March 15, 2007
More on 24 Posted by Alexander Burns at 02:55 PM EST As a fellow 24 fan, I was excited to read Fred Smoler’s post yesterday, “24 and the Politics of Popular Culture.” He writes about a recent New Yorker piece on the show and asks: “Is 24 a ‘rightist’ show? While everything [New Yorker writer Jane] Mayer says about 24’s depiction of torture is true, the series has other recurring themes. In most of 24’s seasons the terrorists are abetted, without their knowledge, by highly placed members of the American government who control sections of the national security apparatus, are represented in the cabinet, and are attempting to panic the public into supporting authoritarian rule.” Mr. Smoler’s is a question that I have contemplated as well. I agree with his argument that it’s too easy to caricature the show’s politics. At the same time, I’d add that the New Yorker article actually goes a long way toward clarifying just what those politics are. Toward the end of the article, Jane Mayer gives a quick rundown of producer Joel Surnow’s political views: dislikes welfare, resents liberal courts, likes Reagan, hates Carter, etc. Then Mayer adds: “Surnow is critical of the way the war in Iraq has been conducted. An ‘isolationist’ with ‘no faith in nation-building,’ he thinks that ‘we could have been out of this thing three years ago.’” Surnow’s political profile is clearly that of a rightist, but his views on foreign affairs are distinctly out of step with those of the Bush administration. Surnow believes, according to Mayer, that we ought to have replaced Saddam Hussein with “some other monster who’s going to keep these people in line.” Where neoconservative Republicans and liberal internationalists alike favor an expanded international role for the United States, Surnow apparently would prefer a more self-interested and coldly amoral foreign policy. This makes sense, in the context of Mr. Smoler’s description of the show. On the one hand, 24 presents the United States as a nation under siege by terrorists, requiring all possible means of self-defense in order to beat back the barbarians at the gates. On the other hand, the show depicts an America profoundly threatened by the machinations of big business, the arms industry, and irrationally militaristic government officials. This rendering of the United States may not be in line with the conservatism of George W. Bush, but it is a conservative rendition all the same. On March 3, Mr. Smoler discussed the influence of Gerald P. Nye’s Senate Munitions Committee on another piece of popular culture, The Plainsman. In 24, it appears that Nye’s fears about belligerent businesses have been resurrected. I’m not sure what Nye would have thought about torture, but I imagine he’d be very sympathetic to Surnow’s warnings about government conspiracies and the profit motive for war. 24 tries hard to mix up the standard political labels of the present day. In the third season, for example, an incumbent Democratic president loses the endorsement of the AFL-CIO to his Republican challenger. In real life, that’s about as likely as a successful recombinant DNA experiment of the type Mr. Smoler’s post mentions. Despite the show’s best efforts to evade ideological labels, however, Surnow’s views come through all the same, and I think “rightist” is a safe label to apply to them. It certainly isn’t the rightism of Paul Wolfowitz, but it is an awful lot like that of Pat Buchanan. Unlike Pat Buchanan, though, 24 sure is fun to watch.
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