodern culture, 24 seems incapable of providing a coherent reaction to global crises. But if it is true that we tend to lose our historical bearings in 24, we nonetheless retain a strong sense of its affective meanings, particularly the threat of crisis. 24 is a traumatic reaction to fundamental transformations in global geopolitics, and Jack Bauer’s world matters precisely because it is a singularly resonant archive of the mediated fear that dominated popular discourse at the beginning of the twenty-first century.

Chapter 1

24 and Cultural Forms

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n this chapter, I discuss the formal characteristics of 24, including genre, narrative, and character types. Initially, though, it is necessary to discuss 24 as an example of the melodramatic mode. This mode is characteristic of a wide range of American popular culture, including films and television shows, and especially soap operas and primetime dramas like 24. Arguing for the primacy of the melodramatic mode in American popular culture, Linda Williams notes: “Melodrama is structured upon the ‘dual recognition’ of things as they are and things as they should be. In melodrama there is a moral, wish-fulfilling impulse toward the achievement of justice that gives American popular culture its strength and appeal as the powerless yet virtuous seek to return to the ‘innocence’ of their origins.’ ”1 For fans of 24, this description will be familiar, even though they may bristle at the idea that the series is a melodrama. But Williams’s claim is that most American popular culture participates in the melodramatic mode, the principal characteristics of which include heightened emotional states, moral and ethical crises, and a retrieval and staging of innocence.2 Drawing a distinction between a mode of melodrama and the genre of melodrama is clearly useful in considering

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commercial television, and especially serial programming, that operates fully within the melodramatic mode but across a range of genres. Williams claims that the melodramatic mode encourages pathos that is used to defer resolution, producing an affective narrative space characterized by minimal plot development. This contributes, according to Peter Brooks, to a performance style that emphasizes gesture, pantomime, and even tableaux, setting the stage for spectacles of affect.3 As well, Mark Gallagher argues that the “action film’s emphasis on spectacle, rhythm of action, spatial properties, performance, and music links the genre to melodrama, both in its narrative structure and its formal properties.”4 Those familiar with 24 will recognize the core elements of the series in Williams’s description:

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The basic vernacular of American moving pictures consists of a story that generates sympathy for the hero who is also a victim and that leads to a climax that permits the audience, and usually other characters, to recognize that character’s moral value. This climax revealing the moral good of the victim can tend in one of two directions: either it can consist of a paroxysm of pathos (as in the woman’s film or family melodrama variants) or it can take that paroxysm and channel it into the more virile and action-centered variants of rescue, chase, and fight (as in the western and all the action genres).5 The influence of the western on 24 is undeniable, and I discuss this in detail below. But the series is not immediately recognizable as a western because its iconography is more typical of spy thrillers and hi-tech action-adventure and detective films and television series, such as Mission: Impossible (Bruce Geller, 1966–1973), MacGyver (Lee David Zlatoff, 1985–1992), The X-Files (Chris Carter, 1993–2002), and CSI: Crime Scene Investigation. The technology of detection and investigation that 24 foregrounds is clearly not the stuff of the western genre,

24 and Cultural Forms

although weapons, especially guns, continue to hold a place of privilege. To the degree that 24’s technology is often displayed as spectacle, the series is reminiscent of the conventions of James Bond films, exemplars of the spy genre. Those films, the first of which was Dr. No (Terence Young, 1962), based on Ian Fleming’s 1958 novel of the same name, emerged in the period of the Cold War and played to a culture of fear similar to that surrounding 24. From the beginning, Bond films included selfconscious sequences in which the agent is introduced to his new equipment. The association between advanced spy technology and geopolitical advantage became standard practice in Bond films and television series like Mission: Impossible and was parodied on television immediately in The Man from U.N.C.L.E. (Norman Felton, 1964–1968) and Get Smart (Mel Brooks and Buck Henry, 1965–1970).6 In contrast, Jack Bauer is never introduced to technology in this self-conscious way and he is never encumbered by technology. Nonetheless, gadgetry, especially as operated by those who perform data analysis and communications at CTU, is routinely crucial to story development. And even though Bauer is provided extensive technological assistance (often including satellite, airborne, and military resources), he is represented as a “doit-yourself” hero who masterfully uses his stripped down arsenal to achieve specific ends. In this respect, his character is inspired by the likes of Jack Ryan and Jason Bourne, heroes from the novels of Tom Clancy and Robert Ludlum, respectively, and the films based on them, many from the post-9/11 period. Rarely is Bauer armed with anything more than a knife and a pistol (although he often uses other weapons that are at hand), and, in this, he not only mimics special-ops and guerilla fighter tactics but also recalls the low-tech approach of many 1980s and 1990s antiauthority action-adventure heroes, including Rambo (Sylvester Stallone in First Blood and subsequent films) and John McLane (Bruce Willis in the Die Hard film series). For example, in episode 5.02, when asked if she should be worried for an unarmed

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Bauer as he heads into a confrontation with an FBI agent, Chloe O’Brian (Mary Jane Rajskub) quips: “He’s done this before.” And when Bauer emerges wearing the FBI agent’s jacket the scene plays like a comic gag. In episode 7.12, an imam who is being questioned by Bauer resists fearfully and, when asked why, he responds: “Because we all know where this is going,” as though he, too, has been watching 24 and is aware of Bauer’s reputation for getting results by force. As technology expert David A. Shugarts observes: “What I have learned over the various seasons is that Jack is probably at his most dangerous without toys.”7 Nonetheless, while Bauer uses a minimalist but uniquely direct and aggressive approach in his investigations, he represents a highly technologized counter-terrorist force and is thus a fully modern spy. For instance, he is “wired” (his cell phone sometimes seems permanently attached to his face), suggesting that, while he may be a cowboy, he is not a technophobe or Luddite. Moreover, because he is typically in the field, he is highly physical and we expect him to be unrestricted by bulky equipment. Instead, communications analysts (the most famous of whom is O’Brian) control the high-tech equipment and, through a mesmerizing array of screen technologies, they serve as Bauer’s link to the global network. It is here that the series enjoys representing the interplay between home base and field agent, and the representations of spaces and technologies are exhilarating. For instance, 24 includes visually striking location shooting in Los Angeles (Seasons 1–6), Washington (Season 7), and New York City (Season 8), but it also features a variety of types of images, including aerial shots, handheld shots, swish-pans, and videographic images that convey a sense of immediacy (including the digital clock that is a powerful icon of the series). Screens, of course, are a privileged visual element and their integration into everyday life, in 24, is an important theme. For example, when we bid Bauer farewell in the final episode, we do it through a screen. The power of technology to illuminate meaning is central to 24 and, in this, the series shares

24 and Cultural Forms

Screens and surveillance: A CTU analyst and portable monitoring station observe Jack Bauer as he tortures his brother.

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Screens and affect: Jack Bauer bids farewell to Cole Ortiz, Chloe O’Brian, and the audience.

much with several crime series during the period in which technologies of detection are fetishized.8 In part, this became a popular tendency because, as Yvonne Tasker observes, the use of screens in crime investigation stories allows “information to be conveyed simultaneously to the team and to the audience in a manner that is both visually exciting and stylish.”9

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Gallagher has claimed that, while the action-adventure film “constitutes a genre of its own, it draws from a variety of other traditional film genres,” including the war film, the gangster film, and the western.10 In fact, while the types of characters and iconography in 24 clearly mark the series as an actionadventure series and a spy thriller, I argue that the western can be understood as its foundational genre. This is emphasized by its worldview that foregrounds the themes of individualism and lawlessness. Not only are the storylines shot through with these sentiments, but they also inform the cowboy characteristics of Jack Bauer.11 Moreover, like the western, the series depicts spaces of power and social relations as configured in “the state of exception,” described by Giorgio Agamben as “an anomic space in which what is at stake is a force of law without law.”12 While Agamben’s reflections were inspired by the post-9/11 context, they also serve to describe the world of the western, in which the law is often suspended or ineffective, and solutions to crises typically involve a high degree of individual heroism that redeems itself in direct (and often illegal) action. These similarities encouraged multiple commentators to draw parallels between a post-9/11 world and the Wild West.13 Taking a late but classic example of the western, John Ford’s The Searchers (1956), we can see that it is driven by themes that are also central to 24. In the film, John Wayne’s Ethan Edwards finds redemption in a heroic quest to bring justice to a lawless land or, more precisely, a land in which the law has only limited effect. The plot provides the basic structure of the avenging cowboy film and, as in 24, there are aspects of the detective story in this type of western, as Edwards’s search for Scar (Henry Brandon), the Native American villain of the film, is plotted out much like a crime investigation. But unlike the crime film, where the rule of law must be confronted (although often compromised) and hence the villains have to be served by a justice system, the western allows for revenge uninhibited by the rule of law. Screenwriter Paul Schrader reputedly

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used The Searchers as a template for his urban revenge story Taxi Driver (Marin Scorsese, 1976), but the different outcomes of the two films are instructive. While it is true that both Ethan Edwards and Travis Bickle (Robert De Niro) are left outside society at the end of each film, only Taxi Driver includes qualifiers that acknowledge the rule of law, and thus determines that the film’s protagonist is not a hero. No matter how satisfying his rampage, Bickle is represented as an unredeemable deviant and criminal. That is not the meaning conveyed about Edwards, who is characterized as tragically heroic. Likewise, Bauer is also cast as a tragic hero, and thus 24 can be seen to resemble even more strongly than other urban action films and television series the classic western genre films—it is a throwback to a lawless world featuring vengeful, lone heroes. In this sense, as Tricia Rose has argued, 24 reflects the “extraordinary American history of vigilantism as entertainment.”14 A striking example of how the show replicates the world of the western occurs in episodes 1.20 and 1.21 in a sequence that extends across the two hours and tells the story of a standoff between Bauer and terrorists. This is also a good opportunity to see how the genre conventions of the western imply standard formal strategies including the cliffhanger and deferral of narrative resolution. The action in the sequence is well executed but typical for the genre, and it is not surprising that its genealogy includes the work of D. W. Griffith. Indeed, if we are considering the broad strokes, the sequence is not only exemplary of classical Hollywood narrative but, specifically, the siege narrative, which Griffith made famous in such films as The Battle at Elderbrush Gulch (1913). In Griffith’s film, Native American warriors avenge the death of the chieftain’s son by attacking a town and then a nearby ranch. Siege narratives are notable for their manipulation of story time but, as important as the temporal dimension is, sieges also narrativize space. For example, in The Battle at Elderbrush Gulch, the siege involves an attack on a ranch that

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consists of one main house as well as an outbuilding. The house is a log cabin with a cloth divider that separates the adults from children. There are several ranch hands and a few town survivors in this house, including two children and two puppies. Immediately, it is clear that these spaces have gendered and racialized characteristics, and that the “inside” spaces tend to be feminized and designated as “white” spaces, while the “outside” spaces are threatening, masculinized, and racially heterogeneous. A minute into the siege, a distraught Melissa Harlow (Lillian Gish), the mother of a lost baby, arrives and is dragged into the main house. The rest of the besieged, including the Harlow baby (who remains unbeknownst to its mother), are in the outbuilding twenty-five yards away. The attack proceeds, in typical Griffith fashion, with long and medium shots of the external threat crosscut with medium shots and close-ups of the besieged inside. Initially, the threat is well beyond the yard around the cabin and the settlers easily shoot at the attackers. But soon the threat begins to move closer and the outbuilding is set on fire. Smoked out, the settlers run to the ranch house but are killed as they cross the yard. One of the settlers carries the baby but drops it a few feet from the safety of the ranch house when he is shot in the back. Lack of ammunition and sheer numbers of attackers begin to overwhelm those inside the ranch house. Only the eldest child, Sally Cameron (Mae Marsh), has noticed the baby lying outside the front door and, in desperation, she uses a secret rear exit to bring it to safety inside. Eventually the attackers reach the front door and the walls of the cabin; now the coverage is almost entirely of interior spaces and crosscutting occurs essentially between events in the house. When the threat pushes its way into the main room we note that Sally has found yet one more space to hide as she secures herself, her sister, the baby, and the puppies in a trunk. Just before resistance gives way, the cavalry makes a last-minute rescue. The film concludes

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with a shot of the happy family recounting their battle when, horrified, they realize they have misplaced the children. To everyone’s relief, they pop out of the trunk and the film ends. As this analysis makes clear, since the time of Griffith, narrative films typically represent threats as challenges to space.15 In The Battle at Elderbrush Gulch, Griffith illustrates how narrative suspense can be modulated through the control of spaces and how those who survive crises always find space in time. This spatial perspective is important to understanding 24 because, though it seems so focused on time, the series also represents the production of space in a time of terror. As Toby Miller points out, in secret agent narratives in general, “when protagonists are restricted . . . the spaces they occupy illustrate the impossibility of ever truly relaxing as a spy. Inevitably, they find themselves in a site that emblematizes the gruesome interiority and tension of their calling.”16 As we have seen, in siege narratives, the ability to find space in time is essential for survival. The sequence of Bauer fighting off attackers in order to secure a prisoner in 1.20 reproduces the standard elements of the siege narrative, and it is also a good example of how 24 often appropriates scenes from other media sources, what might be considered a case of postmodern pastiche. Yvonne Tasker has observed that popular culture regularly uses bricolage and that “such a term, with its sense of the creative play of postmodernism, captures something of the infinite, and often far from playful, recycling of which the mass media is capable, indeed on which it thrives.”17 For example, this specific siege sequence in 24 recalls the action in John Carpenter’s Assault on Precinct 13 (1976), itself a film intended as an homage to Rio Bravo (Howard Hawks, 1959), which is, like The Searchers, a classic western starring John Wayne. Hawks’s film makes vague references to the Alamo but treats that history lightly, if not flippantly, in contrast to many American siege narratives that use the history of the Alamo as an exemplary instance of tragic patriotism. Add John

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Wayne’s role as director of The Alamo (1960) to this series of intertextual elements, and one gets a sense of the overdetermined meaning in 24. In fact, David Lavery argues that the series’ immersion in clichés produces meanings so profoundly obvious that, in his estimation, 24 does not call for a close reading.18 Nonetheless, it is worth noting that the process of transposing the frontier landscape of the western, and the ethos of the Alamo, to urban space in Assault on Precinct 13 is extended, in 24, by depicting the American twenty-first century as a threatening frontier that is global, networked (almost science fiction in its technological capacities), and under siege. The sequence in 1.20 begins as Bauer follows a lead to a pasture near Saugus, California. The location is significant as it replicates in rough fashion the iconography of the western with rolling hills, creek beds, and cattle fences. This is particularly so because the sun has set, and the setting recalls suspenseful and exciting nighttime raids as depicted in westerns. Significantly, Saugus is located in the Santa Clarita Valley on the northern edge of Los Angeles County, just north of the San Fernando Valley where, incidentally, D. W. Griffith shot The Battle at Elderbrush Gulch. While the Santa Clarita is relatively agricultural, it is surrounded by spaces that are marked by the presence of the military-industrial and state-carceral complexes, including the San Joaquin Valley to the north, which boasts a disproportionate number of prisons and correctional facilities (including Charles Manson’s present address, Corcoran Prison), and to the east the Antelope Valley, which features numerous aerospacerelated industries and Edwards Air Force Base.19 Combined, these features make this a liminal space: natural and built, rural and global, private and public. As Lindsay Coleman observes: “The dimly lit CTU, Abu Ghraib’s harsh walls, the blank corridors of the CIA—all are spaces outside the public realm.”20 So this scene has both a realistic spatial meaning (this is where we would expect covert activity to occur) and a mythological spatial meaning (borrowed from the western film genre), the

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combination of which produces an unsettling feeling that is full of portent. As well, the scene recalls those in crime films and television series that use the outskirts of American cities at night as the place and time of a crime. Bauer has followed a lead to this field and, like a detective even more than a cowboy, he discovers an underground bunker that he stealthily approaches. Suddenly strobe lights flash, an alarm wails, and the door to the chamber is opened by personnel who immediately tase him. When he recovers, Bauer learns that he is inside an underground detention center operated covertly by the Department of Defense (DOD). Bauer identifies himself to the warden, Mark DeSalvo (Lou Diamond Phillips), and indicates that he has information that their “high noon,” as it were, is 7:20.21 Upon learning that a prisoner is to be delivered to the facility at that time, Bauer convinces the warden that an attack is imminent. Given that they are severely undermanned, Bauer develops a plan to secure the structure to enable safe delivery of the prisoner. This specifically recalls Rio Bravo, in which Wayne’s sheriff John T. Chance rallies his troops: the on-the-wagon-off-again sharpshooter Dude, played by Dean Martin, and a wily but gimpy Walter Brennan as Stumpy. For days this sorry group holds off the Burdette gang, with significant help from Colorado and Feathers, played by singer Ricky Nelson and Angie Dickinson, respectively. Bauer soon concludes that the prisoner to be delivered is the target of conspirators who have been behind the day’s activities, including kidnapping Bauer’s family and plotting to assassinate Senator David Palmer. The narrative tension is developed exactly as in The Battle at Elderbrush Gulch, Rio Bravo, and Assault on Precinct 13: vengeance and a prized object motivate the siege that proceeds as a series of challenges to interior space. One of the advantages of this type of storytelling is the ability to suggest that parallel activities in different spaces impact each other in complicated and unforeseen fashion. Social and power relations and interpersonal relationships are effectively rendered in

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this form of plotting, and hence it is fundamental to detective and especially spy or conspiracy thriller stories. Fredric Jameson has written of the 1970s American conspiracy films as allegories that paint a picture of the popular anxieties and fantasies during a time of extraordinary sociopolitical change, including the transition to neoliberalism. Not surprisingly, Jameson’s reading of these films as “cognitive maps” of the period also sheds light on how to approach 24. Especially germane is his cautionary insight that, in commercial culture, the representation of the totality of global capitalism can only be figured in an obfuscating form such as the conspiracy thriller.22 Seen from this perspective, 24’s ideological patchwork and indeterminacy is an appropriate allegorical rendering of the contradictions, evasiveness, and fear that lie at the heart of the WOT. At 7:20 Bauer successfully bluffs through the initial attack by creating an exaggerated sense of manpower at the bunker, and the prisoner arrives by helicopter without incident. We watch this bluff from the perspective of the would-be attackers, who are in the hills in the dark. It is significant that Bauer’s ability to bluff is represented early in the series because over the years we realize that, as potent as his violence is, he also routinely bluffs his way through crises. This is the case, for instance, on Day 2 when he bluffs the execution of the son of terrorist Syed Ali (Francesco Quinn) in order to obtain information that he could not get from physically beating him. Bauer displays a special knack for bluffing, time and again successfully deceiving his way through crises, although in this ability he is not alone: the best of the villains he encounters can be equally deceptive (e.g., Nina Myers [Sarah Clarke], Sherry Palmer [Penny Johnson Jerald], President Logan, and both his father, Phillip [James Cromwell], and his brother, Graem [Paul McCrane]). This suggests that one of the cultural forms that is central to the series is gaming, including chess (which notably Bauer is playing the first time we see him), but especially the game of poker, in which the ability to bluff or simulate

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power is highly valued. In 24, the thrill associated with such games is represented in plots that feature the hero risking it all, gambling on his abilities to deceive his opponents. This type of strategic deception is also part of the generic conventions of detective stories, although bluffing (not just lying) is typically associated with shows of force and is thus well suited for action-adventure stories. Importantly, Bauer’s bluffing also creates narrative possibilities that would not exist without the deception. When Bauer and villains extend their own lives through fabulous bluffs, the series simultaneously expands its own narrative options. The development of the plot in 1.20 and 1.21 is consistent with that found in numerous westerns and war films, in which the protagonists initially find safety inside a structure that is understood to be part of their world. But lying just beyond are outside spaces that are designated as a threat. The narrative tension in the sequence is then derived, on the one hand, by having the outside exert itself on the inside and, on the other, by having the integrity of the inside slowly erode. In this particular sequence, Bauer’s group is eventually driven deep within the bunker, seemingly with no place to go. A field team (i.e., the cavalry) has been dispatched, but the antagonists, after having their initial attack at 7:20 foiled, have another plan in place. As well, it’s been revealed that the siege is an attempt to break the prisoner out of the facility, not kill him. In this, the story is a precise reworking of Rio Bravo. Bauer has identified the high-stakes prisoner as Serbian terrorist Victor Drazen (Dennis Hopper). Initially, he is confused, as he believes he saw Drazen die in a bombing in Kosovo that was part of a covert attack (“Operation Night Fall”) that both Bauer and Senator Palmer had a hand in. Although Drazen survived that attack, along with two of his sons, his wife and daughter died. Bauer realizes that Day 1’s crises are the result of Drazen’s motivation to avenge these deaths. Later, in 1.21, Bauer will ask Drazen: “And when does your suffering end, Victor? When you’ve killed me,

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and Senator Palmer, and all the thousand other enemies you have?” “Yes. Simple, is it not?” responds Drazen. Indeed, the siege narrative is a simple melodramatic form that is motivated by personal pain. The drive to seek vengeance is regularly imbued with elements of what are represented as highly emotional traumas, usually featuring family relations, including themes of innocence lost, betrayal, and guilt. In this way, siege narratives have the ability to address such themes as “blow back,” and they typically illustrate for us how the political is intertwined with the personal and how the present is motivated by the past. In the sequence under consideration, for instance, Bauer finally grasps the motivation for Drazen’s plan of vengeance, just as the power is cut to the bunker and Drazen looks menacingly at him and flatly intones: “They are here.” He is taunting Bauer by announcing the attack squad led by his son Andrei (Zeljko Ivanek), but Hopper’s performance is so severe that it feels like he is also conjuring the spirits of all innocents, including his wife and daughter, killed as collateral damage in battles with Bauer, CTU, and imperial America. On this chilling note, as Bauer, the warden, and his guards anxiously stare into the abyss of the darkened underground tunnel, episode 1.20 concludes. Serial television, like classical narrative generally, is constituted by rising crises that lead to a climactic resolution followed by a brief denouement. While this generally describes the form of 24, Kiefer Sutherland has said that the series was structured specifically like a long three-act play and was produced in three sections, each consisting of eight episodes.23 Each act of eight episodes has an arc that is engaging in its own right, and also provides points of integration with stories and characters that are part of the overall trajectory of the season. This form also introduces the necessity of leaving some plotlines and characters behind. Thus, each season’s narrative is developed from a range of story elements, streamlined into a series of cliffhangers, arranged so that the intensity of the story’s overall development

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The cliffhanger: “They are here.”

