So 24 started this week on Sky One. Two hours of Jack Bauer and twisty plots and turns. Yet, for some reason I’m not as into it as I have been in previous seasons. I haven’t seen Day 1 yet, but caught the others.
Maybe it is the fact that it is all a bit real; I don’t mean the “muslim threat” (they’re hiding under beds you know), but the whole torture deal. In the opening episodes Jack shot a man in the leg, fair enough if he had been running away, but no, he was a prisoner that they were interrogating just not breaking him fast enough.
I think I be able to handle it better if they showed CTU torturing people who are innocent as well as those they “know” are guilty. Aren’t the writers making it all a bit convenient if all the suspects are in the know about whatever is going on. Or are they just sparing us all those who were picked up because there names are similar to known terrorists?
I’ve often thought that if real people did what our TV heroes do we would despise them. The same goes for many heroes in books and films, its just that with 24 everything seems as though it should have more of an impact. On the show people are tortured, but always the guilty as though that makes everything alright, and always they give up some vital bit of information. They never lie to make the pain stop or simply agree in the hope that they’ll be left alone. Or admit to something, only for the real culprits to go free.
In real life torture doesn’t work, not if you want justice.
“If you tell me my family are being terrorised,
keep me awake for six days and nights,
confused and terrified,
In the lonely dark of night,
I’ll swear that black is white,
if you’ll let me just lie down and close my eyes.
I’ll sign anything, if you let me close my eyes”
-Scapegoats (Christy Moore), song about the Birmingham Six
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