24 hours – of irresponsible morals

Rudder’s been watching a DVD of Season 4 of the TV show 24. I don’t pay much attention to it – it’s not the sort of thing I’m interested in – but even just sitting in the same room with a book I’ve begun to notice that I really, really don’t like this show. “Don’t like” is not the correct phrase, actually; my problem with the show is a matter of morals rather than taste. I think the show is just bad – not in the sense of having poor writing (I haven’t been paying close enough attention to judge) but in the sense of having poor values. Specifically, it’s the attitude to torture that upsets me.

I don’t think this is a case where the attitude of the characters has to be separated from what the authors are trying to show. It’s too consistent, with no negating voices. Over and over I have looked up to hear someone saying something like, “We’re going to have to torture him for that information – there’s no time to do it any other way.” Not once has there been anyone speaking up to say, “But wait, that’s not our policy,” or “But that makes us no better than the terrorists we’re fighting, or more practically “But torture doesn’t work – if you put them in enough pain people will tell you anything. How will you know if you’re getting the right information?”

(There are some good sources on the unreliability of torture cited at an old discussion thread at Lydy’s journal.)

Instead, it’s always presented as being perhaps not a preferred method, but an effective one, and faster than any other means of interrogation. I’ve talked about this with Rudder; he claims that the characters do get in trouble because they’ve often turned out to have tortured innocent people. I don’t think that’s the same think; there’s a big difference between “You tortured the wrong guy. Bad agent, no donut!” and “You committed torture. We don’t do that here. Get your stuff and leave, now – we’ll let you know whether we decide to initiate legal proceedings.”

I don’t think it’s valid to say it’s “just a TV show” either. (Clarification: Rudder doesn’t say this, but it’s the sort of arugument people use frequently.) TV shows do have effects on their viewers. I also don’t agree with Rudder’s contention that the show’s writers put those episodes in to make people think. If that were their intention, it would be better achieved by showing at least an occasional opposing viewpoint, having one of the characters experience a crisis of conscience about what he’d done, or having someone provide wrong information under torture, not because he’s innocent but because he just wants the pain to go away. Instead, I fear this show has the opposite effect. There was even a recent episode in which one man tortured his girlfriend’s estranged husband, because the latter seemed to have ties to a terrorist organization. Once he understood what was going on, the tortured man seemed primarily upset that he’s been considered a suspect and it might have upset his ex-wife. Not long afterward the two men were in a car together and the torturee saved the torturer’s life, at possible loss of his own.

If people become used to torture on TV that has no ill consequences, no need for self-examination, and doesn’t even particularly upset the tortured person, I fear they will be desensitized to reports of it in real life. The US is already in a compromised enough moral position on that issue; I don’t see how showing it in such a positive (or at least non-negative) light on a TV show can be anything but harmful. I don’t believe in censorship; I do believe in self-control and in trying to do no harm.

Given the way the torture issue played out in the news over the past couple of years; it’s entirely possibly that government agents would have exactly these attitudes, and a TV show ought to be able to portray that. On the other hand, it’s perfectly possible to show characters with questionable morals, even as the hero of a show, and to give the viewers clues that they can’t rely on his sense of right and wrong. 24 doesn’t do that, and I think the writers, the network, and the viewers should all know better than to allow it to be shown and to gain such popularity. I haven’t been able to convince even the viewer in my own household of this, but at least now the issue’s been discussed he can’t ignore it.