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rises slowly and intermittently over the course of the season. Consequently, the structure of primetime soaps like 24 emphasizes deferral of narrative resolution, all the while amplifying the emotional impact of escalating narrative tension. This supports Ina Rae Hark’s view that the series perpetuates an inherently sadomasochistic narrational style that parallels its thematic worldview. Hark explains that, for viewers as much as the characters, the series was torturous: “Due to the program’s unique real-time format and broadcast schedule that caused audiences to experience the twenty-four hours over a period of seven months, the viewers likewise were subject to the phenomenon of waiting and the ‘thrilling’ torture and suspense.”24 The dominant viewing experience in 24, then, is characterized by intensified anticipation, anxiety, and frustration. As Jacqueline Furby observes: “Many strategies are clearly designed to heighten the viewer’s sense of time anxiety, yet the day’s action also seems to go on forever. . . . Time paradoxically appears to be stretched.”25 The cliffhanger that ends episode 1.20 (“They are here”) and the opening sequences of 1.21, for instance, illustrate Hark’s and Furby’s points precisely. Rather than opening

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with a resolution to the cliffhanger bunker scene, 1.21 begins, instead, with increased screen time dedicated to two other stories that had been overshadowed in 1.20. One involves Kim Bauer (Elisha Cuthbert) being arrested and locked up in a Los Angeles city jail, and the other focuses on Senator Palmer’s relationship with one of his staff members, Patty Brooks (Tanya Wright). These stories predominate in the early part of 1.21, and while it is frustrating to not return to the standoff, this nonetheless confirms a dominant strategy in melodrama, specifically the development of a complex series of relationships between family and crises. As Peter Brooks notes: “The familial structure that melodrama (and Greek tragedy) so often exploits contributes to the experience of excruciation: the most basic loyalties and relationships become a source of torture.”26 A variety of scholars have commented on the relationship between action-adventure genres and families, and the ideological thrusts and contradictions of 24 are usefully understood in the context of this dynamic.27 While the spy thriller often features characters whose sexuality is independent of reproduction, creating a popular conception of playboy and dominatrix secret agents, families have historically been crucial to spy stories and, in fact, as we see in 24, much of the suspense of the spy thriller derives from characters’ attempts to maintain a secret identity even in the face of the scrutinizing gaze of family and loved ones. Several scholars cite True Lies (Cameron, 1994) as the first blockbuster film to not only feature a family of spies but to use the spy and action-adventure genres to reconstitute and redeem the American family, with the result that the American family is now routinely imbricated in espionage, as is the case with 24. Karen Schneider asserts that, in action-adventure, “the intimate causal relations between violent actions and the family’s reconstitution lead to a logical and ethical morass. This vexed relationship not only confirms the irrational depth of our anxiety about the state of the family but also clearly illustrates our culture’s profound ambivalence toward violence.”28 Unlike

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the feature films Schneider refers to, however, 24 never fully reconstitutes the family. Due to its serial form and the structural requirement of deferred narrative resolution, 24’s drive to restore innocence and families ultimately invests most of its time in tormenting families, by prolonging the time it takes to restore them. In 24, the family and terror are co-extensive. This is made explicit by the many examples of family members in the series who are deeply impacted by terrorism. A short list would include not only Bauer’s wife and daughter but also his father and brother, who are actual terrorists. On Day 2, Marie Warner (Laura Harris) turns out to be using her good family name and access to military intelligence to assist terrorists. On Day 3, Bauer is able to bluff arch-nemesis Stephen Saunders (Paul Blackthorne) by threatening to walk his daughter into a building contaminated by a virus released by Saunders’ terrorist group. On Day 4, Behrooz (Jonathan Ahbout) disappoints his career-terrorist parents, Dina (Shohreh Aghdashloo) and Navi (Nestor Serrano), who then kill his girlfriend and try to kill him. On the same day, Richard Heller (Logan Marshall-Green) has to reveal his homosexuality to his father and sister after they have tortured him to extract information about his phone calls with terrorists. And, on Day 8, President Allison Taylor (Cherry Jones) deals with her son being murdered by people in league with terrorists, who also assault and kidnap her husband, and, before the day is done, she has to expose her daughter’s treasonous crimes to the authorities. It is no surprise, then, that in the parallel plots in 1.21 we encounter this general convention: Senator Palmer and his family are the target of terrorists; Bauer’s family is terrorized by kidnappers; and the Drazen men have reunited to avenge the deaths of women in their family. While I have noted the level of frustration that is associated with the conventional soap opera format that 24 adopts, it is also imperative to point out the series’ tendency to create powerful and memorable sequences that contribute to fragmented storylines and diminished overall narrative coherence.

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In some cases, this narrative containerization leads to storylines and characters being abandoned without explanation. A good example of this is the unexplained disappearance of special advisor Lynne Kresge (Michelle Forbes) after her fall in 2.20. And Behrooz disappears without explanation once his storyline on Day 4 becomes insignificant. This has led fans of the series to describe such abandoned characters as having been “Behroozed,” and it confirms the sense that the strength of the show lies in its powerful sequences and plot twists more than in its overall coherence or believability. We can see from this that, because the premise of the show is relatively simple and consistent from one season to the next (i.e., Bauer struggles to save the day) and the narrative strategies are standardized, the series tends to be repetitive and formulaic. Having a limited number of viable crises and resolutions, otherwise known as story fatigue, results in repetitive plot twists and character developments. In 1.21, when the plot returns to the siege, what had seemed like a victory for Bauer has predictably begun to turn in favor of the outside threat. A handheld camera provides our view as we follow Bauer, Drazen, the warden, and a few guards through the darkened corridors. As the warden loses communication with one guard after another, it seems that the field teams will not arrive in time. Bauer turns to the warden and asks: “Where is this building most defendable?” At that moment, the Drazen assault team blows a hole into the bunker, and Bauer’s group quickly retreats away from the explosion. The action stops here for the first commercial break, signaled by the digital clock that reads 8:09:59. The show resumes at 8:14:23, with a multiple-frame composition that includes shots from each of the three plotlines: Palmer’s, Bauer’s, and Kim’s. The view cuts from the multipleframe image to George Mason (Xander Berkeley), director of CTU Los Angeles, concluding a phone call in his office and quickly turning to speak with Teri Bauer (Leslie Hope), assuring

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her that her daughter and husband are safe. He is lying, as the evidence in the multiple-frame image has established, but once again this reinforces the theme of doing whatever it takes to get the job done. Before returning to the bunker, the view cuts at 8:16:41 to the senator’s post-primary party. In a quiet part of the hotel suite, Palmer and Patty mix speechwriting and flirting, and then the scene cuts to an exterior shot of a military helicopter in a night sky, followed by a shot of the field team vehicle approaching the bunker. At 8:19:27 the view cuts back inside the bunker with Bauer’s group, who are suddenly hit with laser sights, which precedes by a beat multiple rounds of gunfire. Everyone in Bauer’s group is killed except for Bauer, the warden, and Victor Drazen, whom Bauer holds hostage. Victor’s son Andrei, who has led the assault, steps forward with the warden, whom he threatens to kill if Bauer doesn’t release his father. After a brief standoff Bauer releases Drazen. He looks up to the warden, satisfied that he has at least saved him, only to watch Andrei doublecross him by shooting the warden in the back. This treacherous act is shocking enough but, for those who recognize Sutherland’s long-time friend and Young Guns (Christopher Cain, 1988) co-star Lou Diamond Phillips as the warden, the emotional impact is subtly intensified. This is a good example of how 24 regularly employs intertextual references to hook its audience. Consistent with the logic of the siege narrative, this sequence illustrates how the exchange of space between groups also represents an exchange of power. When the explosion rips a hole in the side of the bunker, the new space that is produced changes the power dynamic between the groups. As seen in The Battle at Elderbrush Gulch, the plot element of the rear exit goes back at least as far as Griffith. In the context of 24, though, this device does not always produce a safe or secure space, and more often than not it simply introduces another threatening encounter. As well, in siege films, control over space typically allows one to drag the action out temporally and, as noted,

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this routinely involves bluffing. This is explicitly the case at the bunker when Bauer secures Drazen’s initial arrival, but another good example of bluffing, this time by the villains, occurs in 7.16, in which CTU’s Tony Almeida (Carlos Bernard) and FBI agent Larry Moss (Jeffrey Nordling) lead a siege on the Starkwood compound in search of a biological weapon. Starkwood employee Greg Seaton (Rory Cochrane), assistant to Jonas Hodges (Jon Voight), has seemingly turned snitch and provided the FBI with a location. But when the team arrives, the building is empty and Almeida and Moss realize that Seaton has bluffed about his willingness to betray his boss in order to buy Hodges more time to prepare the weapon. These sequences illustrate how 24 routinely uses conventions that derive from the western and action-adventure genres, but which are intricately merged with the resolution-deferring plotting of soap operas. In 1.21, for example, a delay in Drazen’s escape plan temporarily suspends narrative development in Bauer’s storyline, which allows Bauer and Drazen to discuss their ethical positions in relationship to Operation Night Fall. As much as 24 is associated with action-adventure, this sequence reveals its roots in the soap opera form that displaces action by showcasing talk. When the action in this storyline resumes, at the end of the episode, a back exit allows the Drazens to make off with Bauer, undetected by CTU. But before this, the view cuts to Kim, who has run into trouble with delinquent youths and local authorities. This sequence plays out as nothing so much as a reimagining of the jail scenes in the exploitation film Caged Heat (1974), written and directed by Jonathan Demme, about an innocent who gets busted for drug possession and is jailed in downtown Los Angeles. Like many other instances in the series, the pastiche of cultural influences is notable and, in this sequence, there are also intertextual references to Besson’s La Femme Nikita (e.g., the link between juvenile delinquency and espionage). This sequence is intercut with views from

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Palmer’s party, where Patty continues to flirt with the flattered but respectful and reserved Senator. Beyond reinforcing Kim’s innocence and Palmer’s integrity, these sequences serve important structural functions. As noted, they play a crucial role in the development of suspense, principally by creating diversions away from a resolution of the Drazen plotline. But these are also sequences that develop characters that we care about. As Surnow has said about the form of 24: “First and foremost you have to create suspense, but the suspense isn’t interesting if you’re not invested in the characters.”29 The sequences that feature Kim Bauer and Senator Palmer are important because they are intended to connect viewers to these characters and those that surround them, including their families, in order to amplify the effect of the rising crises. As Christine Gledhill observes, “The combination of the family and seriality produces conditions in which devices employed by melodrama are almost inevitable: the return from the past, reversals of fortune, painful confrontations and the interpolation of topical social, economic, or political reference into personal, family dramas.”30 Moreover, this combination creates paranoid cultural texts that obsessively feature stories about trust, identity, and citizenship. Michael Kackman points out: “In both 24 and Alias, nationalism reconciles (or attempts to reconcile) the public with the private, the political with the personal, the broadly social with the psychological. These contemporary containment narratives activate discourses of national identity and its relationship to psychosocial trauma that were at the heart of the hyperbolic anti-Communist programs of the Red Scare.”31 Not surprisingly, these types of genres and narratives privilege a cast of conventional characters. The hero is contrasted with the villain most crucially, but we have also seen that the plots of the action thriller, based on the conventions of the western genre, are usefully understood as stories about spatial

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relations and exchange, and this encourages us to think of characters as either insiders or outsiders. In thrillers and action stories, the way that characters produce and occupy space intimates their relative power and their value to the story. This prepares the viewer for future plot developments as well as providing cues as to how to read characters’ attributes and qualities. Because a thriller’s effect depends on a degree of confusion as to whom to trust, these types of spatialized encounters between characters also contribute to the story’s texture. For example, in 1.21, Drazen’s motivation (to avenge the deaths of his innocent family members) provokes ambivalence from the viewer about Bauer, who had been portrayed as part of a morally superior system under siege from an immoral external threat. Noting this doppelganger effect that pairs Bauer off against Drazen, Lindsay Coleman claims that “his confrontation with the Drazens is a family reunion of sociopaths.”32 In a sense, the spatial exchange of outside for inside encourages us to think that Bauer, as a covert special agent, belongs both in our world (to the extent that we identify with his fight for justice) and outside it (because he behaves in an illegal, terroristic, and vengeful manner much like the Drazens). To recall The Searchers as a foundational text for contemporary urban action films and television series, the theme of ambivalence is well represented in the famous image of Ethan Edwards framed by the door of the homestead. He is, like Bauer, a character defined by ambivalence—is he inside or outside society, a friend or a threat? This type of ambiguous character is easily understood as a consequence of social crisis, and Bauer, in particular, powerfully evokes the space and time of terrorism.33 Hence, throughout the run of the series, Bauer’s name would surface in discussions about masculinity, terrorism, torture, and geopolitics generally. So ubiquitous was this interest in the guiding principles of Bauer’s reactions to ethical dilemmas, in the midst of social and personal crises, that bumper stickers and T-shirts began to appear referring

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to his messianic status in popular consciousness: “WWJD— What would Jack do?” If Bauer and other characters are sometimes represented as complex, and hence more like real people, many other characters nonetheless confirm the series’ use of stereotypes associated with action and suspense genres. This is especially notable in the case of Bauer’s daughter. In part, frustration with Kim’s character was rooted in the fact that audiences felt manipulated by normative ideas about gender relations. As Janet McCabe explains, “Not since the hapless maidens of early film melodrama, wantonly throwing themselves into the evil grasp of dastardly villains, has a heroine got into so many scrapes.”34 In a series that features a wide range of powerful and assured female characters, from the recurring terrorist Mandy (Mia Kirshner) to America’s first female president, Allison Taylor (Cherry Jones), the use of Kim as a vulnerable female, and as her father’s liability, confirms many critics’ evaluation of the show as socially conservative. Emphasizing this disparity, the action scenes are also typically reserved for male characters with the notable exceptions of Mandy, Nina Myers, Chloe O’Brian, and Renee Walker (Annie Wersching), who carry out various assignments in the field. Beyond these examples, though, the show includes female characters in conventional fashion by locating them in roles and spaces, including crucial support roles at CTU, that supplement the masculinized warriors. In fact, on Day 3, Kim merges work with family when she takes up a position as a communications and data analyst at CTU. This seems to have been an attempt on the producers’ part to redress the earlier stereotype of her as incapable and vulnerable and a sidebar to her father’s activities. Nonetheless, this has limited corrective impact as Kim is in a romantic relationship with her father’s new partner, field agent Chase Edmunds (James Badge Dale). Inevitably, this family romance ends badly, including the awkward guilt trip that Bauer experiences after having to chop off

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Excruciation and the melodramatic mode: Jack Bauer weeps in his truck after another long day.

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Edmunds’s hand to separate the agent from a vial of the Cordilla virus. At season’s end, Bauer weeps in the cab of his truck as he is inclined to do when the personal is so violently shredded by the geopolitical. 24 uses the television convention of representing the workplace as a surrogate home, but while CTU does provide some degree of emotional and psychological support for the workers, it is also a severely degraded nurturing environment. The merging of work and home life becomes particularly revealing in those instances when CTU is attacked (on Days 2, 3, 5, 6 and 8) and national and family security seem simultaneously threatened. In fact, 24 encourages us to think of terrorism as a space and time dominated by masculinity and expendability, in which individualism and competition engender a strippeddown, do-it-yourself environment where the office serves as a home and workmates are considered family. New York Times columnist Ginia Bellafante, citing the series’ attacks on family and domestic spaces, concluded that “the price of a safe world is considerable, ‘24’ tells us: love and the rest of it mortgaged for some other lifetime.”35

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While scholars have pointed to the recuperative aspects of the family in action-adventure genres, in terror television, by contrast, the presence of family introduces a prolonged sense of social crises and personal pain—according to Brooks, the core of melodrama. This hyperbolic depiction of the tangled fates of the family in terrorism is meant to emphasize how vulnerable family relations are in the context of the corrosive values of terrorism and terrorists. But these representations also contain a subversive meaning that implies that the consequence of attempts to establish “normal” family relations is inevitably terror and terrorism. Moreover, the suggestion is that normal family relations are just a cover for terrorism. It is as though the desire to establish normal family relations sets in motion a chain of events that inexorably and repeatedly produces terror. The dominant tendency in post-9/11 primetime soaps to use seriality to fuse family and terror was not exclusive to 24. For instance, an outlandish depiction of these relationships occurs in Alias, in which double-agent Sydney Bristow (Jennifer Garner) eventually discovers that her father is also a doubleagent as was her presumed-dead mother and, further, her mother used her pregnancy with Sydney as cover for her work in America as a Soviet spy and assassin. Pushing beyond the limits of believability, but reinforcing the family as absolutely central to these stories, one of the men that her mother is suspected of assassinating is the father of the man for whom Sydney now works.36 Clearly, in terror TV, the family and home become uncanny intertwined spaces, filled with anxiety and unease. Characters rarely seem comfortable in their homes, although they typically seem at home while at work. This is certainly true of Jack Bauer, who is rarely depicted in the private sphere and seems disoriented, as in Seasons 2 and 8, when confronted with tasks like keeping house. Moreover, this perspective emphasizes the view that the world of the series effectively displaces domestic life and the feminine and that, more broadly, signs of difference are treated with suspicion. An outrageous example

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of this tendency is the assassination of Renee Walker in Bauer’s apartment in episode 8.17. On the one occasion that the agent has a personal life, and is allowed time to “play house,” she is killed by a sniper, who effectively reinforces the rule of terror television, the fear of difference. Many women are shown to succeed in this world, but the feminine itself and concepts associated with it, such as nurturing and compassion, are non-existent or exist only as a potential weakness. As discussed, Kim’s attachment to both Edmunds and Bauer on Day 3 ultimately leads to crises. During Day 2, when she is working as a nanny, Kim ends up terrorized by a violent employer and throughout the day suffers a series of threats. On Day 7, now a mother herself, Kim naively becomes a pawn of a terrorist gang, but the stereotype of the vulnerable woman is somewhat subverted when she not only escapes captivity but also pursues and helps capture a terrorist. These representations, of course, are all subsequent to the death of the series’ original mother, Teri Bauer, who is killed by Nina Myers at the end of Day 1. This is a notorious instance of the series’ enthusiasm for marginalizing or terminating mothers and home life, effectively signifying their status as a contradiction to the masculine ethos of the series. This attitude is amplified by the fact that Teri is pregnant at the time of her death, and it is also explicitly articulated on several occasions throughout the series, including in Season 3, when Kim admits that her desire to be a mother and have a family cannot be fulfilled in her father’s world. By extension, we are to read Renee Walker’s behavior on Day 8 to be the result of her desire to fully participate in Bauer’s world. She has jettisoned all signs of the feminine, while simultaneously assuming Bauer’s position that, as a counter-terrorist, she will need to do whatever is necessary to get results. We learn that she has survived torture during the eighteen months since we last saw her, and this is meant to rationalize why she now walks and breathes only as a shell of her former self. The lesson is clear: the means-end world depicted in 24 reduces

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Terrorism as family business: Kim Bauer leads Megan through debris after CTU is bombed by terrorists, one of whom is Kim’s father.

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everyone to functional cogs in a masculinist, instrumentalized totality. As George Mason admits in 1.22, everyone at CTU, including Jack Bauer, is expendable. Read in this fashion, the show illustrates the nihilism and emotional imbalance that characterizes the WOT. This does not go unnoticed by characters in the show. For example, it is pointed out to Bauer on several occasions that his life is impoverished by his dedication to the job—he has lost his wife, friends, family, lovers, and even his faith in the U.S. government. His best friend, Tony Almeida and Presidents Palmer, Logan, and Taylor are all confronted by the fact that their dedication to the job has meant that they have lost their loved ones. There is also a profound sense that these characters have lost touch with their humanity and in many cases have lost their guiding ethical principles. For instance, Almeida ends up working for terrorists and killing CTU and FBI agents; President Taylor betrays her democratic values by colluding with conspirators, including disgraced former President Logan; and Bauer concludes the series on Day 8 by running amok and killing everyone in his vengeful path. These examples convey the devastating effects

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that are associated with a world dominated by terror, but they also serve to criticize principles, idealized in neoliberalism, such as competition, individualism, and opportunism because they contradict cherished American values of justice, equality, and democracy. In 24, characters who experience these contradictions participate in ethical debates that rehearse the stress of the historical period.37 As is the case with its treatment of gender relations, racial relations and ethnicity are handled in highly predictable ways in the series, and though it is true that 24 uses racial stereotypes to construct villainous characters (e.g., Chinese state officials are rendered as unrelenting demons, Mexican men are depicted as emotionally unstable and violent, and Arabs are represented as zealots), there is also a constant regulation of these stereotypes to minimize criticism and backlash.38 Consequently, the series has been described as an equal opportunity offender and, while it tries to represent racial and ethnic differences without signifying those differences as value judgments, its tendency to use dichotomization to create narrative crises effectively reinforces conservative values. On Day 2, for instance, the Warner sisters Kate (Sarah Wynter) and Marie are contrasted as examples of how privileged Americans should encounter their other. Kate, voluntarily spying for CTU, uses her knowledge of Islam to infiltrate a terrorist group. By contrast, younger sister Marie (depicted as the weaker of the two) has become a servant of Islam and is recruited to the Second Wave terrorist cell that attacks America. The two women represent diametrically opposed reactions to the other but, in each case, the traditional view that different cultures, religions, races, and nations are threatening is confirmed. Moreover, there is a sense that Marie’s enthusiasm for Islam is a sign of her immaturity. The constant balancing act that the series attempts in order to avoid being charged with racial stereotyping perpetuates a situation where every stereotypical Arab villain is countered by its opposite. As a result, the series includes a variety of “good”

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characters who cooperate with the United States but who are originally misrecognized as “bad” characters (e.g., Yusuf Auda [Donnie Keshawarz] on Day 2 and Jibraan Al-Zarian [Omid Abtahi] on Day 7). As well, there are characters who we presume can be trusted because they represent what is stereotypically thought of as “good,” like Marie Warner and Bauer’s father, who are ultimately revealed to be treacherous villains. This paranoid discourse about the possibility of American insiders being corrupted, and thus posing a potential threat to the nation, is nonetheless used to balance the series’ Islamaphobic reputation.39 While the series reflects conservative values regarding racial and gender relations that seem to confirm Surnow’s selfproclaimed identity as a “right-wing nut,” such authorial intention is routinely watered down in commercial television in favor of developing broadly popular entertainment.40 In this regard, it is important to recall that both Surnow and co-creator Cochran share a populist television pedigree that extends from primetime soaps like Falcon Crest to the thriller La Femme Nikita. While the influence of soaps has been discussed, it is also necessary to appreciate the degree to which the central character in La Femme Nikita served as a template for Jack Bauer. Simply described, the series depicts an anomic world in which powerful individuals and mysterious cabals send an alienated, and often disavowed but ultimately redeemed, assassin on a variety of covert missions. Showcasing vengeance and justice, like 24, the series made a link between the “lawless” frontier of the western and the threatening spaces of the conspiracy thriller associated with the geopolitics of neoliberalism. Clearly, characters are crucial in both advancing the story and engaging viewers in the specifically contoured world of 24. From minor characters sacrificed in the line of duty to major characters who survive the series emotionally and physically scarred, we learn that post-9/11 geopolitics is a world of hard edges. But it is the experience of Jack Bauer that really sets the

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pace and the agenda for how we are to understand appropriate reactions to a world defined by terrorism and the state of exception. As Eric Greene has written, the show’s “aversion to accountability, combined with the faith in the saving power of force, perhaps more than anything else makes 24 truly a show of our time.”41 Jack Bauer was the very embodiment of these qualities—his heroism perfectly in sync with history. To illustrate this, and as a way of bringing this discussion about the formal characteristics of the show to a close, I want to draw attention to an extraordinary example of the suspension of the rule of law depicted in the premiere episode of Day 5. Bauer is lured out of hiding by the assassination of President Palmer (for which he is being framed) and the car-bombing of former CTU colleagues Michelle Dessler, who dies, and Tony Almeida (married to Dessler), who even more tragically survives. In this episode, the villains behind these attacks hunt Chloe O’Brian, and she calls Bauer for help. He answers on his cell phone—the first time this occurs in the new season. We have waited for over fifteen minutes. We have been anticipating the cell phone because it is a vital component of Bauer’s toolkit, almost a signature. It also puts him “on the grid.” He knows this, we know this, and certainly Chloe knows this, because she immediately apologizes for breaking protocol by contacting him. After arranging to help, Bauer tells her to “go dark” in order to evade detection by the men following her. After a suspenseful cat-and-mouse sequence that sees Bauer eliminate all but one of the thugs, O’Brian and Bauer disarm and maim the remaining thug who, under threat of torture, admits that he is Palmer’s assassin. Bauer rises to his feet and appears to be getting ready to move on, leaving the man to either bleed out or be taken into custody. But, instead, he turns to the assassin (whose perspective the audience shares), raises his gun, and shoots and kills him with a single bullet. The force of this event is to suggest a swift and final justice. Its impact is

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Direct action: Jack Bauer executes President Palmer’s assassin.

