24

3. Themes and Meanings

77 Chapter 3 Themes and Meanings In 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 78 Chapter 3 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 79 Themes and Meanings 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...