Difference between revisions of "Jack Bauer and the Ethics of Urgency"
(The LinkTitles extension automatically added links to existing pages (https://github.com/bovender/LinkTitles).) |
|||
(5 intermediate revisions by one other user not shown) | |||
Line 1: | Line 1: | ||
− | + | {{BSZ}} | |
− | + | The fifth season of “24,” the phenomenally successful Fox [[television]] series, premiered on January 15. Composed of 24 one-hour episodes, the show chronicles the workday of the fictitious L.A.-based Counter Terrorist Unit (CTU) as it desperately attempts to thwart a catastrophic terrorist attack. (In season four, they stopped a stolen [[nuclear weapon]] from exploding above a major U.S. city.) The “[[real]]-time” [[nature]] of the series confers a strong [[sense]] of urgency, emphasized by the ticking of a digital clock and accentuated with hand-held camera shots and [[split]]-screens showing the concurrent actions of various characters. | |
− | + | Even the commercial breaks contribute to this sense of urgency: Before a commercial, we see an on-[[screen]] digital clock signalling it is “7:46.” When the [[action]] resumes, the digital clock reads “7:51.” The length of the break in our, the spectators’, real [[time]] is exactly equivalent to the [[temporal]] gap in the on-screen [[narrative]], as if the events nonetheless <i>go on</i> as we watch commercials. This makes it seem like the ongoing action is so pressing, spilling over into the real time of the [[spectator]], that even commercial breaks cannot interupt it. | |
− | < | + | This brings up a crucial question: What does this all-pervasive sense of urgency mean <i>ethically</i>? The pressure of events is so overbearing, the stakes are so high, that they necessitate a suspension of ordinary [[ethics|ethical]] concerns. After all, displaying [[morality|moral]] qualms when the lives of millions are at stake plays into the hands of the [[enemy]]. |
− | + | CTU agents act in a shadowy [[space]] [[outside]] the [[law]], doing things that “simply have to be done” in [[order]] to save [[society]] from the [[terror]]ist [[threat]]. This includes not only torturing terrorists when they are caught, but torturing CTU members or their closest relatives when they are suspected of terrorist [[links]]. In the fourth season, among those tortured were the secretary of defense’s son-in-law and his own son (both with the secretary’s [[full]] [[knowledge]] and support), as well as a [[female]] member of CTU, wrongly suspected of passing information to the terrorists. (After the [[torture]], when new data confirms her innocence, she is asked to [[return]] to [[work]]. And since this is an [[emergency]] and every person is needed, she accepts!) The CTU agents not only treat terrorist suspects in this way — after all, they are dealing with the “[[ticking bomb]]” [[situation]] evoked by [[Alan Dershowitz]] to justify torture in his book, <i>Why [[Terrorism]] Works</i> — they also treat themselves as expendable, ready to lay down their colleagues’ or their own lives if this will [[help]] prevent the terrorist act. | |
− | + | Special [[Agent]] Jack Bauer, played by Kiefer Sutherland, embodies this attitude at its purest. Without qualms, he [[torture]]s [[others]] and allows his superiors to put his [[life]] on the line. At the end of the fourth season, he agrees to be turned over to the [[People’s Republic of China]] as a scapegoat for a CTU covert operation that killed a Chinese diplomat. Although he [[knows]] he will be tortured and imprisoned for life, he promises not to say anything that would hurt U.S. interests. The end of the fourth season leaves Jack in a paradigmatic situation: When he is informed by the ex-president of the [[United States]], his close ally, that someone in the [[government]] ordered his death (delivering him to the wily Chinese torturers is considered too much of a security risk), his two closest friends in CTU organize his fake death. He then [[disappears]] into nowhere, anonymous, officially non-existing. | |
− | + | In the “[[war on terror]],” it is not only the terrorists but the CTU agents who become what [[philosopher]] [[Giorgio Agamben]] calls <i>[[homini sacer]]</i> — those who can be killed with impunity since, in the eyes of the [[law]], their lives no longer count. While the agents continue to act on behalf of a [[legal]] [[power]], their [[acts]] are no longer covered and constrained by the [[law]] — they operate in an [[empty space]] within the [[domain]] of the [[law]]. | |
− | + | It is here that we [[encounter]] the series’ fundamental [[ideological]] [[lie]]: In spite of this thoroughly ruthless attitude of [[self]]-[[instrument]]alization, the CTU agents, especially Jack, remain “warm human beings,” caught in the usual emotional dilemmas of “normal” [[people]]. They [[love]] their wives and [[children]], they suffer [[jealousy]] — but at a moment’s notice they are ready to [[sacrifice]] their loved ones for their mission. They are something like the [[psychological]] equivalent of [[decaffeinated coffee]], doing all the horrible things the situation necessitates, yet without paying the [[subjective]] price for it. | |
− | < | + | Consequently, “[[24]]” cannot be simply dismissed as a pop [[cultural]] justification for the problematic methods of the [[United States]] in its [[war on terror]]. More is at stake. [[Recall]] the lesson of Franics Ford Coppola’s <i>[[Apocalypse Now]]</i>: The [[figure]] of Kurtz is not a reminder of some barbaric [[past]], but the necessary outcome of modern [[West]]ern [[power]]. Kurtz was a perfect soldier — as such, through his [[over-identification]] with the [[military]] [[power]] [[system]], he turned into the [[excess]] that the system had to eliminate in an operation that itself imitated the ruthlessness of Kurtz, what it was ostensibly fighting against. |
