Before we get into an analysis of the character of Jack Bauer, the question must be asked, “Is Jack really evil? What sort of evil are we talking about?” After all, Jack does good things (as well as evil things). He loves and strives to protect his family and his country (in fact, these seem to be the only moral imperatives that Jack obeys consistently). So let me assure you: Jack is no Hannibal Lechter.13 He does not sadistically relish the evil he does. But the evil he does is almost worse in its pragmatic, matter-of-factness.
A scene from the first episode of season two is, to my mind, paradigmatic of the type of evil I’m talking about - this is the scene that really started me thinking about Jack as evil. The only connection the Counter-Terrorism Unit has to the terrorists is a criminal organization which Jack had previously infiltrated undercover. Jack calls in a witness the FBI has in custody that has agreed to testify against the head of this organization. Jack asks a question or two, then pulls out a gun and shoots the handcuffed witness in the chest at point-blank range. Jack’s superior is beside himself, but Jack retorts, “You want results, George, but you don’t want to get your hands dirty! Now get me a hacksaw.” Jack then takes the severed head to the leader of the criminal organization as a display of his loyalty. Note the attitude that typifies Jack’s evil: “You want results, but you don’t want to get your hands dirty.” Jack’s evil is of the type that is somehow considered to be a sort of practical virtue - like “rolling up your sleeves” to fill the wheelbarrow with compost. It stinks, but it’s what’s best for the garden, and somebody’s got to do the dirty, hard work around here. It’s just part of the job, something that has to be done (and the job must be done). It is evil that is pragmatically necessary, unavoidable.
Let’s look at some of the fictive contours of his character that make it possible for the audience to continue to see him as the hero, the good-guy who occasionally does evil things (but they’re not that bad, because Jack’s the hero).
The show tries to pull off a pretty neat trick: to show Jack as simultaneously a normal, everyday kind of guy, and someone with extraordinary powers. Season one begins with Jack trying to heal his broken marriage, a marriage he damaged through sleeping with a co-worker at CTU. He’s not the best father. At the beginning of season two, he is paralyzed with grief, unable to restart his life after the death of his wife. At the beginning of season three, he’s even struggling with a nasty heroin habit that he picked up during his last undercover assignment. He’s a normal, fallible guy with human vulnerabilities and failings.
But once he is put under stress and given responsibility to save others, his true, mythic nature emerges. He is absolutely omni-competent. He is a skilled marksman, martial arts fighter, helicopter pilot, computer programmer, interrogator, and so on. Whatever the exigencies of the situation, he will rise to the challenge. Not once in the show did I hear the words “I don’t know how to do that” escape his lips. This omni-competence makes him trustworthy. He knows how to get the job done, and therefore (and here’s the intuitive leap) the audience can trust that the job Jack has to get done is the right one, and he’ll do it in the most appropriate manner. Because he’s competent, he’s also assumed to have an infallible moral compass. He is the substitute for a transcendent moral framework.
But the best asset that Jack possesses (in terms of the hostile, edgy world of 24) is being able to think on his feet, to improvise, to react quickly and lethally. In other words, his best character trait undermines the kind of moral reflection needed to recognize evil as evil - it makes such reflection superfluous, ponderous, impractical. Jack hasn’t got that capacity. He’s got something better: lightning quick reflexes, a command of the situation. And so ethical reflection is passed over in preference for technical competence and efficiency.
Another aspect of his character that marks him as a superhero is his amazing tenacity and resilience. Jack doesn’t give up. Ever. He just keeps going and going through this 24-hour period of crisis. And he won’t stop until the job is done.
Not even death can stop Jack Bauer. He does die in season two, twice actually. Once symbolically - he pilots a plane to take the bomb to the Nevada desert to explode in an unpopulated area, and he must guide the plane to ground zero, sacrificing himself (Christ-like) for the masses. In an amazing twist of fate, Jack’s boss from CTU, who is already dying from radiation-sickness, stows away on the plane and convinces Jack to parachute out early and let him pilot the plane to ground zero. Jack dies and comes back to life (figuratively), and continues to search for the terrorists. The second time Jack dies, it’s literal. Jack is captured by the enemy and tortured to death, only to be “resurrected” via defibrillator. After that, a normal human being would be in an ICU for a week. But not Jack. He’s able to escape his bonds, kill his captors, and return to the hunt for the dangerous men still at large. The only ill-effects he suffers for the rest of season two are a couple of mild heart-attacks (signified by Kiefer grasping his chest, wheezing, and wincing in pain momentarily). But these, too, pass, and he is able to pursue the villains to their untimely demise. Jack outdoes Jesus - he dies and comes back to life twice! And he kicks butt. He’s sort of a Christ action figure, complete with Uzi.
