TV torture influencing real life

Ever watch the popular television show “24”?  In a recent episode, demanding information, Jack Bauer faces a terrified man tied to a chair in front of him. Through a window over Bauer’s shoulder, the man sees his two children bound and gagged. Tell me where the bomb is, Bauer orders, or we’ll kill your family. Silence. The prisoner watches as a thug kicks down the chair his son is tied to and fires a gun at point-blank range. He screams but still doesn’t relent — until the gun is pointed at his second son. Having gotten what he needed, Bauer whispers that the execution was staged. The scene from Fox’s “24” is haunting, but hardly unusual. The advocacy group Human Rights First says there’s been a startling increase in the number of torture scenes depicted on prime-time television in the post-2001 world.

Click here for the AP story.

This is troubling.  Muslim groups have protested 24’s stereotypes of Muslim terrorists.  Many academic studies document how the prevalence of negative stereotypes in mass culture can influence how the nation treats all particular groups, with the mass depictions of Black criminality being a prime example.   Now we can see torture on our television screens.  Will we soon hear more reports of torture? 

The New Yorker (2/19 print issue) (here) has an article “Whatever It takes” by Jane Mayer that traces the political evolution to the right of Joel Surnow—the co-creator and executive producer of “24.”  It is a fascinating article that offers opinions by experts that Baeur would be a war criminal, that the “ticking time bomb” trope never occurs in real life, etc.

KJ