[Marxism] "24" Takes the Bait (Arab/Muslim baiting that is).

[dwalters@xxxxxxxxxxxx]

"24" Takes the Bait (Arab/Muslim baiting that is).

"24", the fast paced FOX TV series, just finished it's first "4 hours" of it's
"24 hour run". The script is written for action in 'real time'?no truncated
times, no flash backs, every minute that passes in real life passes on the
show.

The mythological "Counter-Terrorism Unit", based in Los Angeles, is the
institutional center for the show with Kiefer Sutherland playing "Jack Bauer",
agent extraordinaire and survivor of every form of torture known to humanity.
Jack is tough. Jack is certainly back. In one scene he bites open the neck of a
bad-guy who is holding him to torture him. Jack is not someone you turn your
back on, or your front, for that matter.

Without going to much into the plot or giving too much away, the plot lines
usually represent grave threats to US national, and physical, security. Usually
the villains are not quite who they appear to be, or appear to be working for.
It's one of the very addictive methods the producers of "24" use to keep fans
of the how stapled to their seats during the show.

While the villains come out of every conceivable 'real world' news?that is,
every villain is a villain based who opposes US policy someplace, they've
stayed away from too open an ethnic profiling of criminals. As others have
pointed out, sometimes it is right-wing factions in the US gov't itself (like
last season) that are intent on carrying out 9/11 type attacks to rile the
masses of Americans up for war. Admittedly season 1 had a Serb as the bad guy
(this not so soon after US involvement in the Balkans, which was part of the
sub-plot of the movie) and two seasons past there were a sort of 'non-ethnic'
Muslim enemy (without ever mentioning the word "Islam" or "Arab") this season
opens with an Al-Queada substitute group that has been blowing up buses and
public places in the U.S. for 3 weeks after the show's intended start. Almost a
thousand dead, the U.S. getting ready to place all Muslims and Arabs in
concentration camps, etc. when agent Jack Baur arrives back to save the day,
having been imprisoned by the Chinese gov't for perceived slights against it,
for the last two years. The plot thickens?

The open use of Arabs and/or Muslims as suicide-bombers in the US is clearly
playing on the US audience fears and prejudices to gain market share. But it's
more than that, too. The show also deals with Constitutional issues raised by
the suspension of Habeas Corpus, the rise of anti-Muslim bigotry because of the
bombings, and presents all of it (Jack Baur's miraculous return notwithstanding)
in what could be considered a very realistic way. The writers are proud of their
belief that they don't argue 'for' or 'against' any of the characters methods.
They try to make no political statements, they say, but put forth what they
believe would be a variety, the full gambit, so to speak, of views that would
be expressed if this situation were real.

In many ways they are successful in this fictional endeavour. I have no doubt
that the US would look like it's portrayed by Fox TV if the kind of bombings
that had taken place in Israel over the last 5 years ago took place here. In
this sense, even without a class analysis (from any class for that matter) the
show does present a fictitious America in a real-world situation. But by making
Muslims (so far, again, we haven't seen the plot twist yet) the focus of Baur's
determination to stop "Muslim terror" can only reinforce the growing
anti-Muslim/anti-Arab bigotry already festering in the US today.

David Walters,
Pacifica




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