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palpable, in part because the scene delivers on an often promised but rarely delivered (especially on primetime television) violent resolution to a vengeance narrative. In describing the final moments as swift and final, I mean to draw attention to the pointedly precise nature of the violence, and the way that this is followed by immediate indifference. Here, as much as the action is important to our understanding of Bauer’s character, it is his perfunctory reaction that speaks volumes about the world of 24. Bauer’s execution of antagonists is shocking in primetime, but his behavior is nonetheless familiar because of his similarity to action heroes in movies.42 Like Dirty Harry, John Rambo, and John McLane, Bauer is clearly acting outside the law based on a commitment to “do the right thing.”43 In 1.09, for instance, after an extraordinary escape from federal custody, Bauer calls CTU analyst Jamey Farrell (Karina Arroyave) for assistance and says: “You know me. I don’t care about protocol and I’m true to my word.” And, at the beginning of Day 7, harangued at a congressional committee hearing, Bauer confronts the chairman, Senator Blaine Mayer (Kurtwood Smith): “Please do not

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sit there with that smug look on your face and expect me to regret the decisions I have made. Because the truth is, sir, I don’t.” It is the calm dispatch with which Bauer does the “right thing” that impresses us as both a unique reaction to terror and, in the same instant, a chilling representation of the ruthlessness of life in the early twenty-first century.

Chapter 2

24 and Style

I

n the previous chapter we saw that 24’s use of the melodramatic mode; action-adventure, spy, western, and soap opera genre conventions; deadline-driven cause-and-effect narratives; and stereotypical characters all contribute to a sense that, on a formal level, and beyond the real-time concept, the series is indistinguishable from many action-adventure films and television series. By contrast, the series gained great distinction and widespread attention for its innovative style. In this chapter, I discuss aspects of visual design, sound, editing, and performance in order to illustrate the series’ unique style and to substantiate my description of 24 as an example of postmodernism. Fredric Jameson describes postmodernism as an aesthetic style that features several key elements in contradistinction to modernism’s elitism, fetishization of authenticity, and celebration of the singular author. He argues that postmodernism relies on a populist vernacular and employs pastiche and imitation as its defining strategies.1 As noted in the previous chapter, 24 routinely uses pastiche and reimagines scenes from past films and television series, which significantly influences the way we feel about the series and the meanings we take from it.

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The series’ commitment to creating a unique style is immediately clear. As each episode begins, the screen is black for a fraction of a second until flickering bursts of yellow light quickly transform into the digital numbers of a clock readout flashing on the screen in randomized blurred fashion. The numbers settle on “24.” The image freezes and, after a beat, fades to black. Then the “Previously on 24” voiceover is heard (except during the first season, where the voiceover begins, “Right now, terrorists are threatening to assassinate a presidential candidate”). In a direct sense, the image accosts us with its urgency—it is as though the yellow-hot numbers are being seared into our eyeballs. The immediate impression is that time is of the essence and the plot is organized by a stopwatch or countdown structure. The use of the digital clock face is a signifier of urgency, but its compelling style also presents itself as a logo, a brand. Thus, the striking appearance of the title also refers to the basic concept of the show—time is running out. The flickering actually tells us quite a lot about the series. For instance, it suggests a loose electric or electronic connection, emphasized by the sounds that connote an electric charge. The implication is that the show will feature electronic technology and especially computers that often have lights that also flicker, confirmed when we see the high-end technology featured in the series. Another element worth noting about the flickering relates more fully to the metaphor of light and illumination. Investigative journalists sometimes describe their job as shining a light in the dark corners of our world. 24 is not investigative journalism, but the metaphor of shining a light on the world is apt given that the principal goal of CTU and its agents is to expose hidden terrorist activity. The graphic design of the title sequence represents this process; moreover, this battle proceeds as light, gradually and seemingly against great odds, stabilizes and becomes so bright as to become impossible to ignore. It is as though the light is mimicking the narrative of the show; the rising story crises are replicated here, in miniature, in the flickering and

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High concept design: the logo embodies the series’ logos—urgency and illumination.

eventually searing images of the title. In this manner, the show can be considered “high concept,” in that it is a production that distills all aspects of its thematic content into a series of relatively homogeneous images, characters, and design elements that can be effectively marketed as a commodity.2 Thus, even in the few seconds of the title image (which ultimately came to serve as the show’s enduring logo), 24 reminds us of the key thematic elements of the series. Beyond its branded title sequence, the most distinctive visual element of the series is its use of multiple-frame compositions. Although these appeared in popular film and television prior to 24, the series’ use of the technique as a critical feature of its real-time narrative attracted significant attention.3 Each episode begins with a recap of previous events, and this is often done in multiple-frame composition. So, in most instances, the initial encounter with the multiple-frame technique is not real time but a selection of significant moments from the past. In the episodes, the multiple-frame compositions tend to appear before and after commercial breaks and toward the conclusion of an episode. In all these instances, the multiple frames allow the

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viewer to assimilate the various parallel plots and, moreover, to plot the story events to a precise timeline. The “live” effect of this style contributes to a sense of urgency and impending crises. Additionally, by allowing us to follow several characters at crucial points in their stories, the multiple-frame compositions encourage comparisons between different characters’ reactions to the same events, revealing important information about them and clues about future story development. Whereas multiple-frame compositions in films and television series have typically been used in montage sequences (e.g., The Thomas Crown Affair [Norman Jewison, 1968]) or credit sequences (e.g., The Brady Bunch [Sherwood Schwartz, 1969– 1974]), 24 uses them to advance the story. Its use of the multiple frames is quite audacious, exhibiting detailed attention to the arrangement of frames within the space of the screen, which is complicated as well by the practice of moving and resizing the frames. This involves not only character framing but also consideration of relative shading, volumes, and movement. As an aside, it is also an extraordinary display of the power of digital editing software that provides capabilities that would have previously been cost-prohibitive for television production. In order to illustrate the powerful narrative and emotional effects of multiple-screen composition in 24, consider the opening minutes of the series’ pilot. After the flickering light of the title sequence has faded to black, yellow text flickers and eventually appears on a black background with an accompanying voiceover that reads the intertitle: “The following takes place between midnight and 1:00 a.m., on the day of the California Presidential Primary.” No sooner have these words appeared than they begin to decompose randomly (as though an electronic signal has been lost) and new text begins to appear: “Events occur in real time.” The text connotes urgency, and its style—the flickering to life followed by its quick dissolution into a series of electronic glitches—instructs the viewer to read the information quickly, before it disappears. This is another

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Multiple-frame composition and narrative: listening in as Sherry Palmer attempts to get an admission from villain Peter Kingsley.

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example of how the series’ style reinforces its principal themes, in particular its focus on time anxiety. The series induces its audience to behave like its characters to the extent that information about the story is provided in glimpses so that even reading titles, for instance, becomes a form of detection. The yellow letters fade to black. After a beat, the first images of the series appear—an aerial shot of two elaborately designed twin towers that immediately evoke memories of the World Trade Center. But these skyscrapers, the Petronas Towers, are unique to the extent that their aggregative composition serves as a refutation of the modernist, streamlined, curtain-walling style of the WTC. The entire image is tinted yellow, reminiscent of the letters of the titles and opening text. While there is an immediate shock in recognizing these structures as twin towers, there is also a clear sense of difference that distinguishes them from the WTC. This difference is confirmed when text appears over the image: “Kuala Lumpur: Local Time 4:00:28 p.m.” The helicopter shot of the towers begins in full frame but quickly shrinks and moves to the upper left, while credits begin to appear on the black background beginning with

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Identity and difference: the first images of 24 evoke uncanny memories of another pair of twin towers.

Kiefer Sutherland. As Sutherland’s name fades to black, with the image of the towers still in the upper left of the frame, a new window appears on the right side. It occupies the entire right side of the frame and consists of street shots, again tinted in the yellow hue of the titles and the image of the towers. Both these compositions include movement (the helicopter shot hovering around the towers and, in the street shots, the camera pans and tilts) and thus our perspective on the objects changes. This creates a shifting of volumes and shading within each frame, and the interplay between the frames produces a slightly disorienting visual effect. This disorientation is consistent with the series’ ideological perspective that non-North American spaces are marked by difference and thus are characterized as suspicious and destabilizing. This perspective is confirmed by the shot that follows the multiple-frame composition, a full-frame street-level shot that depicts the lumpenproletariat population of street vendors, street kids, and prostitutes who move dejectedly and huddle somewhat threateningly in the overcrowded alley. This scene

24 and Style

is familiar to Western audiences as the threatening space that films and television series have previously depicted in racialized stereotypes of Asia and Asian characters.4 In its basest formulation this depiction represents these spaces and characters as homogeneous and malevolent—the concept of the “the yellow peril” is one notorious articulation of this discourse. 24’s first few seconds, then, cast it as a conservative ideological text. Not only are these racial and cultural stereotypes registered on a thematic level, but they are also reinforced visually by the clichéd use of yellow in the color scheme—notably, an effect that is not commonly used elsewhere in the series. This is a striking instance of the series’ contradictory ideological meanings: the hue signifies advanced technology in the series’ logo but, in the images of Kuala Lumpur, it is associated with various signs of difference and deviance. Following the full-frame composition of the lumpen street population is a two-frame composition with the complete left side showing the street from a telephoto perspective. A long shot of the street is in the upper right. This frame is above the credits that continue to roll in the lower right. In this two-frame composition, a character walks toward the camera in each shot. On the left, the telephoto image brings us closer to the character, but, because the framing is tight, his movements often take him out of frame or he is obscured behind other characters. As well, the telephoto effect creates a shallow field of focus, and we can pick the character out of the background only when he is in sharp focus. The image on the right is a long shot with a deep field of focus, so it is harder to pick the character out of the crowd initially, although we recognize him by his movement. The skill with which the show’s creative team handles the multiple-frame composition is notable as we are drawn to the hypnotizing rhythm of the character’s movement in and out of light and among various characters and objects. Because of the different qualities of images in the two frames, including their respective capacities to provide information about this

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Multiple-frame composition and detection: each frame provides clues about story information.

character, the formal visual design is imaginatively integrated with the narrative intrigue that the sequence introduces. The impact of multiple-frame composition on narrative development is nicely illustrated in the next series of shots, for instance, when the character (now in close-up) turns to look behind: in the frame on the left, which is larger, he turns away from the viewer, frustrating any attempt to see his features. In the upper-right frame, the sequence has included a change of camera position (a rare event in scenes used in the multipleframe compositions) so that he is now seen from behind. He is behaving furtively, clearly an outsider in this location, so some degree of suspense has been generated about his identity. Just as we are about to catch a glimpse of him in the left frame, he turns away, but in the right frame he turns toward the viewer, revealing his features in full illumination. This strategy is not only visually mesmerizing but clearly provides another way of engaging audiences in narrative developments. In fact, the viewer is not only drawn to the highly aestheticized movements, when the frames tend to resonate with each other in

24 and Style

terms of their visual qualities, but the multiple-frame composition also allows investigation of each frame for new narrative information. For instance, when the character moves out of one frame, or is obscured, attention tends to gravitate to the other frame in order to see more and gather useful information.5 This is another example of how the visual style of 24 encourages the viewer to become a detective. The sequence follows the character to a door that he opens and disappears behind. The view moves into the space he enters. The multiple-frame composition is maintained in this sequence, although it is intermittently interrupted by full-frame shots. In the low illumination, the multiple-frame composition creates several engaging instances of abstract imagery, as light and shadow seem to bounce from one frame to the other. The character has arrived at a covert communications center. Illuminated by a single bulb hanging from the ceiling, which gives the space a dilapidated look, the room contains several equipment cases, one of which holds a computer. The character hits some keys and there is the sound of a modem. In each of the two frames he puts a cellphone to his ear. An offscreen voice says: “Identify.” The character replies, “Victor,” and when he says his last name, “Rovner,” the view cuts to a full-frame image of him. This emphasizes the importance of the scene, which is confirmed when he concludes: “Requesting permission to transmit.” It is clear that this is an important piece of a larger, global puzzle. By proceeding in this fashion, 24 has allowed the viewer-detective to put a name to this character, after spying on him in crowded streets halfway around the world from where the story will ultimately take place: Los Angeles. After a montage sequence that includes images of satellite transmission technology and some multiple-frame compositions (including Rovner [Jeffrey Ricketts] responding nervously to the sound of pounding at the door), a single small frame in the lower left depicts a long shot of a different man. His back is to us and he is speaking on a phone while sitting

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in front of a screen. He appears to be military personnel and we are led to believe that his was the voice on the other end of Rovner’s transmission. This small frame is followed by a fullframe shot of a helicopter flying at night over what is recognizably Los Angeles. The pan shot begins with the familiar and distinctive U.S. Bank Tower, illuminated and prominent in the foreground, followed by the reveal of the sprawl of city lights. Text on the screen confirms that this is Los Angeles and the time is 12:02:16 a.m. In this sequence, representations of neoliberal geopolitics have linked power and wealth in Kuala Lumpur (as represented by the postmodern Petronas Towers) to power and wealth in Los Angeles (signified by the equally postmodern U.S. Bank Tower). Central to these connections is the surveillance that operates at the edges of these sites of wealth and power. The edges are the spaces where differences meet, and this sequence points out that national security is achieved by carefully monitoring peripheral populations for suspicious “chatter.” In fact, the narrative will augment this perspective later in the episode, when Bauer enlists CTU analyst Jamey Farrell to help him and his wife hack their daughter’s email account. It is the first of many instances in the series when parents spy on their children the way that we assume the state spies on its citizens.6 Rovner’s transmission carries the viewer through the opening credit sequence by moving across the globe and backward in time—Kuala Lumpur is sixteen hours ahead of Los Angeles. He has given U.S. security forces an advantage because, as it turns out, his transmission to CTU boss Richard Walsh (Michael O’Neill) is a warning of a confirmed assassination plot on Senator David Palmer. After Rovner speaks to Walsh, an exchange that is represented in multiple-frame compositions, the sequence cuts to Senator Palmer’s campaign headquarters at 12:02:45. The shot follows the senator’s wife, Sherry, as she takes a tray of coffee to the hotel suite balcony to fuel a brainstorming session that includes the senator and several

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Middle-class tedium: Jack Bauer plays chess with Kim.

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staff members. The handheld shot is evocative of the type of cinematography associated with reality TV as well as earlier documentary styles including direct cinema and cinema vérité. The crucial piece of the season’s puzzle is introduced when, at 12:03:24, the view cuts to an exterior night shot of a modest suburban house, which is quickly followed by a shot of the interior where Jack Bauer is playing chess with his high schoolage daughter, Kim. The shots of Bauer and his family are mundane, which emphasizes their solidly (perhaps suffocatingly) middle-class status. Although we have already heard his voice on the sound track as he says: “The following takes place between midnight and 1:00 a.m.,” this is the first time we see Bauer. The experience of the opening sequence is a whirlwind and, in large part, this is the result of the visual design that uses multiple-frame compositions to reinforce real-time narratives and diverse cinematographic styles that borrow from action films, documentaries, experimental films, “quality TV,” and reality TV. Moreover, the velocity of this sequence is symptomatic of the series’ theme of urgency, where characters constantly find themselves out of time and choices.

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Another compelling visual aspect of the show is its use of location shooting, which I consider by analyzing an episode from the third season. Bauer and CTU have been charged with capturing Stephen Saunders, an ex-MI6 operative who threatens Los Angeles with biological agents. He has obtained twelve vials of the (fictional) Cordilla virus, the agonizing effects of which are revealed after he releases one in the Chandler Plaza Hotel. The rest of the season involves chasing him down before he can use the remaining 11. The hotel is fictional but, beyond this, Day 3 is notable because of its extensive use of location shooting. In episode 3.22, this involves shots of gritty downtown locations, an extended shootout scene that ends in the Los Angeles River basin, and F-18 fighter jets flying over downtown during the climactic conclusion. The sequence begins at 10:52:22 a.m. with a low angle shot of a bridge spanning the Los Angeles River that we recognize from many movies (e.g., Repo Man [Alex Cox, 1984], To Live and Die in LA [William Friedkin, 1985], The Core [Jon Amiel, 2003], and Drive [Nichola Winding Refn, 2011]), as well as from various television series, commercials, and video games (e.g., L.A. Noire). The camera tilts down to Tony Almeida positioned beside a CTU SUV as he asks, “Have Chase’s men got Saunders yet?” The view cuts to Bauer, who replies, “Not yet”; he looks at his tablet to survey the locations of Chase’s men. The camera reveals agents hiding in a variety of spaces in and around the base of the ramp leading to the bridge. These shots confirm our sense that this is industrial and warehouse space—a good location for a covert exchange of prisoners. The agents are hoping to expose Saunders, who has agreed to exchange his hostage, CTU agent Michelle Dessler, for his daughter Jane (Alexandra Lydon). A variety of shots set up this location, including shaky handheld shots, swish pans, and telephoto shots, all of which provide us with intimate views of the agents in the space as well as intensifying our sense of unease and imminent crisis.

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A long shot picks up Saunders’s three vehicles approaching the exchange point—a road under and to the side of the bridge. A telephoto shot of the vehicles tracks left to right behind the bars of a gate, mimicking the point of view of one of the hidden agents or shooters. The effect of this is to create a partially obscured view of the vehicles, but it also divides the screen into a series of vertical frames, reminding us of the series’ use of multiple-frame compositions. Moreover, 24 routinely shoots action in a tight frame and from behind characters and objects in order to create suspense and reaffirm the power of voyeurism. Seeing without being seen is crucial to spycraft and, by contrast, being seen is a form of vulnerability. Notably, this visual experience is similar to that of role-playing video games, especially first- and third-person shooter games. Before the agents can confirm that Saunders is in one of the vehicles, the audience is privy to a phone conversation between Dessler and Saunders during which she receives instructions as to how to proceed. There is a shot that includes a slightly obscured image of a man on a cellphone in one of the vehicles during this conversation, and the viewer is encouraged to believe that it is Saunders. Given the series’ goal of keeping the audience in suspense through restricted narration and vision, this moment is a rare opportunity for the audience to know more than Bauer and CTU. Saunders calls Almeida on a cell phone and says that only when he sees his daughter will Dessler be turned over. Almeida begins to walk Jane toward the vehicles and, when she asks him where her father is, he admits that he doesn’t know. The exchange proceeds with Michelle and Jane walking toward and past each other and, as Dessler approaches Almeida, he advises Bauer to lead the assault. Bauer, looking at his tablet, replies urgently: “We do not have a visual on Saunders. I repeat, we do not have a visual on Saunders.” Although Jane continues to walk toward the villains’ vehicles, she becomes increasingly suspicious of the situation

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F-18s over Los Angeles: realism, spectacle, and propaganda.

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and, just as the exchange is about to be completed, she exclaims, “I can’t” and runs back. This causes Saunders to jump up from the back seat of one of the SUVs. Seeing him, Bauer gives the order to attack and, as the bullets fly, Saunders realizes his tactical mistake—family ties have made him a target. He flees, with Bauer in pursuit, and they run into the Los Angeles River basin. As Bauer pursues Saunders, a get-away helicopter appears overhead and prepares to land. Bauer calls for air support from Chase, who then communicates with analyst Adam Kaufman (Zachary Quinto) at CTU who, in turn, relays information about two F-18s in the vicinity. Chase orders them to attack and, while his team continues to battle with Saunders’s men under the bridge, the view cuts to the highly cinematic coverage of the fighters speeding through the air above Los Angeles, descending on the helicopter, and destroying it with a single missile.7 As the helicopter burns, Saunders writhes on the concrete riverbed, and the view returns to Chase’s team rounding up survivors. The reunion of Almeida and Dessler is featured in these shots and the sequence closes with them clinching. This image, almost a tableau, shrinks into the lower left of the screen to

The Doctrine of Sympathy: three stories connected by a common goal with President Palmer at the helm.

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become one of three images in a multiple-frame composition that includes shots of Wayne Palmer (D. B. Woodside) driving with a covert operative in the lower right and President David Palmer behind his desk taking up the top half of the screen. The size of this last frame and its position on top reinforces the sense that Palmer presides over these two other plots. In discussing the visual style of the series, Michael Allen points out that the sense that characters in one frame have an affective connection to those in other frames has a precedent in the Doctrine of Sympathy. The doctrine, both a philosophical and scientific concept, holds that there is an emotional bond that connects individuals (especially family members and loved ones) despite being physically separated. From antiquity to the nineteenth century, representational techniques signifying a character’s thoughts and feelings being with another were used in the visual arts, theater, and early film. Allen argues that “24 employs the Doctrine of Sympathy on many occasions through the use of split-screen, the different panels placing in juxtaposition the characters who have a particularly powerful relationship, and thereby suggesting that they are intuiting one another’s physical

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or emotional situation.”8 A variation on this strategy includes the representation of phone or intercom conversations in multiple-frame compositions that explicitly connect characters in separate spaces. This has the additional benefit of reinforcing the crucial role of information and communication technologies (ICT) in the series, further naturalizing the integration of family relations with the technology of the WOT. As seen in the previous chapter, suspense is intensified when audiences care about the characters. By employing the Doctrine of Sympathy in multiple-frame compositions, 24 represents subtle aspects of relationships between characters. This supports the view that 24’s audience was particularly attentive, contradicting the general stereotype of television spectatorship as being oriented toward the glance rather than the gaze (which is associated with film spectatorship). As in the scene of the destruction of the helicopter, the series often repays the dedicated viewer with displays of spectacle that rival the production values of blockbuster movies. As this scene concludes, Bauer arrests Saunders against a highly cinematic backdrop. The shots are full-frame compositions with the master shot showing Bauer and Saunders in the foreground and the burning helicopter in the mid-ground against the background of the concrete riverbed. The soft-focus flames conjure Hades, appropriately serving as the ground for the devilish figure of Saunders and the fallen angel Bauer, who has captured the villain but fumes over his failure to find the remaining vials of Cordilla virus. This overview of the visual style of 24 makes it clear that the series draws on a heterogeneous range of sources. It is inspired by cultural forms as disparate as religious triptychs, documentary films, and comic books, and while some scenes resemble expensive movies, the series also consciously borrows popular television styles, including the visceral quality of reality TV shows such as C.O.P.S. (Malcolm Barbour and John Langley, 1989–), and, in its multiple-frame compositions, it resembles news, sports, and infotainment programming. Also, there is

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Cinematic images: Jack Bauer and Stephen Saunders in the foreground with the burning helicopter and the Los Angeles River basin as backdrop.