If ever there were a man you could trust to get the job done, it is Jack. He’s omni-competent, tenacious, unstoppable, and yet, just a regular guy, like one of us. This interesting combination of the quotidian and the mythical is even reflected in his name: Jack Bauer. Why did the writers choose “Jack Bauer” and not, say, “Haywood Chesterfield III”? The name “Jack Bauer” marks the hero as being middle-class, from German immigrant stock (“Bauer” is German for “farmer,” so perhaps Jack has agrarian class roots). The nickname “Jack,” instead of “John” or “Jonathan,” marks him as being informal, non-aristocratic – that is, one of us, a normal guy. At the same time, “Jack Bauer” (like “Clark Kent”) is short, punchy – a strong name with lots of explosive consonants. (Try saying “Haywood Chesterfield III” with a sense of urgency – it doesn’t work; it’s too long to be taken seriously.) More than that, “Bauer” is about as close as you can come phonetically to the English word “power” (the difference being an initial voiced labial versus an unvoiced labial). It suggests the superhero power Jack has without stating it obviously. “Jack Power” would be ridiculous. “Jack Bauer” is understated, yet brims with a hidden potency (like the character himself).
For all of these reasons, then, Jack is coded within this world as a trustworthy moral guide - we don’t have to consider his actions too closely. He is at once gifted with amazing resilience and competence, and he is identified with us, a normal, everyday kind of guy - a sort of god-man, if you will. He does what we’d do, if we were as able and cool as he is. The evil he does is eminently excusable.
But perhaps the trump card that allows us to excuse Jack’s evil is that he, like the world of 24, is an image of us (or of U.S.). In Jack Bauer, we find a certain image of post-9/11 America staged for us, and it’s hard not to root for yourself when you see it in another.
How does Jack embody a post-9/11 America? First, and perhaps most importantly, he is wounded. Season one ends with the violent death of his wife, Teri Bauer. Jack, like us, has lost something precious, irreplaceable. We find Jack at the beginning of season two estranged from his daughter (because of grief over the loss of her mother). He is devastated, emotionally exhausted, numb. He has retired from CTU and wants nothing more to do with it. Jack feels what Americans felt after the towers fell - he’s been personally wounded.
So naturally a situation arises that only Jack can handle, something that calls him out of retirement. The only lead CTU has on the terrorists is a criminal organization that Jack had contact with as an undercover agent. The situation is urgent, and there isn’t time (remember how time is configured in this world) for anyone else. It’s got to be Jack or no one. And naturally, Jack rises to the challenge, wounded though he be. I would argue that Americans (at least many of them) have a similar view of America’s mission in the world. There is a grave terrorist threat out there, and though we’re wounded, it’s up to the U.S. of A. to handle it. Who else can give the kind of leadership so urgently demanded? Europe? They’re effete and self-conflicted. Africa? It’s too mired in its own problems. Asia? They’re either part of the problem or not interested in helping. Nope. It’s either us, or no one, wounded though we are. And if we do some evil along the way, just remember that we didn’t come looking for this job; it came looking for us. In this way, Jack’s character has a peculiar resonance with a popular American self-perception. And this resonance has the effect of short-circuiting any overriding moral considerations other than protecting one’s own (say, human rights, for example).15 We, like Jack, have a job to do, and we may have to get our hands dirty doing it.
13 Hannibal Lechter is a recurring character in Thomas Harris’ books (each of which have been made into movies). The character became a household name after the release of the movie adaptation of Harris’ book The Silence of the Lambs (1991).
14 Any lasting effects of his temporary death or the heart-attacks are completely forgotten by the beginning of season three. Jack’s good as new, and ready for action.
15 In another plot twist, it is revealed mid-season (after the nuclear bomb has exploded) that the terrorists behind the bomb-plot were financed by wealthy oil tycoons who want to start a war in the Middle East to drive oil prices up. Jack spends the second half of season two trying desperately to procure evidence to clear the Arab nations accused of any involvement in order to avoid a war. One could argue that Jack is, in this case, pursuing a noble, moral goal. But my argument still stands. I am not arguing that Jack’s ends (saving downtown L.A. from a nuclear blast, stopping a war) are evil, only that there is no reflection on the evil that he does to accomplish those ends.
In this essay, we’ve considered how different facets of the world of 24 and of the character of Jack Bauer make any transcendent ethical framework irrelevant compared to the pragmatic exigencies of the situation and the mythic presence of the hero. The world of 24 collapses time; it is a world on the edge, and so no moral deliberation can be afforded. The character of Jack Bauer is this curious blend of the normal and the superheroic (without the cape), and his situation strangely parallels our own, so he is commended as a trustworthy hero, despite (or because of?) the evil he does.
I have also been arguing that this sort of projecting of a fictive world the viewers can inhabit and a hero with which to identify all have definite effects upon the identity and moral perspective of the audience (what Ricoeur would call the “refiguration” of identity as the world of the text intersects the world of the reader).16 I have argued that the show enrolls us in a sort of sentimental education whereby evil is seen as necessary and acceptable.17 But perhaps the connections I’ve been making have been misleading, the paths of influence too direct: Jack does x, so we’ll collectively do x.18
Actually, I believe that the influence is more subtle and indirect because of the institutional setting of the character of Jack Bauer. He works for CTU, he is a government agent. Part of his super-prowess seems to emanate from his position as a government agent (his training, his field experience, and so on). The subtext seems to be, “Don’t try this at home, folks! Jack’s a professional.” Rather than directly influencing the audience to go out and emulate Jack, I would argue that the show would have a pacifying effect upon its audience. Instead of spurring us to action, the show may subtly influence us towards passivity, to accept whatever the government deems is necessary in getting the job done in its post-9/11 “War on Terror,” to let the talented and trustworthy folks like Jack and his friends at CTU take care of it. In accepting evil heroes like Jack, we may be tacitly abnegating our responsibility to morally approve or censure the actions of those who represent and protect us. That sort of moral reflection and moral accountability seems irrelevant given that time moves so fast, the threat looms so large, and people like us (but a whole lot better and cooler) are getting the job done.
