Friday, May 19, 2006
I’m not ashamed to admit it: I’m a “24″ fan. When Jack Bauer growls “we’re running out of time!” just before he takes out three guards en route to jacking a slimeball up against the wall by the throat, I stand up and cheer. Think Jack’s too exhausted (after foiling twenty-seven murders, several kidnappings and going hand-to-hand with several very bad men) to take point on a special-ops mission and foil a nerve gas attack? Think again. There he is, sliding out of that chopper in all-black and leading his well-oiled machine into battle. And Jack doesn’t hesitate when there are lives on the line–he’ll make the right call for the greater good, even if it means a few innocent lives will end. Blow up the pipeline so the nerve gas can’t escape into the population? Brilliant. And how did he survive that tremendous explosion, you ask? Don’t be silly. This is Jack Bauer, modern-day Superman. He can do anything.
I’ve read two great articles recently on the allure of “24.” The first is from the New Republic, and it makes the argument (among other things) that the show is a sign of our times, in the same way “All in the Family” was for the 70s, and “Seinfeld” was for the 90s. The turn of the century marked a new dawn in America, one that has been rocked by terrorist attacks and uncertainty about our own safety, which is an unfamiliar feeling indeed. Not since the Cold War (and perhaps not even then) has this country felt so vulnerable. We’re not just concerned with a foreign government launching a nuclear warhead at America, as we were then: we’re concerned with a bunch of faceless lunatics who want to hit the most innocent victims possible in very personal ways. These are not the world leaders you can watch and despise on tv; these are the boogymen from our closet. Kidnappings and beheadings are up on the Internet. It’s all so much more intimate and creepy. It’s a different world, a more dangerous one; or perhaps it’s the same old world, and Americans are finally being made aware of it.
Enter Jack Bauer and “24.” A hero for our times. A man who doesn’t hesitate to “do what’s right,” even if it costs him the people who are most dear to his heart. Bauer is more than a hero, in fact; he’s a superhero, and the argument can be made that this is what Americans want so desperately right now. Having grown up on comic books and Superman cartoons, when faced with such overwhelming evil, we naturally look skyward for the Bat-signal and wonder if there really is someone out there who is more than human.
And in fact, if you carefully analyze “24″ on a number of levels, the analogy works. It is, more than any other show on television, a comic book on screen. This leads me to the second great article I’ve read recently, from The Boston Globe: Like a superhero comic, ‘24′ thrives in a two-dimensional world. And that’s the brilliance of this show: we want larger than life, escapist fiction, we crave it, and “24″ delivers.
But really, when all is said and done, who cares about all that? “24″ is fun. It’s creepy, and tense, and dark, and completely unpredictable. Except, of course, for one thing: Jack Bauer will save the day. That much is written in stone.
The 2-hour season finale starts Monday at 8 pm on Fox. Jack’s got to stop the terrorists from launching warheads from a stolen submarine. This is gonna be good.
“Are you with me?”
Leave a Reply
You must be logged in to post a comment.