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a wide range of videographic elements including analog and digital images from satellites, surveillance cameras, cellphones, and other ICT devices; text printed on screens including digital time clocks and readouts; and, not surprisingly for a show that emphasizes the importance of visual perception, endless images of screens. It is also significant that the series features extensive use of a shallow field of focus and soft focus generally. These techniques tend to create a muted color palette and soft-edged compositions in which objects blend into each other, and this reinforces the impression that, in the world of 24, things are rarely in sharp focus. Like the liminal status of many of its characters, and the hybrid nature of its genre and narrative sources, the visual style of 24 emphasizes intermediate spaces and the theme of indeterminacy. This sometimes makes identification difficult and it encourages viewers to take up the role of investigator. In the previous chapter, we have seen how this is the case on the level of genre and narrative, and we now understand that this is also a quality of the visual style. In a way, by considering multiple-frame composition, we have already touched on the issue of editing in 24. On the one

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hand, we have seen that multiple-frame composition, in conjunction with a real-time narrative, mimics live transmission and gives the impression that events are not edited. Over the course of film and television history, the desire to “see it all” has led to storytelling experiments that imply no narrative ellipsis. In Time Code (Mike Figgis, 2000), for instance, which is composed of four frames and a real-time scenario, we have the sense that we are privy to all the events of the story and there has been no editing for dramatic effect. In 24, as well, these same characteristics suggest that the events we see are the totality of events in the story. The series’ conceit that one hour of screen time is equivalent to one hour of story time implies that there is no editing of the event—we see and experience it all. A moment’s reflection, of course, reminds us that we must miss story events during the commercial breaks and there are all kinds of everyday events that we don’t see (e.g., it is rare to see anyone eat). Nonetheless, even when we watch the show in contexts that work against the real-time effect (as on DVD), the experience of simultaneity that the show perpetuates is compelling. In those instances when 24 seems to be “live,” there also appears to be no editing. By contrast, the obvious artifice of the multiple-frame composition regularly draws our attention to the detailed postproduction work that is required to create complex visual impressions in the series. What is striking about the multipleframe compositions is that, while they are meticulously crafted, the individual shots actually feature minimal cutting. This is because they are meant to simulate real time and, ultimately, their slow pace tends to produce a pause in the action. As noted, this tableau effect emphasizes a more reflective spectatorship allowing for appreciation of the characters’ various relationships, including plot developments that can be anticipated when the action resumes. Moreover, because the multiple-frame composition is used sporadically, the majority of screen time is

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dedicated to only one story at a time with typical continuity editing used to move between various parallel events. 24 is innovative as regards plot, especially its real-time structure and its multiple-frame compositions, but beyond these notable elements the series uses conventional storytelling and thus requires an editing style that is non-obtrusive, linear, and essentially transparent. To this extent, the series utilizes the standard elements of continuity editing including crosscutting between parallel events, shot/reverse-shot coverage of conversations, and manipulation of the length of shots in order to create affect through compression and expansion of story time. The most notable aspect of editing in 24 is that it conforms to the series’ race against time. This leads to large numbers of short shots, hard cuts, and a persistent pressure to move forward. For example, in the scene by the Los Angeles River on Day 3 discussed above, Tony Almeida says, “Look, Jack, promise me you won’t make a move on Saunders until Michelle is safe.” Jack assures him that he will do what he can. This conversation lasts approximately 20 seconds and includes 8 shots, an average shot length of 2.5 seconds. The accelerated pace is conducive to the thriller genre, and it also imitates the style of editing found in commercials and music videos. Additionally, outside of a single flashback in the last episode of the first season, depictions of the past occur only in dialogue or in the “previously on” montage sequences. The goal of editing in this type of storytelling is to remove anything (including excessive plotting) that blocks the forward propulsion and velocity of the narrative. Thus, intensified continuity is the show’s foundational editing style, which gives the series an appearance and affect that is familiar to the audience from a wide range of popular action-adventure films.9 As with editing, the sound (dialogue, music, and noise) is largely indistinguishable from the use of sound in big-budget films and “quality” television programs. By and large, this is a

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The present dominates: On the right, 24’s only flashback.

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realistic style that reinforces the visual information. The music typically supports the audience’s understanding of the affective state of characters without drawing attention to itself. This includes swelling orchestral scores, motifs from the series theme, and quiet electronic bridges and underscores that accompany characters on their spy missions. In some cases, the electronic music imitates noises in the scenes, creating a playful relationship between the score and diegetic sounds. Jacqueline Furby points out that the show’s “accelerated rhythm is often echoed in the sound track, which at moments of high tension features a burst of percussion suggestive of a rapidly ticking clock.”10 Sometimes the sound track augments moments of surprise with a sound effect that suggests an excited or agitated crowd (“Whooooossshhhhh”) familiar to us as a sound sweetener used in sports broadcasts. Even in these more self-conscious instances, however, the show’s sound is intended to support the impression of the visual information and rarely contradicts the goal of establishing character motivation and story development. The conventional style of music in 24 can also be discussed for its use of stereotypical associations between characters or

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locations and musical themes. The tradition of orchestral scores that accompany and bolster patriotic heroism remains a significant emphasis of the sound track. In large part, the music encourages a feeling of redemption for Bauer and American leadership, and the score is typically quite clear and assured in its meaning. For instance, in the sequence discussed above, the music maintains an unobtrusive suspenseful tone until the F-18s arrive, at which point a full-blown orchestral accompaniment takes over. The crescendo of this passage, predictably, is the sound of the missile exploding into the helicopter. The phallic bombast of this music is reminiscent of national anthems and patriotic military scores in movies such as Top Gun (Tony Scott, 1986), Independence Day (Roland Emmerich, 1996), and Pearl Harbor (Michael Bay, 2001). Nonetheless, as a television series designed for suspense, 24 often undercuts the triumphant tone of the music with ambivalent narratives, as is the case in the Los Angeles River sequence. After the explosion, Bauer continues to suffer time anxiety because, while he has marshaled the full force of CTU and the F-18s (and a triumphant score), he has still not been able to get enough information to avert the impending threat. In another illustrative example, in Season 5, sinister orchestral strains rise when President Logan refuses to protect his wife, Martha (Jean Smart), and the Suvarovs, Anya (Kathleen Gati) and President Yuri (Nick Jameson), from an ambush by terrorists. In several long shots of the motorcade we hear an austere, restrained underscore that withholds the pomp and glory that would usually accompany such shots. In these scenes, the music veers into suspenseful string passages reminiscent of many tense sequences in Hitchcock films. As is the case here, composer Sean Callery’s scores are often suspenseful and sometimes expressionistic (as when Bauer is kicking a heroin addiction during Day 3), but they always reinforce powerful moments of affect in the narrative. In the premiere episode of Day 3, for instance, the president’s motorcade is accompanied by mysterious but

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slowly building reverential orchestral music that supports the viewers’ sense of inquiry—is this the return of President David Palmer or the introduction of a new leader? When Palmer rises from his limousine the music swells into an emphatic, soaring score that, combined with the crowd’s cheering, sets the day’s emotional and ethical tone. If stereotypically triumphant music is one of the elements used in the show, there is also the issue of musical stereotypes that are intended to signify characters and spaces that are perceived as different and threatening. On Day 1, for instance, Dan (Matthew Carey) and Rick (Dan Bess) kidnap Janet York (Jacqui Maxwell) and Kim Bauer after midnight and drive them around Los Angeles in their van. Each time we see their van, we hear rock music on the sound track. The effect, relatively innocuous but telling in terms of the show’s ideological perspective, reiterates stereotypical associations between deviance, terrorism, teens, partying, and rock music. The implied meanings of these scenes were provocative, however, as national security discourses routinely merged the rhetoric of the War on Drugs with that of the War on Terror, propagating fear about rampant connections between the illegal drug trade and terrorism. As well, of course, stereotypical music is used to reinforce racial, ethnic, and national stereotypes associated with the various Middle Eastern, African, and Asian characters and spaces that have a prominent place in the world of 24. The representations of Kuala Lumpur on Day 1 serve as a good example. The music that accompanies the images, which, as noted, are tinted yellow, features the soft sounds of bells and flutes that are standard tropes of Western music made to connote the East. Furthermore, as the only recognizably white character emerges from the crowds in the street, a Western orchestral strain pushes through the mix—a motif from the series’ theme. Overall, like most popular television and movie scores, the music of 24 is a pastiche that appropriates elements from European classical music, pop, rock, rhythm and blues, national anthems

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and marching music, and ethnic music stereotypes. It is rarely dissonant, it supports the meanings of the images we see on the screen, and, unlike other spy series that feature a signature musical theme (e.g., Lalo Shifrin’s Mission: Impossible theme), 24’s theme is subdued and not especially distinctive. The two emblematic sounds in the series are Sutherland’s voice and the digital clock. Indeed, the sound of the clock is an example of 24’s remarkable use of sound effects and noise. In part, this aspect of the series’ style is attributable to composer Callery’s practice of merging sound effects and music and of keeping noises high in the sound track mix. He cites his role as sound effects editor on Star Trek: Deep Space Nine (Rick Berman and Michael Piller, 1993–1999) as influential in this regard. He describes that, while a composer’s rule of thumb is to play the music louder, on DS9, he “learned how the sound effects will take more priority over the music and vice-versa, depending on the scene.”11 On a basic level, the sound of the digital clock serves a practical purpose—it alerts the audience that the show is about to begin or resume. In many television series this function is achieved through theme music, but sometimes sounds that are unique to a series also serve the purpose. This is the case with 24’s clock sound, and it should be noted that this “alarm” has an immediate antecedent in the gavel sound from the popular series Law & Order (Dick Wolf, 1990–2010), a sound that is uniquely associated with that series. 24’s clock sound, though, is just one of many sounds that show up in the series. Everything from the cracking of glass underfoot to the roar of jets is reproduced with extraordinary fidelity as though we are unnaturally close to the sound. As Callery points out, the noises are often mixed louder than the music, having the effect of introducing a sense of hyperrealism that fetishizes the sounds of technology and objects. This aesthetic strategy has thematic meaning also, to the extent that it contributes to a sense that, in a world defined by fear, even our sounds can expose us to threat.

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Because 24 is a series that foregrounds covert surveillance and spying on citizens, one of the sounds given a place of privilege is the human voice. This is most clearly represented by the numerous phone calls that the show features, but it is also seen in the extended dialogue scenes, hushed conversations, and disembodied voices that are heard through various technologies. Perhaps the most telling example of this occurs each week when Bauer’s voice introduces the episode. Immediately following the appearance of the show’s title, accompanied by its distinctive and recognizable sound and music, the screen fades to black and there is silence. Then, in what seems like a kind and dispassionate tone, Sutherland either describes the season’s backstory or says, “Previously on 24.”12 In the first episode, Bauer delivers a line that will serve, in slightly different versions through the run of the series, as an iconographic element of the show: “The following takes place between midnight and 1:00 a.m., on the day of the California presidential primary. Events occur in real time.” Subtle and suspenseful music plays under the voice, and the words we hear appear in yellow like a readout on the black screen. The voice indicates none of the anxiety that the series induces and none of the personalized stress that we come to associate with this character in particular. In the field, Bauer will use his voice to terrify suspects and curse enemies (he is particularly fond of yelling “Dammit!”), but in the offscreen introduction Bauer’s voice seems uncharacteristically indifferent to terrorism. Although we understand that Bauer is a character within the diegesis, this weekly narration places him momentarily on the edge of the story, and his proximity to the viewers has the effect of giving the audience an insider’s access to the drama. Within the context of the story, Bauer’s voice is rarely calm and most of the time he barks orders and threats; only in moments when he is counseling and caring for family members or trusted accomplices does he sound the way he does in the introduction.

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Through this form of address, the audience is encouraged to imagine that it is part of the show’s family. Each major character’s voice has distinct qualities that tell us about their character. Tony Almeida’s voice, for instance, suggests he is harboring a grudge or has a chip on his shoulder. Chloe O’Brian’s voice is clipped and perfunctory as though she is both pragmatic and self-conscious. Senator and later President Palmer’s bass tones and assured style of speech are evidence of his political confidence, while President Logan’s nervous treble voice conveys the exact opposite. In 24, the unique qualities of characters’ voices can also be used to expose them even when we cannot see them. This is significant in the context of espionage stories and surveillance society. For instance, in Season 6, when Tom Lennox (Peter MacNicol) surreptitiously records Vice President Noah Daniels (Powers Boothe) and his assistant Lisa Miller (Kari Matchett) conspiring to commit perjury, it is their voices, not their images, that identify them. Famously, at the beginning of Season 7, a group of masked terrorist thugs violently kidnap a man, and when one of them speaks, although his mask hides his face, we recognize the voice as Almeida’s. And, in Season 6, when Audrey Raines (Kim Raver) contacts Bauer by phone to reveal that she is still alive, her voice is small and all but extinguished. Simply hearing her frailty, without any visual confirmation of her identity or state of well-being, Bauer is motivated to initiate a controversial and crisis-ridden mission that will ultimately require his transformation into a fugitive. Such is the power of the human voice in 24. While the voice is important in the series, it is notable as well that non-verbal human sounds such as breathing, sputtering, gasping, and, of course, screaming play a crucial role. In fact, Bauer is unique as an action hero in that he makes an excessive amount of body noise, grunting and breathing heavily as he carries out his missions. Sutherland’s habit of performing Bauer as a constantly suffering hero includes having him snuffle

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The distinctive voice reveals the terrorist to be Tony Almeida.

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repeatedly, quickly taking short audible breaths, and speaking in gasps. One of the effects of this performance style is that it tends to literalize the series’ structure as an exhausting race against the clock. As a consequence, the world of 24 tends to leave characters breathless, trying to survive in a suffocating environment that seems to constantly lean on them, pushing the life out of them. The series pays a great deal of attention to performance, and it is also clear that the actors enjoy the roles they inhabit. For instance, Sherry Palmer is a vivacious, intelligent, and conniving power broker and, in the tradition of evil female characters in soap operas and melodramas, her manipulations of power develop into exaggerated caricatures of her aspirations. Penny Johnson Jerald’s enthusiastic portrayal of Sherry includes laying on charm so thick it becomes toxic. For instance, on Day 2, President Palmer, now Sherry’s ex-husband, covertly assigns her to complete some dirty work that has raised the suspicions of Chief of Staff Mike Novick (Jude Ciccolella) and Special Advisor Lynne Kresge. Sherry senses she is unwelcome and that the staff is interfering with her work; she confronts Kresge by saying that she doesn’t want to waste time playing

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games. Kresge replies, “Fine, you don’t want to play games. I don’t like you and I don’t like you being here.” Sherry, slyly grinning because Kresge has lost her composure and exposed her allegiances, snidely says: “Well, now we’re communicating.” Johnson’s delivery is full of wit and menace—worthy of that archetypal primetime villainess Alexis Carrington Colby (Joan Collins) from Dynasty (Aaron Spelling, 1981–89). The unexpected rise of Chloe O’Brian to a place of central importance in CTU and as the last of Bauer’s confidantes is testament to the performance of Mary Jane Rajskub, who plays the character as competent and abrasive, introducing a unique and admired female type to primetime. Predictably, Chloe became a favorite of “geek” youth culture, but she was also admired in the mainstream by academics, the media, and politicians. For instance, Rush Limbaugh was so inspired by Chloe that he invited Rajskub to address the Heritage Foundation’s panel on 24 in 2006. Dennis Haysbert, so comfortable in the role of the sonorous David Palmer, has parlayed his performance of an honorable, warm, and calm leader into the role of trustworthy spokesperson for Allstate Insurance in their television commercials. As clear as it is that Haysbert relishes playing a character whose leadership skills are admirable and clearly evident, Powers Boothe (Vice President Noah Daniels) and Gregory Itzin (President Logan), who strikes an uncanny resemblance to former President Richard Nixon, seem equally enthused at the opportunity to seek out every corner of their characters’ opportunistic, weak, and conniving personalities and to put across a lasting image of disreputable leadership. The appearance of many famous movie and television actors in the series is further testament to both the quality of the roles in 24 and to the premium that the series places on unique and compelling performances.13 One of the viewing pleasures of 24 is seeing the actors develop their characters in reaction to the various crises that they encounter. This encourages character arcs that are hyperbolic in a variety of ways, and this excess

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in dramaturgy can be seen as an element of the series’ postmodern style, to the extent that what becomes acceptable in the context of the series is ultimately a form of hyperrealism. This is certainly the case with Jack Bauer, who is excessive on all fronts, from his physical prowess and his stoic demeanor to his exaggerated vocalizations, grunts, and snuffling. Memorable television crime fighters all have their idiosyncrasies (e.g., Friday’s all-business persona; Columbo’s trench coat and bumbling insight; Crockett and Tubbs’s nihilism and pastel wardrobes; Horatio’s sunglasses and quips). Bauer’s character is defined principally by his body, which repeatedly signifies the pain of being a counter-terrorist tool. Over the seasons, his body suffers beatings, addictions, torture, poisoning, wounding, imprisonment, sensory deprivation, as well as social and workplace alienation. The abusive treatment of his body illustrates the series’ theme of expendability, showcased in the extraordinary sequence in episode 2.19 in which Bauer is tortured to death and then revived, only to be tortured again. All of this pain is registered in Sutherland’s captivating performance and appearance: the blue-eyed maverick introduced in the first season is visibly changed over the course of the series. By the time he rampages in Season 8 his face is weathered, wrinkled, and sweaty; his hair is short, dark, and greasy; and his eyes have become hollow and cold. As much as Jack Bauer serves as a cautionary figure, the hyperbole of his character ultimately exceeds the strict definition of a warning. Whereas spies like Bond or those in The Man from U.N.C.L.E. were excessive and ironic, and sexy because of it, Bauer’s hyperbolic performance is puritanical and draining. Moreover, the fact that he is operating in a soap opera world gives the impression that fighting terrorism is a matter of interminable gesturing and performance and that spycraft is a form of stagecraft. Seen from this perspective, those moments when Bauer emotes to excess and becomes overwrought, as in the final minutes of Day 3 in which he weeps uncontrollably in

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his truck, there is a sense that his breakdown is a bit stilted, as though it is a ritual intended for redemption rather than a spontaneous response. This also applies to other characters who have been forced beyond the natural limits of their identities. Renee Walker, Charles Logan, Mike Novick, Chloe O’Brian, Kim Bauer, Nina Myers, and Tony Almeida all represent, at one time or another, identity crises in a time of terror. Each in his or her own way illustrates that duplicity is fundamental to patriotic citizenship post-9/11, implying that artifice is one of the fundamental symptoms of a culture of fear. We have already noted that bluffing becomes a crucial strategy in Bauer’s world, because in the time-space of terror, survival regularly depends on exaggerated performance. The melodramatic acting styles in 24 draw attention to the power of simulation and illustrate how performance allows a spy to be misrecognized as a friend, and how patriotic acts can serve to mask terrorism. The pastiche of visual, sound, and performance styles that characterizes 24 is emblematic, like the use of pastiche in the formal design of the show (i.e., its mimicry of past genres, narratives, and characters), of the series’ self-conscious awareness of its status as media. It draws its influences not from real life but from intertextual references to media culture and, in this sense, it should not be considered realistic but hyperrealistic. It would be fair to say that 24’s perceived value in inflecting the reality of the WOT, for instance, is overwhelmed by artifice and performance. And though the series develops several significant criticisms of post-9/11 culture, including unsettling our confidence in counter-terrorism, torture, patriotism, work, and family life, its meanings tend to be polysemic, variable, and often incoherent. In the next chapter, I discuss several sequences in depth in order to highlight the themes and meanings that the series privileges, but I also emphasize how these meanings regularly contradict themselves with the consequence that they reproduce a de-politicized postmodern populist discourse.

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Themes and Meanings

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n the previous chapters I have discussed the form and style of 24, describing how certain genres, narratives, and character types structure the series and how it is distinguished by its visual aesthetic, its particular approach to editing and sound, and its acting and performances. While the series’ real-time plot device is unique, we also noted that 24 is relatively typical of mainstream films and television series. To that extent, it employs realism, classical narrative, continuity editing, characterdriven plots, and goal resolution as basic design principles. In addition to relying on these formal conventions, the series also often borrows and reimagines whole scenes and sequences from the history of film and television, which are exemplary instances of the series’ postmodernism. Moreover, I noted that these cultural pastiches create complex and often contradictory meanings; in this chapter, I revisit the issue of meaning in 24 by discussing the key themes of the series as they are represented in a variety of sequences and episodes. While the series is riddled with ideological contradictions, its fundamental themes tend to reinforce the impression of a world in crisis, dominated by militaristic law-and-order discourses. Douglas Kellner notes that “while providing startling

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allegorical visions of criminal activity of the current US political administration, the series also legitimated torture, political assassination, and other breaches of international law.”1 We find several significant themes in 24 including fear, crisis, urgency, patriotism, power, family, networks, technology, and conspiracy. While there are overlaps between these areas, there is also enough difference between them to allow for intriguing variations. For instance, while fear affects all the characters, their relationships to threats are necessarily different and varied, quite often radically so. Thus the show can make the point that, while it takes a patriot to defeat terror, it is also the case that patriots routinely create terror. By emphasizing broadbased crises—of the state, of the community, of the family, and of the individual—the series showcases all manner of destabilization. As we have seen, in the world of 24, not only is terror everywhere, but anyone can be a terrorist, and anyone can be killed. The production of anxiety is paramount in the series and takes many forms. Certainly the visceral nature of the action scenes, much admired by viewers, was a direct result of the desire to create a crisis-filled environment. And the anxiety introduced by the covert work of spies and counter-terrorists also contributes to this feeling. The overall sense of distrust and anxiety engendered by the series is also reflected in the theme of identity crises that encourages suspicion of characters and their intentions. On more than one occasion, the series represents identity as nothing more than a performance and that assumptions about identity can have deadly consequences. 24 is a world of duplicity in which subjects take on a variety of interchangeable roles and hence there is a preponderance of double agents, moles, and traitors. Notably, the theme of fear is bolstered by the series’ preferred formal and stylistic choices. For instance, the siege narrative is particularly important as a cultural form that reproduces the fear of threat. More generally, the double agent, the

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deadline, and the lethal weapon all become naturalized plot elements in 24’s extended threat landscape. Significantly, 24 is not alone in this, as numerous post-9/11 action-adventure films, television series, video games, comics, and graphic novels share common threats including sieges, false identities, and ticking bomb scenarios. During the period, even news channels contributed to this culture of fear by presenting “crisis alert” graphics in the corner of the screen that updated the population on threat probabilities. As David Altheide points out: “The symbolic construction of terrorism transformed the 9/11 attacks into a worldview that was apparent in numerous news and public affairs messages. Virtually all explicit and implicit political statements, holiday messages, commercials and advertisements, economic projections, domestic issues, fiscal discussions, and even sporting events communicated the danger of terrorism and thereby increased its significance.”2 Jonathan Markovitz adds: “Hollywood has a long history of turning widespread fears into cinematic spectacles, but never before has the source of those fears been so singular, so easily isolated, or so thoroughly disseminated to national and international audiences.”3 In popular fiction, fear is regularly associated with, and amplified by, the innocence of victims. In discussing the influence of the western and the melodrama on 24 we noted the importance of innocence and redemptive violence in the series’ storylines and characters. By generalizing innocence and perpetuating a sense of vigilance in the face of persistent crisis, 24 is able to produce fear, not just as an affect, but as a theme itself. This is consistent with the fact that, following 9/11, Americans tended to cast themselves as innocents and were encouraged to organize their lives around themes such as fear and persistent threat. As a consequence, threats appeared around every corner. This dynamic is represented well by the character of Kim Bauer, who is depicted as an innocent victim constantly under threat. In fact, Kim is so obviously meant to elicit fear

