Article From The Yale Daily News: “‘24’ is model of American psyche at its most intense”
Check out this article in the Yale Daily News about 24:
Over spring break, with a senior essay deadline looming, I bit the bullet and did the only thing I responsibly could. I watched TV.
In fairness, it was research — sort of. I reasoned, as I downloaded seven episodes from this season of “24” and watched them back to back, that I was doing important background work for this column. I was trying to decide what “24” said about American politics.
Surprisingly, I am not talking about the thoroughly bizarre conception of torture as a legitimate tool of public policy, which has so seduced both the show’s producers and the real-life White House. (Though it is worth briefly noting that in a recent episode, the show’s heroic protagonist, Jack Bauer, pries valuable information out of the Russian consul by slicing off his finger with a cigar cutter. This was, of course, in addition to injecting excessive doses of a neuro-inflammatory agent into his brother’s veins during an interrogation a few episodes before that. It’s another busy day for Jack.)
For Yalies who have been living in a cave for the past five years: “24” is Fox’s wildly successful television drama, now into its sixth season, which features Bauer as the suicidally brave and emotionally unavailable man every American boy dreams of becoming. Every season of “24” is one day in Jack’s action-packed life, and every episode one suspenseful hour in real time, the passage of which is marked by the show’s trademark ticking digital clock.
The show furnishes Jack and his generally ill-fated cohorts a seemingly endless stream of high-octane crises — deadly terrorist plots, assassination attempts, kidnappings, hostage situations and the like — and furnishes us with the occasional split screen, so that we can view the explosive action through multiple cameras at once.
Tags: 24, yale, jack bauer, torture
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POSTED IN: Jack Bauer, Torture
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