Less torture on tap for “24″
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- February
- 16
Apparently, the last eight to 10 eps of “24” will have less torture, according to the exec producer Howard Gordon, via the Philadelphia Inquirer.
Why? Because the U.S. military asked them to tone down the torture? (Yeah, you read that right, the U.S. military.) Nope. (The Cliff’s Notes version: Brig. Gen. Patrick Finnegan, dean of the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, along with retired military interrogators and Human Rights First reps met with “24”’s creators to ask them to tone it down because they didn’t want to influence young, real American interrogators in Iraq. Not that the interrogators are so easy to influence that “24” would influence them, but just in case. Human Rights folks, natch, objected just because they don’t like torture. All of the above also met with the folks from “Lost” apparently because they don’t particularly like the concept of the sensitive torturer, Sayid.)
Oh, back to why they’re cutting down on the torture. Because it’s become “trite.” Yes, folks, “24” has tortured so many bad guys (and even the occasional good guy  after all, Jack himself has been on the wrong end of interrogations more than once, even before China) that the use of it as a plot device has become kind of tired, Gordon says. His wife even told him it’s been used too much.
As expounded on in great detail in this New Yorker piece I previously blogged about, how torture is used on TV is quite different than how it would work in reality. 24 uses it in the “ticking time bomb” scenario, which experts say is extremely rare in real life. Sayid’s flashback on his introduction to torture on “Lost,” at least, showed him using it over a long period of time, which is the more realistic situation.
Not realistic, most experts agree, is that the torture actually results in accurate information. In real life, those subject to torture, if they’re going to give up information eventually, tend to say whatever it is they think their captors want them to say whether it’s the truth or not, because that’s what’s going to make the torture stop.
Despite all that, and despite the fact that I tend to lean toward pacifism and don’t personally believe torture should be used in real life, it’s part of what makes “24,” well, “24.”
So bring on the pliers, the waterboarding, the power drills. So long as it moves the plot along and keeps us on the edge of our seats. 24 ain’t real, folks. It’s a roller coaster thrill ride and I’m just glad I climbed on board.
UPDATE: Apparently, the FCC has drawn up a report suggesting that Congress craft a law allowing the agency to regulate violence on television as much as sexual content and profanity. What do you think?
This entry was posted
on Friday, February 16th, 2007 at 11:29 am by Amy Vernon.
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