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that critics and fans alike have expressed displeasure with the creative team’s predictable use of “damsel in distress” plots. Moreover, because her father routinely helps her survive these threats, paternalism is affirmed as a core principle of the WOT. For example, on Day 1, Kim gets involved with bad teenagers who are connected to terrorists who inevitably cross paths with her counter-terrorist father. On Day 2, rebuilding her life after the death of her mother, Kim kidnaps a child, evades the police, and, with the help of her father, learns how to shoot a man dead. In later seasons, even when she reappears as a mother with her own family, her plotlines are nonetheless maddeningly driven by threats to her safety that inevitably become intertwined with her father’s job as a counter-terrorist. In 24 paternalism appears to be a natural and preferred reaction to fear and, to the extent that the series fictionalizes the WOT, this effectively supports the Bush administration’s own paternalism in its attempts to avenge American innocence. The conventions of Kim’s storylines are familiar to us from melodramas and fantasy narratives, and it is notable that her plots are full of fairy-tale elements. Specifically, they closely mimic the structure and themes found in the classic Grimm’s tales including “The Story of the Youth Who Went to Learn What Fear Was,” a tale that relates the adventures of a boy who survives a variety of increasingly terrifying situations by performing heroically, with skill and courage. Like this boy, Kim proves particularly adept at eluding various threats and, in this, she shares much with her father. From this perspective, her storylines can be reconsidered as a mirror of her father’s rather than simply irritating diversions. On Day 2, Kim has a series of threatening encounters that reproduce American fears of difference generally, but also refer to specific fears associated with Los Angeles, the setting for the first six seasons. The story begins with Kim estranged from her father and working as an au pair in the Hollywood Hills for a man who turns violently menacing during the course of

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the first two episodes. After escaping and taking her deranged boss’s daughter, Megan (Skye McCole Bartusiak), with her, Kim is arrested attempting to leave the city. She has been in contact with her father, who has broken protocol to warn her that an attack on Los Angeles is imminent, but local police create confusion for the Bauer family. In 24, we are often encouraged to see local police from a negative perspective and, additionally, because we sympathize with Bauer, typically a federal agent, our tendency is to ascribe a degree of ignorance borne of territoriality to the local authorities. In fact, their lack of global perspective constitutes a significant threat. In these sequences, the series represents its interest in the theme of networks, which acknowledges the contemporary geopolitical and technological context of global networks of information, capital, and power. This theme lies at the heart of the implication that the local police are ultimately ineffective in the WOT in which real-time “intel” is the condition for survival. Were they fully enabled, they would know that there is a nuclear attack planned for Los Angeles, but their interference with Kim’s plans displays their inability to stay informed and, inevitably, this contributes to the day’s crises. In fact, when they disrupt her plans to obey her father’s instructions to leave Los Angeles and to protect the child she has saved from a murdering father, they are represented as not only a threat to Kim but ultimately to paternalism and heroism, generally. The local police force, then, is represented as ill-informed, incompetent, and counter-productive in the WOT. The show prefers the slick, technologically enhanced, and globally networked policing of CTU and the FBI and represents them as powerful weapons against threats of terror. If the series sometimes depicts the state surveillance apparatus as cumbersome and bureaucratic, it nonetheless also affirms that the system is made effective by the innovative and committed individuals in its employ. Individuals like Bauer, O’Brian, Almeida, Mason, Edgar Stiles (Louis Lombardi), and Cole Ortiz

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(Freddie Prinze Jr.) all provide correctives to the system by internalizing the state’s imperative of urgency. Torin Monahan has observed: “This imperative for immediate action further catalyses the creation of zones of indistinction and states of permanent legal exception whereby the torture and consumption of human bodies appears to be merely collateral damage in the war for national security.”4 As many of the characters remind us throughout the series, they are without the luxury of time and they make difficult decisions based on their commitment to patriotic ideals and limited options. These celebrated “what if” scenarios made 24 a crucible for discussions about post-9/11 politics and ethics. From every point of entry into 24’s world, then, we encounter life in crisis dominated by a sense of urgency and necessity, including a mantra that the characters operate in a world distinguished by no time and no choices. The need to respond to this crisis-filled world introduces questions about the role of law and governance and appropriate responses to a state of exception. In the series, both good and bad characters circumvent or suspend the law in order to achieve their ends and, over the course of the series’ eight seasons, numerous characters and storylines contribute to discourses about patriotism, citizenship, and sacrifices made in the name of freedom and justice in a time of urgency. In 24, the state of exception becomes the dominant refrain, the norm. A notorious instance of the theme of urgency occurs during Day 4 when Bauer interrogates Audrey Raines’s estranged husband, Paul (James Frain). During this day, the theme of family, as always, is pronounced as the Araz family sleeper cell initiates a terrorist attack, while Bauer is shown dating Audrey and working for her father, Secretary of Defense James Heller (William Devane). The circle of connections between terror, the nation, and family is completed when Bauer discovers that Paul’s name has been linked to terrorists who are working with the Araz family. Bauer tells Audrey at the beginning of 4.11, as

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he prepares to torture Paul: “Right now, Paul is a prime suspect and he’s not cooperating with me and I don’t have time to do this any other way . . . and I need to know for sure.” Bauer’s torture of Paul has implications of primitive male competition for a woman, and when Paul taunts Bauer by saying, “You’re bluffing,” Bauer shows just how macho he is by pressing the live leads of a lamp cord against Paul’s bare, wet chest. Audrey is shocked at Bauer’s violent interrogation—whatever attracted her to him has now been replaced by revulsion and caution. For his part, Bauer’s reactions to Audrey indicate that he has also lost respect for her, scowling at her expressions of sympathy for Paul, and frustrated that she has interfered with his work. Because Paul reveals information that advances the investigation, the implied meaning of these scenes supports torture as a productive form of interrogation, and thus the series apparently endorses the Bush administration’s view of torture. But, just as powerfully, Bauer’s actions are condemned, because they ultimately result in Paul’s death. If these weren’t exceptional times, Bauer would be considered a murderer. This sequence, like many in the series, provides an excessively violent representation of the negative effects of the WOT on family life. And this is not limited to Bauer’s storyline during this episode, as we also see this strategy used when CTU Director Erin Driscoll (Alberta Watson) puts job and national security above her daughter’s care, resulting in the young girl’s suicide. The plot is designed to illicit viewer empathy, and the depiction of the crisis provides a powerful picture of the bare social relations fostered in the period. In fact, the expendability of human life is represented in no clearer fashion than the closing moments of the episode. The grieving Driscoll reaches down to hold her bloodied and dead child on the cold floor of the CTU medical facility, and the frame shrinks to make space for an image of Secretary of Defense Heller informing the president, “It’s over . . . we’ve stopped the meltdown.” The two frames comment on each other: when Heller says, “It’s over,” an

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image of Driscoll’s daughter is featured in the other frame, with the meltdown he mentions understood as a reference to her mental collapse. The sequence also draws connections between the public and private spheres when the president, in the upper frame, receives congratulations for the success of stopping the crisis while, in the other frame, the CTU director huddles over her daughter on the blood-spattered floor. Yet, predictably, and in contrast to what Heller says, the crisis is not over and the final shots of the sequence show Bauer in pursuit of a terrorist who ultimately eludes capture. This episode confirms, in agonizing ways, that the WOT and neoliberalism generally produce a world of crisis that incessantly grinds innocents and families to pulp. It is through Jack Bauer’s reactions generally that we mediate our understanding of 24’s world of crisis and, moreover, our reactions to the series’ characterization of geopolitics post-9/11. Bauer personifies patriotic urgency in the period, and several scenes confirm this in unsparing detail. His reputation for successfully extracting, under deadline, valuable information that will save the day is a persistent plot device and, in episode 7.11, for instance, Bauer brings torture to the White House as he conducts an off-book interrogation of Ryan Burnett (Eyal Podell). It happens that Burnett’s boss, Senator Blaine Mayer, is in a meeting with President Allison Taylor at the very moment that Bauer begins to torture Burnett. Mayer is the senator we met at the beginning of the day conducting his own interrogation of Bauer at an official hearing of allegations of prisoner abuse and other illegal behavior at the now-disbanded CTU. The meeting between President Taylor and Senator Mayer includes a remarkably lucid discussion of the theme of rogue behavior that has extratextual implications, with Mayer holding to a line of argument that serves as a direct refutation of the Bush administration’s position. Mayer describes Bauer as a “thug,” echoing Paul Raines’s snarling comment to Audrey in Season 4 that her boyfriend was “just a thug with a badge.” On one level,

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the contest between Mayer and Bauer is exemplary of the masculine competition featured in the series, and thus Bauer’s aggressive interrogation of Burnett, like his torture of Paul Raines, can be seen as a form of exaggerated male aggression. But when Bauer tases Burnett and flatly says, “I can pull this trigger 128 more times before this battery dies,” the effect is both humorous and insidious. The mood becomes grim and sadistic after Bauer continues to tase Burnett and then says, “That was twelve hundred volts of current; now, when I eject this cartridge I access the drive stun mode, upping the voltage 40 times.” Like his earlier and more famous line from the opening episode of Season 2, “I’m gonna need a hacksaw,” when preparing to behead pedophile and terrorist Marshall Goren (Carl Ciarofalio), these lines are typical of what we have come to expect from representations of geopolitics contemporaneous with the show. While Bauer may be seen by some as a thug, he is nonetheless an illustration of the core principle of neoliberalism—ruthless competitive individualism. In any case, President Taylor storms the office and interrupts Bauer before he can get information about the terrorists’ target. Bauer has been able to establish that Burnett is involved in the plot, information that the viewer already has gathered from earlier episodes, but this means that Taylor and Mayer have unwittingly enabled the terrorists to proceed. This effectively endorses Bauer’s approach and suggests that diplomatic quibbling about torture is counter-productive in the face of hardened terrorist commitment. In fact, Bauer often explains to naive citizens and politicians (including Mayer) that terrorists don’t play by commonly accepted rules. But the show’s message, again, is equivocal, in part because each of the four characters featured in this sequence (Bauer, Taylor, Mayer, and Burnett), though in conflict with each other, all claim to be patriots and assert that their actions represent the best interests of the nation. The accompanying storyline that includes General Benjamin Juma (Tony Todd), who is in league with Burnett,

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adds another layer of confusion to these representations of patriotism as Juma himself is also a conflicted patriot, having led a coup in the name of his nation, the fictional Sengala. He is ultimately revealed to be a tyrant working with American patriot terrorists, which inspires the theme of conspiracy that guides the day’s events. It turns out that on Day 7, Starkman Industries, run by American patriots, attempts to undermine President Taylor’s leadership by using Juma and, notably, the president’s daughter Olivia (Sprague Graydon) to produce a national crisis. As we have seen, the series regularly features conspiracies that link families and terror. Thus, while the conspiracy genre tantalizes us with the possibility of pulling the veil off the secret world of government and corporate affairs, 24 uses the form strictly to produce a pervasive sense of paranoia. In large part, this is an effect of the serial form. Because primetime soaps are designed to draw out their crises and defer resolution, the form of 24 can be seen as reinforcing the nihilist meanings of the conspiracy genre in which the reveal is always a window onto greater obfuscation. In 7.18, for instance, Starkman executive Jonas Hodges bellows at President Taylor when he is arrested for conspiracy: “You think this ends with me? I’m just a small cog in a very big machine. . . . You can’t even begin to imagine what you’re up against.” Such is the nature of the series: by remaining always on the precipice of truth, ambiguous about its position, foregrounding the crises of characters who exist in liminal states, it retains a populist address that speaks to a variety of interested viewers, not all of whom understand politics in the same way, although all viewers probably agree that they are watching a television series about citizenship, governance, and politics. Bauer’s rampage in search of Burnett begins when he confronts Bill Buchanan (James Morrison), his former superior and ex-friend at the now disbanded CTU. Buchanan has been working covertly with O’Brian and Almeida to expose a government

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conspiracy, and they have invited Bauer into their patriot group. Bauer soon grows impatient and confronts Buchanan: “The attack window is open, we’re out of time,” and proceeds to bind him to a chair and knock him out, ostensibly so that Buchanan is not held responsible for Bauer’s actions. From this point on in the season, claims of patriotism are measured strictly by their relationship to the ticking bomb. Even the music, which pulsates with triumphant bursts, emphasizes the idea that patriotism is conjoined to urgency and the state of exception. Indeed, even loathsome patriots like Jonas Hodges and Phillip Bauer, who intentionally subvert national security in order to justify the need for increased U.S. militarism, are tolerated because their patriotism is associated with a shortage of time and their illegal actions are granted the distinction of being their only reasonable choice in the face of crisis. Urgency rules the day in these scenarios, and along with being a defense of the state of exception and radically populist notions of patriotism, these types of representations can also be understood, as noted, as contributing to a discourse about neoliberalism more generally. For instance, the cultivation of opportunism by power elites and the corresponding constriction of principles of democracy and citizenship constitute core formations of meaning in neoliberalism, irrespective of the WOT. At the beginning of Season 2, Bauer is recovering from the murder of his wife by his former lover and double agent Nina Myers at the end of Season 1, and is summoned from self-exile by President David Palmer. He is secretly assigned to discover evidence that will avert a war with three Middle Eastern nations. While covert work is typical for Bauer, the president’s endorsement of illegal actions and his unwillingness to disclose these to his cabinet are anomalous for a leader who is highly respected for standing up for the principles of democracy, transparency, and justice. On Day 1, for instance, Palmer was willing to sacrifice his political career in order to expose a murder cover-up involving his staff and family. In that instance, his principled

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stand is rewarded by his family name being cleared and his political victory. On Day 2, Palmer accepts that duplicity is part of his job, but as it turns out his reputation as an honorable politician will be preserved because Bauer finds the evidence that allows the president to stop the unjustified military strike. Here, the themes of urgency, patriotism, and the state of exception jump out at the viewer, but they are not delivered as a coherent message so much as an expression of populist affect incorporating a variety of intertextual references to news media, political discourses, and popular culture. As a populist pastiche, 24 ultimately produces incoherent meanings and contradictory ideological formulations that are typical of postmodern culture. Routinely, we are witness to the ways that the series’ commercial form produces ambivalent meanings and, in some cases, equivocation to the point of nonsense. The approach to the topic of the defensibility of rogue behavior is a case in point. The series could not fully endorse rogues without appearing to confirm charges that it was simply a conservative mouthpiece. But, as entertainment, the series could not afford to ignore the historical appeal of rogues in American popular culture. The result is an ideological agglomeration that suppresses coherent meaning in favor of excessive affect. As Stacy Takacs puts it: If the ideological content of 24 varies from hour to hour, season to season, this variation is mitigated by the relentlessness of its structural compulsion to love the nation and its representatives or risk expulsion, punishment, or death. It is a form of emotional blackmail that demands viewers abide the loss of their personal freedoms in exchange for collective security, and it defines security in narrowly nationalist terms.5 In this sense, 24 can be considered a cognitive map of its time. In its forms and its meanings, it registers the dominant features

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of the world and the relations that give it shape. The series normalizes crisis scenarios and violent responses to threats, and it also provides, in the figure of Jack Bauer, a model of citizenship appropriate for the period. As Slavoj Zizek has pointed out, Bauer is an example of “what Giorgio Agamben calls homini sacer, those who can be killed with impunity since, in the eyes of the law, their life no longer counts.”6 This theme is repeated throughout the series and we recognize that Bauer, his wife Teri, his lovers, various CTU agents, and a multitude of terrorists represent the concept of the human subject that lives only to die: expendability a seemingly mandatory condition of post-9/11 life. As a secret agent, Bauer must routinely disavow his own identity and take on the role of a cog in the larger wheel of global politics, battered and humiliated by past defeats, freighted with the dishonor heaped on him by incompetent politicians and conniving criminals. He is compelled to take on roles that regularly deny him basic citizenship. For instance, he has been disowned by politicians and exiled by them, he has assassinated co-workers, faked his own death, developed a heroin addiction to go under­ cover, been poisoned and contaminated, and alienated his friends and family in order to serve as a patriot in the fight against terrorism. Bauer is sometimes depicted as gaining a reprieve from crisis, humbly carrying on outside the world of terror, as is the case at the beginning of Days 1, 5, and 8. But the lesson that these glimpses provide is not that peace, or lack of crisis, is a goal that is preferable and achievable, but that the tedium of low-wage, unskilled labor and the curse of social anonymity and alienation represent a form of impotence and walking death. Bauer is dull when he is not being a spy. Crisis, apparently, injects vitality into citizenship, and the world of 24 can only emerge once the agent is called back into service much the way that sheriffs, detectives, super heroes, and knights are summoned in times of crisis. It is only in this capacity as a wish fulfillment, a fantasy, that Bauer can serve as the medium of

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popular discontent, the conduit of suppressed rage, and the secret agent of neoliberalism. The impunity that criminal heroes like Jack Bauer enjoy can be read as an acknowledgment that the crises represented in the stories create a condition of civil war that predominates at large. Thus the rule of force prevails. The days that we share with Bauer illustrate Agamben’s point that “the declaration of the state of exception has gradually been replaced by an unprecedented generalization of the paradigm of security as the normal form of government.”7 Bauer, like other heroes who perform outside the law, proceeds with the assumption that he is in the midst of war and his actions are to be justified based on the extreme nature of this crisis. Such fantasies—of individuals who take decisive action in the context of lawlessness—are also expressions of populist resentment against a variety of perceived injustices. In the post-9/11 context, calls for holding terrorists accountable were ubiquitous and 24 regularly narrativized discourses about extreme justice and revenge as everyday necessities. For instance, in episode 2.17, an extensive discussion of how best to respond to threats of terror develops around Chief of Staff Mike Novick’s commitment to uncover information about the covert activity that President Palmer has assigned to Bauer. Midway through the episode we see Novick ask Lynne Kresge, the Special Advisor to the President, for Bauer’s contact information. He is hoping to get an update about the authenticity of the Cyprus audio file in order to determine his next course of action, which may include undermining President Palmer’s “wait and see” approach regarding the retaliatory strikes in the Middle East. Kresge warns him that this is a dangerous and “conspiratorial” move, and Novick replies in clipped tones that her objections are “duly noted.” This is yet another instance of characters in the series taking matters into their own hands and dismissing contrary opinions as irrelevant or, worse, unpatriotic.

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The specter of conspiracy: Chief of Staff Mike Novick.

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In this case, Novick’s rogue actions will be proven wrong in the extreme as they contribute to Kresge’s accident, the removal of the president from office, and the nation being brought to the brink of war. In later episodes, he will be dismissed as chief of staff, a plot development that effectively criticizes the strategy of rogue behavior. As we have seen, off-book is Bauer’s preferred approach and it regularly achieves desired results, but, as is the case here, the series often contradicts this positive representation of rogues by punishing those who ignore policy and protocol. Already on Day 2, for example, National Security Agency (NSA) representative Eric Rayburn (Timothy Carhart) is dismissed for his disregard of Palmer’s orders, and his replacement, NSA chief Roger Stanton (Harris Yulin), is eventually tortured for misleading the president. Ultimately, Novick, Palmer’s cabinet, and Vice President Jim Prescott (Alan Dale) are all assailed for circumventing presidential orders. By punishing officials in this way, the show suggests that rogue behavior is confined to characters that exist in a liminal political and legal space. The president has ordered Bauer into the field, but ultimately he is

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operating as a former CTU agent with unclear official status. This is also the case when the president, on the same day, assigns his ex-wife and freelance consultant Sherry to a covert mission so as to avoid getting his hands dirty. While these plots provide confusing ideological meanings, they do allow the series to have its cake and eat it too, as it were: terrorists can be fought through illegal means and the offices of the government can maintain plausible deniability because the criminal behavior is attributable to isolated individuals. Ultimately, though, over the years the series contributed to the appeal of rogue actions by representing a variety of CTU and FBI agents, politicians, and citizens who gravitate toward, or are coerced into, illegal actions in order to assist Bauer. Ultimately, their success in fighting terrorists sends a mixed message about attitudes toward unlawful behavior, and the resulting hodgepodge of meanings makes it difficult to discern the series’ overall intentions. In part, the inability to assert confidently 24’s ideological position is related to its formal strategy of plot twists and reversals that reveal multiple layers of truths. That is to say, information deficits compel viewers to anticipate that knowledge is always only partial and relative. A popular tangent of this theme is the conspiracy plot that represents the power and threat of global networks that are too expansive for any one individual to comprehend. On Days 5 and 7, for instance, Presidents Logan and Taylor, respectively, are being manipulated by secret and globally influential cabals, but the restricted narration withholds this information from viewers, and thus the inability to discern truth from lies and good from bad, for instance, produces extreme anxiety. The compelling storytelling creates suspense and produces fear about not knowing enough about global connections and relations. Thus, while the series does consider the increased role of transnational and international citizenry in the context of globalized technologies and geopolitics, it tends to reinforce Walter Benjamin’s view that “in times of terror, when

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everyone is something of a conspirator, everybody will be in a situation where he has to play detective.”8 In fact, Jack Z. Bratich claims that “snitch culture, as a type of popular spycraft, has been a persistent part of U.S. history. By sketching this long line, we note that the popular secrecy has been integral to U.S. politics.”9 Adopting this perspective, 24 encourages highly conservative and xenophobic attitudes toward global flows because they represent potential ruptures and leaks but also new formations of power that challenge U.S. hegemony. Multiculturalism, globalization, and the free movement of people and information across borders all become threatening characteristics of the period. These anxieties provide fertile ground for ethical debates about the intensified repression of populations by the U.S. military and the expanded capacity, after 9/11, of the state to spy on its own citizens. One of the strongest motivations for characters in the series to “get off the grid” or “go dark,” for instance, is the vast network of surveillance that maps the population. This apparatus is represented by the variety of spies that populate the stories but also by the surveillance technologies that track and locate subjects. In order to avoid detection by this system, one has to disconnect from it or go underground much in the way that guerilla fighters and survivalists, for instance, avoid control mechanisms and detection systems. As we have seen, Jack Bauer gains a degree of freedom by moving to the shadowy edges of his world. We noted both Bauer’s and Drazen’s liminal identity in episodes 1.20 and 1.21, for instance, and, throughout the seasons, characters often become significant because of their liminal identity, because they are outside a system of registration. This theme also manifests itself, of course, in characters who are not what they appear to be, such as double agents or family member villains like Marie Warner and Phillip Bauer. These characters have an identity that we fail to fully perceive. Importantly, the theme of being outside is also represented in spaces that are beyond perception or are otherwise liminal.

