01.11 | The depraved heroes of '24' are the Himmlers of Hollywood
Slavoj Zizek writes in yesterday's Guardian that the message of the TV series, that torturers can retain their human dignity if the cause is right, is a profound lie:
Bloody hell. That's a bit deep. The rest of it I don't understand.
In the fourth season, Jack Bauer agrees to be delivered to China as a scapegoat for a CTU covert operation that killed a Chinese diplomat. He knows he will be tortured and imprisoned for life but promises not to say anything that might damage US interests. When he is informed by the ex-president of the US that someone has ordered him to be killed, his two closest CTU friends fake his death. Both terrorist and CTU agents operate as examples of what the political philosopher Giorgio Agamben calls homo sacer - someone who can be killed with impunity since, in the eyes of the law, their life no longer counts. While they continue to act on behalf of the legal power, their acts are no longer constrained by the law. It is here that we encounter the series' ideological lie: in spite of the CTU's ruthlessness, its agents, especially Bauer, are warm human beings - loving, caught in the emotional dilemmas of ordinary people.