− | + | This is the dilemma for those in [[power]]: How to obtain Kurtz without Kurtz’s [[pathology]]? How to get people to do the necessary dirty job without turning [[them]] into monsters? [[SS]] chief [[Heinrich Himmler]] faced the same dilemma. When confronted with the task of liquidating the [[Jews]] of [[Europe]], [[Himmler]] adopted the heroic attitude of “Somebody has to do the dirty job, so let’s do it!” It is easy to do a noble [[thing]] for one’s country, up to sacrificing one’s life for it. It is much more difficult to commit a <i>crime</i> for one’s country. | |
− | < | + | In <i>Eichmann in Jerusalem</i>, [[Hannah Arendt]] provided a precise description of how the [[Nazi]] executioners endured the horrible acts they performed. Most of them were not simply [[evil]]; they were well aware that their actions brought [[humiliation]], [[suffering]] and [[death]] to their [[victim]]s. Their way out of this predicament was that, “instead of saying: What horrible things I did to people!, the murderers would be able to say: What horrible things I had to watch in the pursuance of my duties, how heavily the task weighed upon my shoulders!” In this way, they were able to turn around the [[logic]] of resisting temptation: Their “[[ethical]]” effort was directed toward the task of resisting the temptation not to [[murder]], torture and humiliate. Thus, the very violation of [[spontaneous]] [[ethical]] [[instinct]]s of pity and compassion was turned into the proof of ethical grandeur: Doing one’s [[duty]] meant assuming the heavy burden of inflicting [[pain]] on others.< |
− | + | There was a further “ethical problem” here for [[Himmler]]: How to make sure that the [[SS]] executioners who performed these terrible acts could remain human and retain their dignity? His answer was found in the <i>[[Bhagavad-Gita]]</i>, a special leather-bound edition of which he always kept in his pocket. There, Krishna tells Arjuna that he should carry out his acts with an [[inner distance]] and never get fully involved in them. | |
− | + | Therein also resides the lie of “[[24]]”: The presumption that it is not only possible to retain human dignity in accomplishing acts of [[terror]], but that when an honest person accomplishes such acts as a heavy [[duty]], this confers on him an additional [[tragic]]-[[ethic]] grandeur. But what if such a [[distance]] <i>is</i> possible? What if we <i>do</i> have people who commit terrible acts as part of their job, while, in private, they remain loving husbands, [[good]] [[parents]] and caring friends? As [[Arendt]] knew, far from redeeming them, the very fact that they are able to retain their normality while committing such acts is the ultimate confirmation of their [[moral]] catastrophe. | |
− | + | So what [[about]] the popular and seemingly convincing reply to all these worries and hair-[[splitting]] distinctions regarding [[torture]]: “What’s all the fuss about? The [[United States]] is just openly admitting, at least tacitly, not only what it has been doing all the time, but what all [[other]] states have been doing all the time. If anything, we have less [[hypocrisy]] now.” To this, one should retort with a simple counter-question: “If this is the only thing that the statements from the U.S. government mean, <i>why, then, are they admitting this</i>? Why don’t they just silently go on doing it, as they did before?” | |
− | + | What is inherent to [[human]] [[speech]] is the [[irreducible]] [[gap]] between the [[enunciated]] [[content]] and its [[act]] of [[enunciation]]: “You say this, but why are you telling me it openly now?” For example, we all [[know]] that a polite way to say that we found a colleague’s talk stupid and boring is to say, “<i>That</i> was very interesting.” If instead we openly told our colleague, “That was boring and stupid,” he would be fully justified to be surprised. The act of [[public]]ly reporting on something is never neutral — it affects the reported content itself. | |
+ | The same goes for the [[recent]] open admission of [[torture]]: When we hear [[Dick Cheney]] make [[obscene]] statements about the [[necessity]] of [[torture]], we should ask: “Why are you saying it publicly?” That is, the question we must raise is: What is there about this [[statement]] that made you enunciate it? Thus, what is truly problematic about “[[24]]” is not the [[message]] it conveys, but the fact that this message is so openly stated. It is a sad indication of the deep [[change]] in our [[ethical]] and [[political]] standards. | ||
− | http://www.inthesetimes.com/site/main/article/2481/ | + | |
+ | ==See Also== | ||
+ | * [[torture]] | ||
+ | * [[war on terror]] | ||
+ | * [[ethics]] | ||
+ | * [[emergency state]] | ||
+ | * [[democracy]] | ||
+ | * [[human rights]] | ||
+ | * [[liberalism]] | ||
+ | * [[democracy]] | ||
+ | * [[war]] | ||
+ | * [[Hannah Arendt]] | ||
+ | * [[law]] | ||
+ | |||
+ | |||
+ | ==Source== | ||
+ | * [[Jack Bauer and the Ethics of Urgency]]. ''In These [[Times]]''. January 27, 2006. <http://www.inthesetimes.com/site/main/article/2481/>. Also listed on ''[[Lacan]].com''. <http://www.lacan.com/zizbauer.htm> | ||
+ | |||
+ | [[Category:]] | ||
+ | [[Category:Ethics]] | ||
+ | [[Category:Politics]] | ||
+ | [[Category:Culture]] | ||
+ | [[Category:Articles by Slavoj Žižek]] | ||
+ | [[Category:Works]] |
Latest revision as of 01:14, 25 May 2019
|