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Some of these are off the radar, or they are shielded from surveillance, as in those instances when satellite coverage loses a vehicle in a tunnel or when a tracking device is damaged. These unmapped spaces are represented as alien and dangerous (e.g., the DOD bunker where Victor Drazen is delivered; the Los Angeles Coliseum on Day 2, where Sherry Palmer tries to bluff the villain Peter Kingsley [Tobin Bell]; the offshore oil rig where Phillip Bauer holds his grandson hostage on Day 8). This theme is provocatively presented in Kim’s fairy tale on Day 2 when she escapes from custody and avoids detection by getting outside the city and into ravines where she can hide. While this encounter with the wild achieves her goal of moving off the police radar, it quickly becomes a threatening space when she realizes that she is being stalked by a cougar. Ludicrous as a story element, serving possibly only as a hyperbolized threat in her fairy tale, Kim’s encounter nonetheless makes sense as a story set in Los Angeles. As Mike Davis points out, one of the unique characteristics of the city is its extensive perimeter contact with the wild. No other city in America has as extensive a perimeter and, Davis informs us, Los Angeles’s boundary is home to a uniquely diverse range of animals, plants, and geography.10 Seen from this perspective, Kim’s encounter with the cougar seems less preposterous and more like another of the series’ references to the spatio-cultural meaning of Los Angeles. The representation of the threat that is associated with being outside Los Angeles is extended and intensified when she steps into a snare and becomes prey for both the cougar and the loner who eventually shows up to check his traps. This character, Rick (Kevin Dillon), is exemplary of being outside and is associated, in the American context, with paramilitary groups and survivalists, and he also recalls Los Angeles’s early history as a last preserve of white Protestant settlement. Survivalism is a value that also informs Jack Bauer’s identity, so it is not surprising that Rick is depicted in ambiguous ways—on the one hand, he is clearly a threat to Kim, but his

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status as being outside the law is fully consistent with an attitude that the series enthusiastically endorses. Ultimately, though, Rick’s efforts to contain Kim in his underground lair prove to be a narrative obstacle, and she proceeds to negotiate her freedom. Although he has lied to Kim and is effectively holding her captive, Rick is not judged harshly and, because he ultimately releases her and gives her directions and a gun for protection, he is not characterized as a terrorist so much as a misguided American who unintentionally assists terrorists by interfering with the counter-terrorist project. After gaining her freedom, Kim walks through the night, climbing through ravines and shadows, and eventually comes to a quiet road where, first, two bikers pass threateningly and then a young man in a messy car pulls over. Kim, sensing danger, decides to pass on his offer of a ride, and, proving that her intuition was correct, he reacts aggressively and angrily abandons her after she defends herself with the gun. After walking a bit further, Kim accepts a ride from a woman in an SUV. Kim places her trust in this woman and has just settled into the ride when she receives a call from her father, who informs her that he is flying the plane that will divert the nuclear device to the Mojave Desert. Breaking down with the realization that he will die in the explosion, Kim jumps from the vehicle and runs into the night. She eventually reaches a convenience store and it is here that another encounter with difference is staged. Ramon Garcia (Lombardo Boyar), who holds Kim hostage in the convenience store and accidentally shoots and kills the clerk, is a crudely drawn caricature of a desperate young Latino and, as such, represents the other to Kim Bauer’s norm. Like Kim, he is anxious about the bomb but, unlike her, he reacts hysterically and makes one mistake after another, encouraging us to see him as immature, unintelligent, and cowardly. While he is concerned for his family, his poor leadership results in an extreme crisis, and the events at the store, then, constitute another representation of a stereotypical threat associated with

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Los Angeles—fear about Latino culture. The intensity of this racialized fear is notable when compared to Kim’s earlier encounter with the white survivalist Rick. While both men represent exaggerated responses to a threatening world, Rick is essentially forgiven while Ramon is criminalized. Clearly, Kim’s fairy tale provides opportunities to encounter fear, but it also includes representations of other themes that the series privileges including patriotism, urgency, and family and social relations. It is also important to note that, because of the series’ emphasis on affect and sentiment, and its routine ideological equivocation, the meanings extracted from these scenes tend to be obvious and superficial (because they derive from a fairy tale) and relatively incoherent (because they are populist pastiches). Returning to the notorious scene during Day 7 of Bauer torturing Ryan Burnett, we can see how these themes become entwined. Initially, we would note that, unlike those in the first six seasons, which were shot and set in Los Angeles, these events take place in Washington, D.C., and, while the locations used in Los Angeles were both unique to primetime television (e.g., the San Fernando Valley, downtown, the harbor) and typical (e.g., the U.S. Bank Tower, the river), the Georgetown and D.C. locations signify sites that are overdetermined by their political and military status. In the episode under discussion, for instance, all roads lead to the White House. Thus, the allegorical battle between those on the inside and those laying siege from the outside is cast in literal terms, with Burnett infiltrating while General Juma leads the siege through the waterways under the White House. In what appears to be an extravagant Freudian metaphor, Juma is represented as the return of the repressed, the Id, that presents both a physical and psychological threat. Having been introduced and temporarily displaced in the made-for-TV movie 24: Redemption, broadcast a year before this episode’s release, Juma emerges from below as the subterranean threat to the dominant order—he is a monster in the tradition of the American horror film.11

Themes and Meanings

As discussed in relation to the siege narrative, 24 represents such threats as spatial ruptures—an inside is exposed and those previously on the outside gain power by inserting themselves into protected space. But the identity of those on the inside and outside is often confused in the world of 24, and this confusion about identity provides significant narrative suspense. In short, the spatial logic of 24 can be said to also perpetuate the state of exception as a norm. Fear invades every space and thus the distinctions between inside and outside spaces, for instance, become increasingly unclear. As Anne Caldwell and Samuel A. Chambers put it, “The zone of exception proves to be a liminal realm in which the clear lines of legitimacy blur. 24 attempts to draw those lines, and, in so doing, demonstrates their fuzziness.”12 We recognized this in episodes 1.20 and 1.21 as Bauer tries to defend the bunker that holds Victor Drazen. Over the course of the two hours, the bunker is transformed from a relatively unknown space to ground zero of a national security breach. Its status as being off the grid initially defines it as a place of safety, but ultimately this makes it vulnerable when the terrorists lay siege. These types of scenarios reaffirm the series’ strategy of normalizing the state of exception by exaggerating the themes of crisis and urgency. And, if we recall that these scenes are reimaginings of the films Assault on Precinct 13 and Rio Bravo, we have an insight into how long the state of exception has been part of the American cultural imagination. Jameson argues that postmodern culture features “the transformation of reality into images” and “the fragmentation of time into a series of perpetual presents.” 24 embodies these features to the extent that, while it is ostensibly about the contemporary reality of terrorism, and gained extraordinary attention because of its perceived symmetry with history, on closer inspection it is apparent that the series repackages the reality of neoliberalism and the post-9/11 period, specifically, into a series of representational conventions that emphasize crisis and urgency. In so doing, the series elides reality as a process

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of history and replaces it with a world, a totality, defined by appeals to take action in the immediate present regardless of history or the future. This is substantiated by the fact that, although it contains some topical references, including mention of Guantanamo Bay and representations of waterboarding and official debates about torture, by April and May 2003, halfway through the second season, 24’s storylines were already wildly out of touch with reality. While the United States was preparing for the invasion of Iraq, 24 was telling a story about a principled president averting a war in the Middle East. Fixated, as it is, on a perpetual present that is under constant threat, 24 is also restricted in its capacity to imagine an original response to crisis. In this way, 24 actually interferes with our ability to understand the reality to which it refers.

Conclusion

D

espite its apparent geopolitical relevance, 24 is primarily about entertainment and shopping, not war, politics, or history. Imaginatively capturing the narcotic fantasy effects of the series, Kiefer Sutherland described it as “Dynasty on crack.”1 This type of admission that 24 is nothing but spectacle is made explicit in the final minutes of the series, when Chloe O’Brian prepares to shut down the operation and tells analyst Arlo Glass (John Boyd): “Whatever happened here, didn’t happen. Understand?” This is meant as a bit of ironic dialogue, but the series’ solipsistic style does, in fact, convey the sense that, despite all the crises and action, nothing ever changed or even happened on the series. For a series so focused on the passage of time, it was as though time stood still. Its regurgitation of mainstream conventions and populist references encouraged conservative meanings. And its emphasis on humorless and repressed heroism evoked a nostalgic tone that gave rise to numerous contradictory and confusing ideological meanings. It is as though 24 can tell us nothing new. But its commercial success suggests that its marketing and promotion were profoundly in sync with the times. As a commodity, the series is an eye-catching

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pastiche of forms, styles, and discourses that is exemplary of postmodern culture. As Joseph Natoli explains: Our world has also been shifting from the uncertainty and nervousness and always-looming darkness of twentiethcentury modernism into the aimless playfulness of the postmodern. A good part of that playfulness extends to whatever we’ve inherited along the lines of traditional values and meanings, firm foundations, and reachable eternal verities. The market has found its port here, jacking into an attitude that buries the old and has us rushing for the new. New realities require new fashions, new homes, new cars, and new looks. In this new postmodern world, nothing has lasting, intrinsic value: value is in the newest line, the most recent innovation, and the new technological advance.2 24’s strategy of packaging its historical moment, the WOT, as a commodity makes clear how postmodern culture is driven by the desire to create simulations and to make reality serviceable for consumerism. Its pastiches provide a kaleidoscope of social, cultural, economic, political, and military references that fold together current and older forms and styles, lived and mediated experiences, and documented and performed events. And all this is produced in strictest alignment with commercial media practice that emphasizes the absolute dominance of the present and the market. In fact, 24 fully embraced its capacity as a commodity exchanged across several media platforms, and its development of webisodes, interactivity, and elaborate DVD packaging served as a business model for global television success during the period. 24’s postmodernism encouraged the full integration of terrorism with consumerism. David Altheide has argued persuasively that the WOT was not only a political venture but an excellent example of consumerism’s imbrication in the dense fabric of all aspects of

There has everywhere been an emphatic turn toward neoliberalism in political-economic practices since the 1970s. Deregulation, privatization, and withdrawal of the state from many areas of social provision have been all too common. . . . [Neoliberalism] seeks to bring all

Conclusion

everyday life, inflecting its values on ideas and discourses about citizenship, patriotism, identity, and security: “Unlike reactions to previous ‘external attacks’ such as Pearl Harbour, which stressed conservation, personal sacrifice, and commitment, a prevailing theme of consumption-as-character and financial contributions as commitment pervaded mass media messages surrounding the 9/11 attacks.”3 24’s significance as a simulation lies in the fact that it commodifies crisis, revealing, in turn, the extent to which artifice and fantasy are central aspects of mass engagement with politics in postmodernism. In fact, the use of media fantasies to explain real crises helps contextualize U.S. Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia’s defense of harsh interrogation methods when he claimed that, by resorting to torture, “Jack Bauer saved Los Angeles.”4 In a world constructed as a cultural pastiche that conforms to the logic of commercial media, Scalia’s enthusiasm for the series is recognition that many Americans see Bauer as confronting what Altheide calls “terrorism world.” This is the simulation that dominates in the post-9/11 and neoliberal contexts, a worldview where “terrorism defined reality and became an incorrigible proposition that could not be questioned, challenged or falsified.”5 If this was a new reality, then Jack Bauer seemed tailor-made as our avatar in the post-9/11 world of terror. More suggestive still is the idea that 24 is not only about the WOT but that it actually engages with the crisis that goes by the name of neoliberalism. Themes that drive 24, including the urgency of competition, the instrumentalization of life, and the atrophied public sphere, are also characteristics of neoliberal political economy. As David Harvey explains:

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human action into the domain of the market. This involves technologies of information creation. . . . Hence, neoliberalism’s intense interest in and pursuit of information technologies.6 Given this backdrop, it is reasonable to see the world of 24 as a reaction to and repackaging of the social and political crises ushered in by neoliberalism. Its use of conspiracy stories, its representations of human sacrifice in the name of the security state, its depiction of the space-time compression of ICT, and the privilege it grants the present all refer in a relatively clear way to a world familiar to everyone—daily life in neoliberalism. From this perspective, terrorism didn’t arrive with 9/11—it had been going on for decades in the form of rising debt crises, increased living costs, joblessness and dead-end jobs, and the loss of freedoms and aspirations. Viewers were already familiar with heroes who had risen to fight against this overwhelming feeling of powerlessness. Characters popularized by actors such as Clint Eastwood, Sylvester Stallone, Chuck Norris, and Bruce Willis were the types of populist heroes that routinely took on the crises and threats associated with neoliberalism: yuppies, red-tape bureaucrats, careerist politicians. Jack Bauer is part of this populist lineage, and his fight is conceived as a struggle against an unjust system, asserting the innocence of betrayed and besieged Americans. 24’s real-time plotting perfectly captured the feeling of the devaluation of human life through the period, specifically by making a day seem so long and life so pointless. Moreover, the techno-fetishistic and paranoid character of neoliberalism was reflected in the shiny surfaces of the mise-en-scène that included miles of surveillance and computer screens. The “ticking bomb,” in particular the way that the sound of the clock grates on nerves and the image sears into consciousness, was the ideal symbol of the contradictory aspects of life lived in neoliberalism—the grind experienced as a race against the

Conclusion

clock. Unfortunately, because American popular culture and its heroes are consumed as commodities, their collective political and activist fire is dampened. But, to be sure, 24’s expression of populist resentment leaves burning embers.7 Throughout this book, I have argued that, despite profound correspondences between 24 and post-9/11 geopolitics that mark the series as historically relevant, the distinction the series most deserves derives from its innovative and flamboyant approach to storytelling and visual style. For instance, the use of real-time plotting, multiple-frame compositions, and extreme violence establish the series’ place in television history. But I have also pointed out that, innovative as 24 is, it is also highly conservative. From both formal and ideological perspectives the series routinely privileges conservative values and cultural forms. Its references to the past include numerous instances of reimagining scenes and sequences from previous films and television series. In fact, the construction of Jack Bauer can be understood from this perspective as a reimagining, in the era of neoliberalism, of the traditional American hero who acts violently and outside the law.8 Following Jameson, we can appreciate these reimaginings as examples of pastiche that produce a fragmentation of meaning associated with postmodernism. This is evident in the series’ focus on the sequence and the scene, and its general indifference to the overall coherence or plausibility of the story. A good example of the consequences of postmodernism’s attitude to coherent meaning is the concept of being “Behroozed,” for instance. Additionally, the shameless recycling of plot twists and character types also reinforces the sense that 24 is a pastiche of dead forms and styles. Moreover, to the extent that each episode is a version of the pilot, we also sense the extreme level of self-reference that is at the heart of 24. Ultimately, the postmodern style of 24 emphasizes meanings that are too obvious, self-conscious, and exaggerated to reasonably engage with their historical moment or provide

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insight about that reality. The influence of the series’ other principal aesthetic source—the melodramatic mode—contributes to this affect as well because, as Peter Brooks says, “Nothing is understood, everything is overstated.”9 This is evident in the series’ repeated staging of ethical debates in the heightened emotional context of “ticking bomb” scenarios. This tendency to hyperbole is notable because it implies that the show was made to be consumed as play, a media fantasy, or a formal exercise, but not as reality.10 Additionally, Jameson argues that postmodernism is distinguished by cultural forms that are emptied of their historical content but continue in a nostalgic mode. This is precisely what is happening in the series’ appropriation of past forms, including the western and the Cold War spy thriller. Hence, 24’s excesses derive both from the melodramatic mode and postmodern style. Among the clutter of forms and conventions that it accumulates, 24’s relationship to its own historical moment is often difficult to discern, although its popularity can be seen to lie precisely in its unwillingness to cast meaning onto this reality. Instead, 24 creates a nostalgic affect—secure, fetishized, and commoditized—that inoculates it from having any value as a critical account of its time.

Notes

Introduction 1. Suzanne C. Ryan, “TV Producers Have to Be Agile to Deal with Ratings, Say Experts,” Boston Globe, January 16, 2005, http://my. brandeis.edu/news/item?news_item_id=103458&show_release_ date=1, accessed April 18, 2012; “Viewership Numbers of Prime-Time Programs during the 2005–06 Television Season,” ABC Medianet, May 25, 2006, http://web.archive.org/web/20070310210300/http:// www.abcmedianet.com/pressrel/dispDNR.html?id=053106_05, accessed April 18, 2012; Kath Skerry, “2006–07 Primetime Ratings,” Give Me My Remote, May 29, 2007, www.givememyremote.com/ remote/2007/05/29/2006–07-primetime-ratings/, accessed April 18, 2012; Robert Seidman, “Dancing with the Stars, CSI and NCIS Lead Weekly Broadcast Viewing,” TV by the Numbers, November 25, 2008, http://tvbythenumbers.zap2it.com/2008/11/25/dancing-with-the -stars-csi-and-ncis-lead-weekly-broadcast-viewing/8758/, accessed April 18, 2012; Bill Gorman, “Final 2009–10 Broadcast Primetime Show Average Viewership,” TV by the Numbers, June 16, 2010, http:// tvbythenumbers.zap2it.com/2010/06/16/final-2009–10-broadcastprimetime-show-average-viewership/54336/, accessed April 18, 2012. 2. Rush Limbaugh, “24 and America’s Image in Fighting Terrorism: Fact, Fiction, or Does It Matter?,” in Secrets of 24: The Unauthorized Guide to the Political and Moral Issues behind TV’s Most Riveting Drama, ed. Dan Burstein and Arne J. De Keijzer (New York: Sterling, 2007), 152.

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3. For an overview of the characteristics of “quality TV” see Jane Feuer, “HBO and the Concept of Quality TV,” in Quality TV: Contemporary American Television and Beyond, ed. Janet McCabe and Kim Akass (London: I. B. Taurus, 2007), 145–57. On the series’ relationship to quality TV see Daniel Chamberlain and Scott Ruston, “24 and Twenty-First Century Quality Television,” in Reading 24: TV against the Clock, ed. Steven Peacock (London: I. B. Taurus, 2007), 13–24. 4. Yvonne Tasker, “Television Crime Drama and Homeland Security: From Law & Order to ‘Terror TV,’ ” Cinema Journal 51, no. 4 (2012): 44–65, and Stacy Takacs, Terrorism TV: Popular Entertainment in Post9/11 America (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2012). 5. The violence that is constitutive of the TV series influenced the books and the video game, and the latter was notable for its inclusion of torture-interrogation gameplay, which was relatively rare in games during the period. See Mark L. Sample, “Virtual Torture: Videogames and the War on Terror,” Game Studies 8, no. 2 (2008), www. gamestudies.org, accessed April 30, 2013. 6. 24 was an early adopter of new distribution technologies. In 2005, it introduced “mobisodes” for cell phones in a series called 24: Conspiracy that was nominated for an Emmy for innovative programming for mobile devices; it was included as disc 7 in Season 4’s DVD package. Subsequent webisode series emphasized cross-promotional opportunities and included 24: Day 6 Debrief (available only to American Express card holders), 24: Day Zero, and The Rookie (both sponsored by Unilever’s Degree Men antiperspirant). In each case, the paratextual material was an easily recognizable extension of the TV series but also introduced significant unique stylistic characteristics that were important for its success beyond TV screens. For a discussion of some of these techniques, see Max Dawson, “Little Players, Big Shows: Format, Narration, and Style on Television’s New Smaller Screens,” in Convergence: The International Journal of Research into New Media Technologies 13, no. 3 (2007): 231–50. Observing the absorption of the series into daily life, one commentator offered the following account of 24’s use of cell phones and texting in Season 6: “Viewers could subscribe to a text-message service and get updates and previews from Jack Bauer. For a program that often features high-octane mobile phone usage, this was tantamount to being part of the action. Via this marketing scheme, the text spills out into everyday practice via the very technology featured prominently in the show. For the twenty-first century spy, immersion into everyday life

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is not just representational.” Jack Z. Bratich, “Spies Like Us: Secret Agency and Popular Occulture,” in Secret Agents: Popular Icons beyond James Bond, ed. Jeremy Packer (New York: Peter Lang, 2009), 138. 7. The Heritage Foundation (panel), “24 and America’s Image in Fighting Terrorism: Fact, Fiction, or Does It Matter?,” June 2006, www. heritage.org/events/2006/06/24-and-americas-image-in-fighting -terrorism-fact-fiction-or-does-it-matter; Chuck Kleinhans, John Hess, and Julia Lesage, “Torture and the National Imagination,” Jump Cut: A Review of Contemporary Media, no. 50 (Summer 2008), www.ejump cut.org/archive/jc50.2008/lastword.html, accessed July 14, 2013. 8. For discussion of the terrorist attacks’ institutional and thematic impact on U.S. television, see Lynn Spigel, “Entertainment Wars: Television Culture after 9/11,” American Quarterly 56, no. 2 (2004): 235–70. 9. For an overview of the characteristics of post-network TV see Amanda Lotz, The Television Will Be Revolutionized (New York: New York University Press, 2007). 10. Robin Nelson discusses the series in these terms in State of Play: Contemporary High-end TV Drama (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2007), 130–60. 11. Jane Mayer, “Whatever It Takes,” New Yorker, February 19, 2007, 66–82. This article is reproduced as “Whatever It Takes: The Politics of the Man behind 24,” in Burstein and De Keijzer, Secrets of 24, 22–36. 12. The run of the series includes 192 episodes over eight seasons (consisting of twenty-four hour-long episodes per season), three prequels (one each in Seasons 4, 5, and 6), a TV movie, Redemption, broadcast in 2008, and numerous short behind-the-scenes videos that were included in DVD sets. Several web-based elements were also produced and distributed initially via the show’s homepage, and these were also included in the DVD sets. Seasons 1 to 3 were broadcast according to a typical network schedule with premiere episodes slated for late October and season finales playing in May. Beginning with Season 4 the premieres were scheduled for January with the prequels for Seasons 4, 5, and 6 released in early December as teasers. The compression of the last five seasons was achieved by having two episodes play on consecutive nights in early January and a two-part finale broadcast in May. Season 7 was delayed a year because of the Writers Guild of America strike that ran from November 5, 2007, to February 12, 2008.

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13. Christopher Heard, Kiefer Sutherland: Living Dangerously (Montreal: Transit, 2009), 18. 14. W.J.T. Mitchell, Cloning Terror: The War of Images 9/11 to Present (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2011), 15. 15. For an overview of Hollywood’s reaction to 9/11 see Jonathan Markovitz, “Reel Terror Post 9/11,” in Film and Television after 9/11, ed. Wheeler Winston Dixon (Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 2004), 201–25. 16. Jason Middleton, “The Subject of Torture: Regarding the Pain of Americans in Hostel,” Cinema Journal 49, no. 4 (2010): 1–24, and Lindsay Coleman, “ ‘Damn You for Making Me Do This’: Abu Ghraib, 24, Torture, and Television Sadomasochism,” in The War Body on Screen, ed. Karen Randell and Sean Redmond (New York: Continuum, 2008), 199–214. 17. For overviews of this period that are pertinent to 24 see James Der Derian, “9/11: Before, After, and In Between,” in Terrorism, Media, Liberation, edited and with an Introduction by J. David Slocum (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2005), 321–35, and Douglas Kellner, Cinema Wars: Hollywood Film and Politics in the BushCheney Era (Chichester: Wiley-Blackwell, 2010), 98–131. 18. The quote comes from an interview in a “making-of” documentary entitled 24: Exposed, featuring Surnow, Cochran, and Gordon and included in the Season 2 DVD set. The phrase was penned by a journalist and used derisively to describe episodes of Falcon Crest written by Surnow and Cochran. The pair has adopted the phrase as an accurate evaluation of their oeuvre. 19. Fredric Jameson, Postmodernism, or, the Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism (London: Verso, 1991). A consideration of the series’ relationship to advertising and consumer culture is offered by Paul Woolf, “So What Are You Saying? An Oil Consortium Is behind the Nuke?: 24, Programme Sponsorship, SUVs, and the War on Terror,” in Reading 24: TV against the Clock, ed. Steven Peacock (London: I. B. Taurus, 2007), 73–84. 20. It was not uncommon for participants in the debates to denounce their adversaries, for instance, as fascists, simple-minded, naive, weak, or deluded, as though an ethically defensible position on 24 was the measure of political acumen and commitment in the period. See, for example, Slavoj Zizek, “The Depraved Heroes of 24 Are the Himmlers of Hollywood,” Guardian, January 10, 2006, www.guardian .co.uk, accessed April 16, 2012. A revised version of this article is

Notes

reproduced as “24, or Himmler in Hollywood,” in Burstein and De Keijzer, Secrets of 24, 202–6. 21. Efforts by military officials to curb the provocative aspects of the series are reported in Mayer, “Whatever It Takes,” 26–28.

Chapter 1: 24 and Cultural Forms 1. Linda Williams, “Melodrama Revised,” in Refiguring American Film Genres: History and Theory, ed. Nick Browne (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1998), 48. 2. Ibid., 42. 3. Peter Brooks, The Melodramatic Imagination: Balzac, Henry James, Melodrama, and the Mode of Excess (New York: Columbia University Press, 1985), 1–80. 4. Mark Gallagher, “I Married Rambo: Spectacle and Melodrama in the Hollywood Action Film,” in Mythologies of Violence in Postmodern Media, ed. Christopher Sharrett (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1999), 209. 5. Williams, “Melodrama Revised,” 58. 6. For discussions of the conventions of the spy genre in film and TV, see Jeremy Packer, ed., Secret Agents: Popular Icons beyond James Bond (New York: Peter Lang, 2009); Michael Kackman, Citizen Spy: Television, Espionage, and Cold War Culture (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2005); Wesley Britton, Spy Television (Westport, CT: Praeger, 2004); and Toby Miller, Spyscreen: Espionage on Film and Television from the 1930s to the 1960s (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003). 7. David A. Shugarts, “The Technology of 24: Real and Imagined, Fiction and Nonfiction,” in Secrets of 24: The Unauthorized Guide to the Political and Moral Issues Behind TV’s Most Riveting Drama, ed. Dan Burstein and Arne J. De Keijzer (New York: Sterling, 2007), 232. 8. For an overview of the fetishization and proliferation of surveillance and detection technologies post-9/11, see Mark Andrejevic, “The Discipline of Watching: Detection, Risk, and Lateral Surveillance,” Critical Studies in Media Communication 23 (2006): 391–407. 9. Yvonne Tasker, “Television Crime Drama and Homeland Security: From Law & Order to ‘Terror TV,’ ” Cinema Journal 51, no. 4 (2012): 48. 10. Gallagher, “I Married Rambo,” 205. 11. Notably, Kiefer Sutherland is also a former professional rodeo competitor. This contributes to an understanding of how his own physiognomy and biography are assimilable to that of his character.

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Additionally, Sutherland’s star image is associated with the 1980s “brat pack” that was often regarded as introducing a maverick sensibility to Hollywood. Sutherland’s own reputation as a rebel, including several altercations with authorities and jail time for DUI in 2007–2008, reinforces some of the features of the Jack Bauer character. As well, the general presence of “cowboy culture” in American discourse post-9/11, which included the performance style of President Bush, created a seemingly overdetermined frontier context for 24. See Susan Faludi, The Terror Dream: Fear and Fantasy in Post-9/11 America (New York: Metropolitan, 2007), and Ryan Malphurs, “The Media’s Frontier Construction of the Image of President George W. Bush,” Journal of American Culture 31, no. 2 (2008): 185–201. 12. Giorgio Agamben, The State of Exception (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2005), 39. 13. For a thoughtful account of the use of western iconography and themes in popular film and TV post-9/11, see Stacy Takacs, “The Contemporary Politics of the Western Form: Bush, Saving Jessica Lynch, and Deadwood,” in Reframing 9/11: Film, Popular Culture and the “War on Terror,” ed. Jeff Birkenstein, Anna Froula, and Karen Randell (New York: Continuum, 2010), 151–63. The implications of this essay are expanded and reframed in Takacs’s book-length study Terrorism TV: Popular Entertainment in Post-9/11 America (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2012). 14. Tricia Rose, “24 and the Tradition of American Vigilantism,” in Burstein and De Keijzer, Secrets of 24, 133. 15. Providing an insight that will prove particularly illustrative of other siege narratives that we discuss, including sequences from 24, Mark Garrett Cooper writes that “when Battle at Elderbrush Gulch sets any two given spaces in competition it inevitably demonstrates their interdependence and thus insists that a qualitative change in each will be necessary if we are to have narrative closure.” See Mark Garrett Cooper, “Narrative Spaces,” Screen 43, no. 2 (2002): 155. 16. Miller, Spyscreen, 45. 17. Yvonne Tasker, Spectacular Bodies: Gender, Genre, and the Action Film (New York: Routledge, 1993), 54. 18. David Lavery, “24: Jumping the Shark Every Minute,” FLOW 4.11, September 8, 2006, http://flowtv.org/2006/09/24-jumping-the-shark -every-minute, accessed July 14, 2013. 19. The real-life agency that most resembles CTU is the Joint Regional Intelligence Center (JRIC), an antiterrorism fusion center that combines

Notes

the forces of the FBI, the Department of Homeland Security, the Los Angeles Police Department, and other agencies. Like the liminal space under discussion, it is located in an unremarkable stretch of light industrial sprawl in the vicinity of Los Angeles in Norwalk, California. See Shane Harris, “The Shadow Hunters: LA’s Real CTU,” in Burstein and De Keijzer, Secrets of 24, 185–91. 20. Lindsay Coleman, “ ‘Damn You for Making Me Do This’: Abu Ghraib, 24, Torture, and Television Sadomasochism,” in The War Body on Screen, ed. Karen Randell and Sean Redmond (New York: Continuum, 2008), 212. 21. It is worth noting the series’ confusing representation of time by recognizing the mistake in this instance. Specifically, the show implies by its title graphic and its themes that it uses twenty-four-hour military time. This is not the case, however, and, like its other oblique and confusing references to reality, the series obfuscates the representation of time. In military time, “7:20” in the evening would be rendered as ”1920” or “1920 hours.” 22. Fredric Jameson, The Geopolitical Aesthetic: Cinema and Space in the World System (Bloomington: Indiana University Press; London: BFI, 1992), 9–84. 23. See Laura Jackson, Kiefer Sutherland: The Biography (London: Portrait, 2006), 217. 24. Ina Rae Hark, “ ‘Today Is the Longest Day of My Life’: 24 as Mirror Narrative of 9/11,” Film and Television after 9/11, ed. Wheeler Winston Dixon (Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 2004), 133–34. 25. Jacqueline Furby, “Interesting Times: The Demands 24’s Real-Time Format Places on Its Audience,” Reading 24: TV against the Clock, ed. Steven Peacock (London: I. B. Taurus, 2007), 65–66. 26. Brooks, The Melodramatic Imagination, 35. 27. See Peter Krämer, “Would You Take Your Child to See This Film? The Cultural and Social Work of the Family-Adventure Movie,” in Contemporary Hollywood Cinema, ed. Stephen Neale and Murray Smith (London: Routledge, 1998), 294–311; in the same volume, Susan Jeffords, “The Big Switch: Hollywood Masculinity in the Nineties,” 196–208; Karen Schneider, “With Violence if Necessary: Rearticulating the Family in the Contemporary Action-Thriller,” Journal of Popular Film and Television 27, no. 1 (1999): 2–11; Yvonne Tasker, “Family in Action,” in Action and Adventure Cinema, ed. Yvonne Tasker (London: Routledge, 2004), 252–66; Tasker, “New Hollywood, Genre,

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and the Action Cinema,” in Spectacular Bodies, 54–72; and Mark Gallagher, Action Figures: Men, Action Film, and Contemporary Adventure Narratives (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2006). 28. Schneider, “With Violence if Necessary,” 11. 29. Quoted in Jackson, Kiefer Sutherland, 218. 30. Christine Gledhill, “Speculations on the Relationship between Soap Opera and Melodrama,” Quarterly Review of Film and Video 14, no. 1–2 (1992): 122. For a general discussion of the topic see David Thorburn, “Television Melodrama,” in Television: The Critical View, 6th ed., ed. Horace Newcomb (London: Oxford University Press, 2000), 595–608. 31. Kackman, Citizen Spy, 181. 32. Coleman, “ ‘Damn You for Making Me Do This,’ ” 211. 33. Agamben usefully describes the position of such characters as “being outside, and yet belonging: this is the topological structure of the state of exception.” The State of Exception, 35. 34. Janet McCabe, “Damsels in Distress: Female Narrative Authority and Knowledge in 24,” in Peacock, Reading 24, 149. 35. Ginia Bellafante, “In the ‘24’ World, Family Is the Main Casualty,” New York Times, May 20, 2007, reprinted in Burstein and De Keijzer, Secrets of 24, 66. 36. See Miranda J. Brady, “The Well-Tempered Spy: Family, Nation, and the Female Secret Agent in Alias,” in Packer, Secret Agents, 111–31. 37. On the issue of the relevance of the series to the sociopolitical sphere during its run, see Jane Mayer, “Whatever It Takes,” in Burstein and De Keijzer, Secrets of 24, 22–36; and Eric Greene, “Jack Bauer Syndrome,” in Jack Bauer for President: Terrorism and Politics in 24, ed. Richard Miniter (Dallas: BenBella Books, 2008), 171–93. On the series’ staging of provocative ethical debates, see Jennifer Hart Weed, Richard Brian Davis, and Ronald Weed, eds., 24 and Philosophy: The World According to Jack (Malden, MA: Blackwell, 2007), and Alan Dershowitz, “24 and the Use of Torture to Obtain Preventive Intelligence,” in Miniter, Jack Bauer for President, 103–24. 38. In response to controversy generated by the series, Kiefer Sutherland did several public service announcements including ones with the Council on Islamic Relations and Americans for Gun Safety. See Christopher Heard, Kiefer Sutherland: Living Dangerously (Montreal: Transit, 2009), 195–97. 39. Writer Evan Katz explains: “There was a lot of talk about how the show had this right-wing agenda, but that is not true at all. Of the

Chapter 2: 24 and Style 1. Fredric Jameson, “Postmodernism and Consumer Society,” in The Cultural Turn: Selected Writings on the Postmodern, 1983–1998 (New York: Verso, 1998), 4–5. 2. See Justin Wyatt, High Concept: Movies and Marketing in Hollywood (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1994). Though Wyatt discusses films, the following description also pertains to commercial TV: “Ultimately it is the process—the coherent and repeated structuring of a film and its elements around the marketing possibilities in the project—that distinguishes high concept” (64). 3. Michael Allen, “Divided Interests: Split-screen Aesthetics in 24,” in Reading 24: TV against the Clock, ed. Steven Peacock (London: I. B. Taurus, 2007), 35–47; Julie Talen, “24: Split Screen’s Big Comeback,” Salon.com, May 14, 2002, www.salon.com/2002/05/14/24_split/,

Notes

eight of us that write the show, only two of us are conservatives, and that includes creator Joel Surnow. . . . We began thinking about making the connection between terrorism and corporate greed and avarice.” Quoted in Heard, Kiefer Sutherland, 204. 40. In an interview with Jane Mayer, Surnow discusses his admiration for former president Ronald Reagan, his financial support for conservative politician Rick Santorum, and his close friendship with conservative personality Rush Limbaugh. Surnow’s other media work has involved conservative producer Cyrus Nowrasteh (The Path to 9/11 [Touchstone/ABC, 2006]) with whom he created The ½ Hour News Hour (Fox, 2007), a conservative response to the liberal The Daily Show (Comedy Central, 1996). Surnow believes that 24 served a therapeutic function after 9/11, telling journalist Mayer, for instance, “We love to torture terrorists—it’s good for you.” Mayer, “Whatever It Takes,” 36. 41. Greene, “Jack Bauer Syndrome,” 183. 42. Lorie Byrd, “Jack Bauer Is the Dirty Harry for the Age of Terrorism,” in Miniter, Jack Bauer for President, 67–75. 43. The concept of doing “the right thing” is often referred to in the series and is initially expressed during the first season when Senator Palmer refuses to give in to political pressure to hide the truth about his son’s involvement in a murder cover-up, saying that he insists on doing the right thing. When he prevails and wins the primary he includes the phrase in his victory speech.

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accessed July 14, 2013; Deborah Jermyn, “Reasons to Split Up: Interactivity, Realism and the Multiple-Image Screen in 24,” in Peacock, Reading 24, 49–57. 4. See Gina Marchetti, Romance and the “Yellow Peril”: Race, Sex and Discursive Strategies in Hollywood Fiction (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993). 5. For a thoughtful discussion of the multiple-frame design’s influence on narrative and thematic meanings in the series see Steven Peacock, “Status and Style,” in Peacock, Reading 24, 25–34. 6. Torin Monahan, “Just-in-Time Security: Permanent Exceptions and Neoliberal Orders,” in ibid., 109–17. 7. 24’s high production values were regularly seen as significant achievements and were often made possible by support from the U.S. military. The series’ dependence on such production values, it was argued, resulted in entertainment that could not afford to be critical of U.S. military policy, and was thus nothing short of Pentagon propaganda. 8. Allen, “Divided Interests,” 45. 9. See Kristin Thompson, Storytelling in Film and Television (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2003). 10. Jacqueline Furby, “Interesting Times: The Demands 24’s Real-Time Format Places on Its Audience,” in Peacock, Reading 24, 70. 11. Sean Callery, “Interview,” Soundtrack.Net, www.soundtrack.net/content/ article/?id=182, accessed August 17, 2013. 12. Bauer’s voice became a familiar signifier of authority during the period, and Sutherland was asked to provide voiceover work for a variety of films and television programs including the thriller Phone Booth (Joel Schumacher, 2002), a documentary on United 93, The Flight That Fought Back (Bruce Goodison, 2005), and the Dreamworks animated film Monsters vs. Aliens (Rob Letterman and Conrad Vernon, 2009). 13. Notable stars that have taken minor roles include Shohreh Aghdashloo, Sean Astin, Powers Boothe, Rory Cochrane, James Cromwell, William Devane, Colm Feore, Lukas Haas, Dennis Hopper, C. Thomas Howell, Anil Kapoor, Akbar Kurtha, Will Patton, Kal Penn, Lou Diamond Phillips, Freddie Prinze Jr., Katee Sackhoff, Julian Sands, Ricky Schroder, Jean Smart, Kurtwood Smith, Jon Voight, Arnold Vosloo, and Alberta Watson.

1. Douglas Kellner, Cinema Wars: Hollywood Film and Politics in the BushCheney Era (Chichester: Wiley-Blackwell, 2010), 120. 2. David L. Altheide, “Consuming Terrorism,” Symbolic Interaction 27, no. 3 (2004): 293. 3. Jonathan Markovitz, “Reel Terror Post 9/11,” in Film and Television after 9/11, ed. Wheeler Winston Dixon (Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 2004), 201. 4. Torin Monahan, “Just-in-Time Security: Permanent Exceptions and Neoliberal Orders,” in Reading 24: TV against the Clock, ed. Steven Peacock (London: I. B. Taurus, 2007), 117. 5. Stacy Takacs, Terrorism TV: Popular Entertainment in Post-9/11 America (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2012), 95. 6. Slavoj Zizek, “24, or Himmler in Hollywood,” in Secrets of 24: The Unauthorized Guide to the Political and Moral Issues behind TV’s Most Riveting Drama, ed. Dan Burstein and Arne J. De Keijzer (New York: Sterling, 2007), 203–4. 7. Giorgio Agamben, The State of Exception (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2005), 14. 8. Walter Benjamin, Charles Baudelaire: A Lyric Poet in the Age of High Capitalism (London: NLB, 1973), 40. 9. Jack Z. Bratich, “Spies Like Us: Secret Agency and Popular Occulture,” in Secret Agents: Popular Icons beyond James Bond, ed. Jeremy Packer (New York: Peter Lang, 2009), 142–43. 10. Mike Davis, Ecology of Fear: Los Angeles and the Imagination of Disaster (New York: Vintage, 1998), 201–05. 11. Robin Wood, “An Introduction to the American Horror Film,” in Bill Nichols, Movies and Methods, vol. 2 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1985), 195–220. 12. Anne Caldwell and Samuel A. Chambers, “24 after 9/11: The American State of Exception,” in Peacock, Reading 24, 98.

Conclusion 1. Laura Jackson, Kiefer Sutherland: The Biography (London: Portrait, 2006), 201. 2. Joseph Natoli, Memory’s Orbit: Film and Culture, 1999–2000 (Albany: State University of New York Press, 2003), 3.

Notes

Chapter 3: Themes and Meanings

115

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3. David L. Altheide, “Consuming Terrorism,” Symbolic Interaction 27, no. 3 (2004): 298. 4. Quoted in Colin Freeze, “What Would Jack Bauer Do?” Secrets of 24: The Unauthorized Guide to the Political and Moral Issues behind TV’s Most Riveting Drama, ed. Dan Burstein and Arne J. De Keijzer (New York: Sterling, 2007), 140. 5. Altheide, “Consuming Terrorism,” 290. 6. David Harvey, A Brief History of Neoliberalism (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005), 2–3. 7. Interest in the series remains high, and while a proposed feature film was never produced, in May 2013 the Fox network, influenced by the U.S. market success of limited series such as Homeland and House of Cards (Beau Willimon, 2013–), announced plans to broadcast twelve episodes of a series reboot called 24: Live Another Day, slated for May 2014. 8. Tricia Rose, “24 and the Tradition of American Vigilantism,” in Burstein and De Keijzer, Secrets of 24, 130–33. 9. Peter Brooks, The Melodramatic Imagination: Balzac, Henry James, Melodrama, and the Mode of Excess (New York: Columbia University Press, 1985), 41. 10. By contrast, The Wire (David Simon and Ed Burns, 2002–2008) was arguably the most realistic U.S. television series during the period. Notably, it also deals with surveillance society and thus shares significant thematic and ethical ground with 24.

Bibliography

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Miller, Toby. Spyscreen: Espionage on Film and Television from the 1930s to the 1960s. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003. Miniter, Richard, ed. Jack Bauer for President: Terrorism and Politics in 24. Dallas: BenBella Books, 2008. Mitchell, W.J.T. Cloning Terror: The War of Images, 9/11 to Present. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2011. Mittell, Jason. Genre and Television: From Cop Shows to Cartoons in American Culture. New York: Routledge, 2004. Natoli, Joseph. Memory’s Orbit: Film and Culture, 1999–2000. Albany: State University of New York Press, 2003. Nelson, Robin. State of Play: Contemporary High-End TV Drama. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2007. Packer, Jeremy, ed. Secret Agents: Popular Icons beyond James Bond. New York: Peter Lang, 2009. Peacock, Steven, ed. Reading 24: TV against the Clock. London: I. B. Taurus, 2007. Prince, Stephen. Firestorm: American Film in the Age of Terrorism. New York: Columbia University Press, 2009. Quay, Sara E., and Amy M. Damico, eds. September 11 in Popular Culture: A Guide. Santa Barbara, CA: Greenwood, 2010. Randell, Karen, and Sean Redmond, eds. The War Body on Screen. New York: Continuum, 2008. Schneider, Karen. “With Violence if Necessary: Rearticulating the Family in the Contemporary Action-Thriller.” Journal of Popular Film and Television 27, no. 1, (1999): 2–11. Sharrett, Christopher, ed. Mythologies of Violence in Postmodern Media. Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1999. Slocum, J. David, ed. Terrorism, Media, Liberation. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2005. Takacs, Stacy. Terrorism TV: Popular Entertainment in Post-9/11 America. Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2012. Talen, Julie. “24: Split Screen’s Big Comeback.” Salon.com (May 14, 2002). www.salon.com/2002/05/14/24_split/singleton/. Accessed July 14, 2013. Tasker, Yvonne, ed. Action and Adventure Cinema. London: Routledge, 2004. ———. Spectacular Bodies: Gender, Genre, and the Action Film. London: Routledge, 1993. ———. “Television Crime Drama and Homeland Security: From Law & Order to ‘Terror TV.’ ” Cinema Journal 51, no. 4 (2012): 44–65.

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Index

Note: Bold page numbers indicate photographs. Abtahi, Omid, 43 Abu Ghraib prison scandal (2004), 4 acting, 71–75 action genre and films: character types and clichés, 17, 35–37, 45, 79–80, 102; locations, 24, 58; music, 67; production methods and effects, 12, 62, 63, 65; references and influences, 12, 16–17, 20, 24; storytelling and narrative, 16, 20, 27, 35, 47 advertising: commercial editing, 65; product placement, 5; voice work, 73 Afghanistan War, 2001–, 10 Agamben, Giorgio, 20, 89, 90 Agency, The (television program), 2 Aghdashloo, Shohreh, 31 Ahbout, Jonathan, 31 Alamo, The (1960), 23–24 Ali, Syed (character), 26 Alias (television program), 2, 35, 39

Allen, Michael, 61 Allstate Insurance Co., 73 Almeida, Tony (character), 75, 81–82; losses, 41, 44; Season 3 storylines, 58, 59, 60–61, 61, 65; Season 7 storylines, 34, 86–87; as a terrorist, 41, 71, 72; voice, 71, 72 Altheide, David, 79, 100–101 Al-Zarian, Jibraan (character), 43 American Idol (television program), 5 American values, 42, 101 Arabs, representations, 4, 42–43, 68 Araz, Behrooz (character), 31, 32, 103 Araz family (characters), 31, 82 architecture, 51–52, 52, 56 Arroyave, Karina, 45 Asia, settings, 52, 52–53, 68 Assassination: legitimization, 78; storylines, 25, 40, 44–45, 45, 56 Assault on Precinct 13 (1976), 23, 24, 25, 97 Auda, Yusuf (character), 43

121

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audience experience. See viewing experiences award nominations, 3 Bartusiak, Skye McCole, 81 Battle at Elderbrush Gulch, The (Griffith), 21–23, 24, 25, 33 Bauer, Graem (character), 26 Bauer, Jack (character), 19, 29, 38, 45, 57, 63, 66; audience identification, 84, 102; casting, 6–7; character and nature, 9–10, 14, 36–37, 43–44, 45–46, 81–82, 89–90, 103; character influences, 17, 21, 43; emotions, 38, 70, 74–75; farewell, 18, 19; father-daughter relations, 37, 57, 80; introduction, 57; morals, 36–37, 45, 45–46; technology resources, 17–18; voice, 48, 57, 69, 70, 71–72, 74 Bauer, Kim (character), 31, 41, 57, 75; audience response, 37–38, 79–80; father-daughter relations, 37, 57, 57, 80; Season 1 storylines, 30, 32–33, 34–35, 68, 80; Season 2 storylines, 40, 41, 80–81, 94–96; Season 3 storylines, 37–38, 40; Season 7 storylines, 40 Bauer, Phillip (character), 26, 31, 43, 87, 93, 94 Bauer, Teri (character), 31, 32–33, 40, 66, 87, 89 “Behroozed,” 32, 103 Bell, Tobin, 94 Bellafante, Ginia, 38 Benjamin, Walter, 92–93 Berkeley, Xander, 32 Bernard, Carlos, 34 Bess, Dan, 68

Besson, Luc, 6, 34 Bickle, Travis (character), 20–21 biological weapons, 34, 38, 58–60, 62 Blackthorne, Paul, 31 Blackwell, Stan, 7 bluffing, 26–27, 33–34, 75, 83 Boothe, Powers, 71, 73 Border, The (television program), 2 Bourne, Jason (character), 17 Boyar, Lombardo, 95 Boyd, John, 99 Brandon, Henry, 20 Bratich, Jack Z., 93 Brennan, Walter, 25 bricolage, 23. See also pastiche Bristow, Sydney (character), 39 Brooks, Patty (character), 30, 33, 35 Brooks, Peter, 16, 30, 39, 104 Buchanan, Bill (character), 86–87 Burnett, Ryan (character), 84, 85, 86, 96 Bush, George W., and administration, 8–9, 11, 80, 83, 84 Caged Heat (1974), 34 Caldwell, Anne, 97 California geography and topography, 24, 58, 60, 63. See also Los Angeles, as setting Callery, Sean, 6, 7, 67, 69 camera techniques: focus, 53, 54, 63; methods in 24, 12, 18, 58–59 Cameron, Sally (character), 22–23 Carey, Matthew, 68 Carhart, Timothy, 91 Carpenter, John, 23 Cassar, Jon, 6 casting: actor quality, 73–74; Sutherland, 6, 9

C.O.P.S. (television program), 62 Corman, Roger, 34 Counter Terrorist Unit (CTU) (setting): attacks on, 38, 41; design, 7; as home, 38; Kim Bauer employment, 37; technology, 17, 19. See also specific characters “cowboy” tendencies: Bauer character, 18, 20; real-world politics, 8–9. See also western genre and westerns critical acclaim, 2, 3 Cromwell, James, 26 Cuthbert, Elisha, 30 Dale, Alan, 91 Dale, James Badge, 37 Damages (television program), 2 Dan (character, Season 1), 68 Daniels, Noah (character), 71, 73 Davis, Mike, 94 Demme, Jonathan, 34 DeSalvo, Mark (character), 25 design. See sound; visual design Desperate Housewives (television program), 5 Dessler, Michelle (character), 44, 58, 59, 60–61, 64, 65 Detection: citizenry, 92–93; viewers as detectives, 51, 53–55, 54, 63. See also liminal identities; liminal spaces/states Devane, William, 82 Dickinson, Angie, 25 Difference: gender, 39, 40; racial/ ethnic, 52–53, 95–96 digital clock countdown, 5, 18, 32, 48; music echoing, 66; sound of, 69, 102 Dillon, Kevin, 94

Index

Chambers, Samuel A., 97 Chance, John T. (character), 25 characters: abandonment, 31–32, 103; connections, “Doctrine of Sympathy,” 61–62; conventional/ stock, 35–36, 37; doubles, 36; emotional investment, 35, 62, 80; performances, 71–75; voices, 70–71. See also “outsider” characters Charters, Rodney, 7 chess, 26, 57 Ciarofalio, Carl, 85 Ciccolella, Jude, 72 civil rights. See PATRIOT Act (2001); “state of exception”; surveillance Clancy, Tom, 17 Clarke, Sarah, 26 cliché and hyperbole, 12, 24, 39, 53, 73–75, 104 cliffhangers, 21, 28, 29, 29–30 clock motif. See digital clock countdown “cloning terror,” 10 close-up shots, 22, 54 Cochran, Robert, 5–6, 7, 43 Cochrane, Rory, 34 Coleman, Lindsay, 24, 36 color, in visual design, 51, 52, 53, 63, 68 commercial success, 1, 2, 99–100, 104 conservatism: content of 24, 13, 37, 42–46, 53, 99, 103; criticism of 24, 4, 37, 88, 93 conspiracy: films and television, 12, 26, 43; themes, 78, 86–87, 90, 91, 92, 102 containerization, narrative, 31–32 contradictions within themes, 88–92

123

Index

124

Diplomacy: portrayed as counterproductive, 85; portrayed as weakness, 8–9, 9 Dirty Harry (character), 45 “Doctrine of Sympathy,” 61, 61–62 documentary style, 57, 62 double agents, 78–79, 93 doubles, characters, 36 double standards, laws. See “state of exception” dramatic arcs, 28–29, 31–32 Drazen, Andrei (character), 28, 31, 33 Drazen, Victor (character), 27–28, 29, 31, 32–33, 36, 93, 94, 97 Driscoll, Erin (character), 83 duplicity, identities, 30, 75, 78, 88. See also bluffing Dynasty (television program), 73, 99 East vs. West, 52–53, 68–69 editing, 12, 47; continuity, 65, 77; and multiple-frame composition, 63–65 Edmunds, Chase (character), 37–38, 40, 58, 60 Edwards, Ethan (character), 20–21, 36 Emmy Awards, 3 exception standards, and effects, 20, 43–44, 82, 87–88, 90, 91–92, 97 executions, 26, 44–45, 45 expendability, 40–41, 74, 89 fairy tales, 80, 94–96 Falcon Crest (television program), 6, 43 Falling Skies (television program), 2–3 family relationships: audience inclusion, 70–71; Bauer family,

26, 30, 31, 34–35, 41, 70–71, 89; Doctrine of Sympathy, 61; melodrama, 30–31, 35; political families, 31, 86; spy-thriller and action-adventure genres, 30–31, 39; surveillance, 56; terrorist families, 31, 35, 39, 42, 59–60, 82, 86; value and vulnerability, 38, 39, 83–84 Farrell, Jamey (character), 45, 56 fear, as theme, 2–3, 11, 78–79, 95–96 fear, culture of Cold War, 17; “terrordrama” association, 2–3, 3, 11, 79; war on terror/post9/11 life, 10–11, 14, 75, 79 Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), 18, 34, 81, 92 the feminine, difference portrayals, 39, 40 Femme Nikita, La (1990), 6, 34 Femme Nikita, La (television program), 6, 43 Fetishization: authenticity, 47; technology, 18–19, 69, 102 flashbacks, 65, 66 Fleming, Ian, 17 Forbes, Michelle, 32 Ford, John, 20–21 Fox Network: product placement, 5; 24 pitch and launch, 7–8 fragmentation, storylines, 31–32, 103 Frain, James, 82 frames and framing. See camera techniques; multiple-frame composition Furby, Jacqueline, 29, 66 Gallagher, Mark, 16, 20 games, 26–27, 57

handheld camera shots, 12, 18, 32, 57, 58 Hark, Ina Rae, 29 Harlow, Melissa (character), 22 Harris, Laura, 31 Harvey, David, 101–2 Hatufilm/Prisoners of War (television program), 2 Hawks, Howard, 23 Haysbert, Dennis, 11, 73 Heller, James (character), 82, 83–84 Heller, Richard (character), 31 Heritage Foundation, 4, 73

hero figures: Bauer as, 9, 16, 17, 20, 21, 36–37, 44, 101, 102, 103; contrasting characters, 26, 35, 42; films, 16, 17, 20, 21, 102; tragic heroes, 21, 36 Hodges, Jonas (character), 34, 86, 87 Hodges, Joseph, 7 Homeland (television program), 2–3, 7 homes: scenes, 57, 57; threats and destruction, 38, 39–40; workplaces as and vs., 38, 39–40 Hope, Leslie, 32–33 Hopkins, Stephen, 6 Hopper, Dennis, 27, 28, 29 horror genre, 11, 96 hostage situations, 58–60, 95–96 Howard, Ron, 6 human voices, 70–71 Hussein, Saddam, 10 hyperbole. See cliché and hyperbole hyperrealism, 69, 73–74, 75 identity crises, 30, 75, 78 innocence themes, 15, 28, 31, 34–35, 79–80, 102 intertextuality in 24, 23–24, 33, 34, 75, 88. See also pastiche intros and outros: clock cue, 69; intra-program, 32; “Previously on 24...,” 48, 65, 70. See also digital clock countdown Iraq War, 2003–2011: Abu Ghraib prison scandal (2004), 4; unmentioned in 24, 10, 98 Itzin, Gregory, 8–9, 9, 73 Ivanek, Zeljko, 28 James Bond films, 17, 74 Jameson, Fredric, 13, 26, 47, 97, 103, 104

Index

gangster films, 20 Gansa, Alex, 7 Garcia, Ramon (character), 95–96 Garner, Jennifer, 39 Gati, Kathleen, 67 gender roles: character limitations and expectations, 37–41, 80; competition, 83, 85 Generation Kill (television program), 2 Get Smart (television program), 17 Gish, Lillian, 22 Glass, Arlo (character), 99 Gledhill, Christine, 35 globalization, 12, 92–93 global networks, 56, 81, 92, 93 “going dark,” 44, 93–94 Golden Globe Awards, 3 Gordon, Howard, 7 Goren, Marshall (character), 85 Graydon, Sprague, 86 Grazer, Brian, 6 Greene, Eric, 44 Griffith, D.W., 21–23, 24 Grimm’s Fairy Tales, 80 Guantanamo Bay detention facility, 4, 98

125

Index

Jameson, Nick, 67 Jerald, Penny Johnson, 26, 72, 73 Jericho (television program), 2 Jones, Cherry, 31 Juma, General (character), 85–86, 96 Jump Cut (journal), 4 Kackman, Michael, 35 Kaufman, Adam (character), 60 Kellner, Douglas, 77–78 Keshawarz, Donnie, 43 Kill Point, The (television program), 2 Kingsley, Peter (character), 51, 94 Kirshner, Mia, 37, 54 Kresge, Lynne (character), 32, 72–73, 90–91

126

Lapidus, James, 7 Latham, David, 7 Latino characters, 95–96 Lavery, David, 24 lawlessness, 13, 20, 43–44, 90. See also “state of exception” Law & Order (television program), 69 Lennox, Tom (character), 71 light, 48–49, 49, 53, 54, 55 Limbaugh, Rush, 1–2, 13, 73 liminal identities, 10, 63, 93 liminal spaces/states, 24, 86, 91, 93, 97–98 live television, 24 simulation, 1, 50, 64 local law enforcement, 81 location shooting, 12, 18, 24, 58–60, 96 Loceff, Michael, 6 Logan, Martha (character), 67 Logan, President Charles (character), 8–9, 9, 26, 41, 67, 71, 73, 75, 92 logos, 48, 49, 49

Lombardi, Louis, 81 Los Angeles, as setting, 7, 18, 24, 55–56, 58–60, 60, 63, 67, 81, 94–96 Lost (television program), 5 Ludlum, Robert, 17 Lydon, Alexandra, 58 MacNicol, Peter, 71 Mandy (character), 37 Man from U.N.C.L.E., The (television program), 17, 74 Manwiller, Debi, 7 Markovitz, Jonathan, 79 Marsh, Mae, 22 Marshall-Green, Logan, 31 Martin, Dean, 25 masculinity and masculinization, 36, 37, 38, 40–41, 83, 85 Mason, George (character), 32–33, 41, 81–82 Matchett, Kari, 71 Mayer, Blaine (character), 45–46, 84–85 McCabe, Janet, 37 McCrane, Paul, 26 McLane, John (character), 17, 45 Megan (character), 41, 80, 81 melodrama, 10, 15, 35, 38; character performance, 72, 74–75; form examples, 28; mode, 15–16, 38, 104; strategy examples, 30, 35; themes, 15, 79–80 merchandising, 3 Miller, Lisa (character), 71 Miller, Toby, 23 Mission: Impossible (television program), 17 Mitchell, W.J.T., 10 MI-5 (television program), 2

narration. See storytelling themes and styles national identity, 35, 42 national security, 56, 68, 82, 88. See also War on Terror National Security Agency (NSA), 91 Natoli, Joseph, 100 NCIS (television series), 2 necessity themes. See “state of exception”; “ticking bomb” scenarios Nelson, Ricky, 25 neoliberalism, 101–3; geopolitics, 11–12, 26, 56, 85; representations, 89–90, 97–98; values, 42, 84, 85, 87

networks (television), 4–5, 5, 7–8 networks (theme), 56, 81, 92, 93 Nevins, David, 7 news media formats and messages, 1, 62, 79, 101 New York City, as setting, 7, 18 Nikita (television program), 2–3 9/11. See September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks Nixon, Richard, 73 nonverbal communication, 71–72 Nordling, Jeffrey, 34 nostalgia, 99, 104 Novick, Mike (character), 72, 75, 90, 91 nuclear attacks, 3, 81, 95 Obama, Barack, 11 O’Brian, Chloe (character), 17–18, 19, 37, 44, 75, 81–82; performance, 73; quotes, 18, 99; voice, 71 O’Neill, Michael, 56 Ortiz, Cole (character), 19, 81–82 “outsider” characters, 35–36, 93–94; Bauer as, 9–10, 36; film, 21–22; visual cues, 54 Palmer, Senator/President David, 11, 73; Season 1 storylines, 27–28, 30, 31, 32, 33, 34–35, 87–88; Season 2 storylines, 72, 87–88, 90–92; Season 3 storylines, 61, 61, 67–68; Season 5 storylines, 44–45; voice, 71 Palmer, Sherry (character), 26, 51, 56–57, 72–73, 92, 94 Palmer, Wayne (character), 61, 61 parallel plots: editing, 65; multipleframe compositions, 5, 49–50; narrative, 31, 32–33

Index

Monahan, Torin, 82 montage sequences, 50, 65. See also multiple-frame composition Morrison, James, 86 Moss, Larry (character), 34 multiple-frame composition: art of design, 50, 53–54; “Doctrine of Sympathy,” 61–62; editing, 63–65; frame size examples, 5, 51, 52, 54, 54, 60–61, 61; other film and television, 50, 62, 64; storytelling, 50, 51, 53–55, 54, 57, 59, 60–61, 83–84, 103; twoframe examples, 53, 54, 83–84; usage frequency, 64–65; visuals: recaps, intros, and outros, 5, 32–33, 49–50 music, 66–69, 70, 87 music videos, 65 Muslim characters: portrayals and stereotypes, 4, 42; stereotype regulation, 42–43 Myers, Nina (character), 26, 37, 40, 75, 87

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Index

128

paranoia themes, 2–3, 11, 13, 35, 86, 102 Parents Television Council, 11 Pastiche: music, 68–69; populist forms and 24, 12, 14, 23, 47, 75, 77, 88, 96, 100, 103 paternalism, 37–38, 80 PATRIOT Act (2001), 8, 9 Patriotism: bluffing, 75; music, 67–68, 87; themes, 11, 74, 78, 82, 84, 85–88, 90; westerns, 23–24 performance: characters and actors, 71–75; identity as, 30, 78 Person of Interest (television program), 2–3 Petronas Towers (Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia), 51–52, 52, 56 Phillips, Lou Diamond, 25, 33 phone calls: omnipresence, 18; sound, 70; storyline elements, 44, 55, 59, 71 pilot episode, 7–8, 50–51, 103 plotting techniques: parallel and intersecting stories, 25–26, 28, 31, 32–33, 50; parallel scenes, viewing, 49–50; success and viewer response, 1–2; themes, 78–79, 84, 103; time’s passage, 28–29, 102–3; traditional, 65 Podell, Eyal, 84 police, 81 political history, 11–12, 93 postmodernism, 47, 97, 100, 104; acting and performance, 74–75; architecture, 52, 55; recycling and pastiche, 23, 47, 75, 77; of 24, 12–14, 47, 88, 103–4 “post-network age,” 4–5 Powell, Scott, 7

power relations: Bauer, 9; geopolitical, 56, 81, 92, 93; interpersonal, 25–27, 72–73; spatial, 20, 33–34, 35–36, 97; themes, 78, 102 Prescott, Jim (character), 91 presidents (characters): comparisons to US presidents, 8–9, 11, 73; shared challenges, 8, 41, 92. See also specific characters Prinze, Freddie, Jr., 81–82 Prison Break (television program), 2 prisoner abuse, 4, 84 prison films, 34 production methods and styles. See camera techniques; editing; multiple-frame composition product placement, 5 “quality” TV, 2, 57, 65–66 Quinn, Francesco, 26 Quinto, Zachary, 60 racial stereotypes, 42, 53, 68, 95–96 Raines, Audrey (character), 71, 82–83, 84 Raines, Paul (character), 82–83, 84, 85 Rajskub, Mary Jane, 18, 73 Rambo, John (character), 17, 45 Raver, Kim, 71 Rayburn, Eric (character), 91 reality and fiction: politics and law, 8–9, 11, 82, 83, 84, 97–98, 101; real-life wars, 10, 98 reality television: popular shows, 4–5; techniques and 24, 1, 57, 62–63 real-time: multiple-frame composition effects, 64; program self-reference, 50, 70;

Saunders, Jane (character), 58–60 Saunders, Stephen (character), 31, 58–60, 62, 63 Scalia, Antonin, 101 Schneider, Karen, 30–31 Schrader, Paul, 20–21 screens, 18–19, 19, 63, 102 Searchers, The (1956), 20–21, 23, 36 Seaton, Greg (character), 34 secret identities, 30, 75, 78 September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks: considering 24 post-, 4, 10–11, 13, 20, 79, 82, 97–98; surveillance post-, 93; 24 creation and filming pre-, 8, 11; “wild west” era following, 20, 24, 90. See also fear, culture of Serrano, Nestor, 31 Shugarts, David A., 18

siege narratives, 21–22, 23–25, 27–28, 33–34, 96–97 Sleeper Cell (television program), 2 Smart, Jean, 67 Smith, Kurtwood, 45 snitch culture, 92–93 soap operas: characters, 72, 73; format and storytelling, 15, 29, 31–32, 34, 39, 43, 86 sound, 47, 65–70, 102 space: camera techniques, 32, 58–59; difference highlighted, 52–53, 94, 96; liminal spaces, 24, 93, 97–98; narrativization, 21–23, 24–26, 27, 33–34, 35–36, 62, 96–97; power and, 20, 33–34, 35–36, 97; types and meanings, 24–25, 27, 39–40, 43 spy and detective genres: conventions, 16–17, 74; families, 30, 35, 39; music, 66, 69; other television and films, 2, 16, 17, 35, 39; space, 23, 25–26; themes and narratives, 16–17, 20, 25–26, 27, 39, 93, 104 Stanton, Roger (character), 91 Starkwood Industries, 34, 86 Star Trek: Deep Space Nine (television program), 69 “state of exception,” 20, 43–44, 82, 87–88, 90, 91–92, 97 Stereotypes: gender, 37, 40; music, 68; Muslims, and criticisms, 4; racial, 42–43, 53, 68, 95–96; regulation, 42–43; stock action characters, 37 Stiles, Edgar (character), 81–82 “story fatigue,” 32 “Story of the Youth Who Went to Learn What Fear Was, The” (tale), 80

Index

sadomasochistic effect, 29; 24 characteristic, 1, 7, 10, 29, 47, 49–50, 57, 103 Real Time Productions, 5–6 Rebar, Cloudia, 7 revenge themes. See vengeance themes Rick (character, Season 1), 68 Rick (character, Season 2), 94–95 Ricketts, Jeffrey, 55 Rio Bravo (1959), 23, 25, 27, 97 rogues and rogue behavior, 84, 88, 89–91, 92. See also vigilantism Rose, Tricia, 21 Rovner, Jeffrey (character), 55–56 rule of law: criticism on series attitudes toward, 77–78; suspensions/avoidance, portrayals, 20, 44–45, 82, 90. See also lawlessness Ryan, Jack (character), 17

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130

Storytelling: action genre, 12, 20, 21–22, 27, 35–36, 47; classic narrative, 28, 65, 77; deferred resolution, 25–27, 29, 34–35, 86; melodramatic mode, 15–16; serial television, 28–29, 31–32; spy and detective genres, 27, 39; war genre, 27; western genre, 16, 21–22, 27 Surnow, Joel, 5–6, 7, 13, 35, 43 surveillance: avoidance, 44, 93–94; Counter Terrorist Unit (CTU), 19; intra-family, 56; state, 56, 81–82, 93; voices, portrayed, 70, 71 survivalism themes, 93, 94–95, 96 Sutherland, Kiefer: awards, 3; casting, 6, 9; performance, 71–72, 74–75; production, 6–7; quotes about 24, 28, 99; voice and voiceovers, 48, 57, 69, 70 Suvarov, Yuri and Anya (characters), 67 tableau effect: narrative, 16; visual, 60, 61, 64 Takacs, Stacy, 3, 88 Tasker, Yvonne, 3, 19, 23 Taxi Driver (1976), 21 Taylor, Olivia (character), 86 Taylor, President Allison (character), 31, 37, 41, 84, 85, 92 technology: character resources and skills, 17–18; communication and relationships, 44, 62; film and television, 16–19; information and communication technology (ICT), 62, 63, 102; references, program intro and logo, 48, 50

telephoto shots, 53, 58–59 television networks, 4–5, 5, 7–8 “terrordrama,” 2–3, 79 terrorism themes: all television, 2–3, 39, 79; real-time details, 7. See also War on Terror theme music, 69. See also music Third Watch (television program), 2 Threat Matrix (television program), 2 “ticking bomb” scenarios, 8, 10, 79, 82–83, 87, 102, 104 time: compression and expansion, 29, 65, 102; manipulation in narratives, 21, 22; postmodern culture, 97; urgency and stress, 48, 50–51, 65; zone differences, 51, 56. See also digital clock countdown; “ticking bomb” scenarios Time Code (2000), 64 title sequences, 48–49, 49, 50–51, 54, 70. See also intros and outros Todd, Tony, 85 torture: character effects, 40, 74; legitimization acceptance, 101; legitimization and criticisms, 4, 11, 13, 77–78, 82; official national discourse, 98; psychological, 26; series content, 8, 9, 19, 44, 82–83, 84–85, 91; viewing experience as, 29 “torture porn,” 11 Touch (television program), 2–3 True Lies (1994), 30 Turner, Brad, 6 twentieth-century history, 11–12 24: Redemption (TV movie), 96 twin towers, 51, 52 two-frame composition, 53, 54, 83–84. See also multiple-frame composition

vengeance themes, 28, 90; media after 9/11, 11, 90; in 24, 25, 27–28, 31, 36, 41, 44–45; westerns, 20–21, 25 video games, 3, 58, 59, 79 videographic images, 63 viewing audience: emotional investment, 33, 35, 62, 70–71, 80; opinions, characters, 37, 79–80; size, 1; sophistication, 62, 64 viewing experiences: detection and investigation, 51, 53–55, 54, 63; stress and anxiety, 29–30, 50–51, 62, 66, 78, 92 viewing formats, 5, 64, 100 vigilantism: American values and entertainment, 20, 21; criticism of 24, 4; 24 content, 44–45, 84–85 villains, 26, 35, 42, 93. See also specific characters visual design, 47, 48–49, 57–58, 62–63; color, 51, 52, 53, 63, 68; logos and text, 48, 49, 49, 50–51, 54; multiple-frame composition, 5, 49–50, 51, 53–55, 54, 56–57, 61 voice, human, 70–71 voiceovers, 48, 57, 69, 70 Voight, Jon, 34 voyeuristic techniques, 59

Walker, Renee (character), 37, 39–40, 75 Walsh, Richard (character), 56 war films, 12, 20, 27, 67 Warner, Kate (character), 42 Warner, Marie (character), 31, 42, 43, 93 War on Drugs, 68 War on Terror: commodification, 100–101; increasing terrorism, 10; nature of, 26, 41–42, 80, 81, 84, 90, 100–101; news media, 79, 101; technology used, 62; 24’s fictional account, 1, 4, 10, 11, 13–14, 80, 100; 24’s purported support, 13, 75, 80, 83. See also fear, culture of Washington, D.C., as setting, 7, 18, 96 Watson, Alberta, 83 Wayne, John, 20, 23–24, 25 Wersching, Annie, 37 western genre and westerns, 16–17, 20–24, 25, 27, 35–36, 43, 97, 104 Williams, Linda, 15–16 Woodside, D.B., 61 World Trade Center, 51 Wright, Tanya, 30 writers, 7 Wynter, Sarah, 42 xenophobia, 52–53, 93 Young Guns (1988), 33 Yulin, Harris, 91 Zizek, Slavoj, 89

Index

Unit, The (television program), 2 urgency: assumed, War on Terror, 82; series theme, 13, 57, 78, 82–83, 84, 87, 88, 96, 97–98; time, 48, 50–51, 65 USA PATRIOT Act (2001), 8, 9 US Department of Defense, 25

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