16 See Ricoeur, 1984, 70-86.
17 Ricoeur calls fiction a moral “laboratory of the imaginary.” See Ricoeur, “The self and narrative identity,” in: Oneself as Another, translated by K. Blamey (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992), 164.
18 Lawrence and Jewett call this direct effect of popular culture upon the behavior of its audience the “Werther Effect,” after the copycat suicides that swept Europe after the publication of Goethe’s popular novel The Sorrows of Young Werther. See Lawrence and Jewett, 9-12.
One question that always dogs essays like these is the dreaded “So what?” What practical good does such a reading of an American television show do? Allow me, therefore, to draw back the curtain on some of the motivations behind the essay above as they apply to our understanding of evil. This paper serves two purposes: first, to underline the necessity of critical reflection in the consumption and reception of popular culture; and second, to explore the displacement of religious discourse on evil in a secularized environment.
First, concerning critical reflection and popular culture . . . One of the dangers attending popular performances like 24 is that the visceral always threatens to trump reflection on evil. This happens in two ways. One is that the show (or movie or video) uses the shock of evil to turn popular entertainment into a sort of amusement park thrill ride. Each particular act of evil then functions as a sort of commentary on the performance as a whole, in essence saying: “Hang on, kids! This is going to be wild! Wheeee!” In other words, the shock-value of these acts consigns the show to a genre where reflection is assumed to be unnecessary. It’s a show to be bathed in, not thought about.
The second way the visceral trumps the reflective is in the presence of the hero. The popular hero is generically trustworthy – he is the good guy by definition.19 The evil that he might do along the way is not worthy of reflection compared to the admirable qualities immediately displayed by the hero (bravery, perseverance, physical prowess, and so on). Moral reflection upon evil is rendered unnecessary by fiat, by dint of the personality and skill-set of the hero. The hero becomes a savior who need not be questioned (more on that later).
This paper then acts as a corrective reading (and perhaps as a model for other readings). The type of reading recommended here allows evil to assume a voice, a specific gravity that would allow it to be reflectively weighed and sifted. Such readings always feel like swimming upstream and “spoiling the fun” of this kind of popular entertainment, but I believe it is all the more necessary. Without reflection, an attitude of acceptance and resignation with regard to evil slowly becomes the norm. The influence of such popular discourses of evil flies in under our radar, so to speak.
The second concern driving this paper (though kept much more in the background) is the social scientific debate over secularization, and specifically as it applies to how we weigh evil in the “secular” West.20 Religion has been the traditional carrier of moral discourse in the West. That is, until relatively recently in human history. Beginning in the eighteenth century, an influential group of cultural and intellectual elites made a sustained effort to discredit religious discourse as an effective carrier of moral or metaphysical truth. That effort, combined with certain changes in key social structures during and after the Industrial Revolution, have attenuated traditional religions’ claim to speak Truth (with a capital “T”) on matters of morality, epistemology, or ontology. Sociologists of religion call this coupling of elite discourse and social change “secularization.”
All alike agree that something indeed has happened, that the texture of life is different since the onset of modernity in the West. But what secularization means and to what extent religion itself is truly impaired is by no means agreed upon.21 This paper is meant to be an indirect contribution to that debate, namely, that even though traditional religion has in some respects lost its social legitimacy as a carrier of moral and metaphysical truth, much of the slack has been picked up by popular cultural discourses. In other words, it seems clear to me as a student of popular culture that secularization has not meant a decline in religion (as Steven Bruce and the “classical” theorists would have it). Rather, secularization has produced a religious displacement, a reorganization of the sacred arena in which discourse about evil is produced.
So my comparison of Jack with Jesus wasn’t (only) a bit of cheek – it was meant very seriously. The dynamics of 24, by trumping traditional religious moral reflection with action and heroism themselves take on a religious (or quasi-religious) weight, complete with their own rituals, myths and savior figure.22 Such entertainments can have that sort of influence (with specific political consequences) without having to be taken seriously as religion. After all, it’s only a television show. But surreptitiously, something sacred is slipped in, something numinous that excuses the evils of torture, murder, or what have you. The sacred in 24 is “family” and “national security.” In other shows, it might be “romantic love” or “success,” or whatever. In this respect, I feel that the discourse of popular culture is the great overlooked wildcard with respect to debates on civil religion, and the fate of religion in general in the “secular” West.
As a way of understanding evil, I myself vastly prefer the grounded discourse offered by traditional religions such as Christianity.23 Without such rooted reflection, moral discourse soon becomes weightless, nothing more than strongly felt sentiments – umbrage without ballast (and therefore, more easy to manipulate). But such a shift in perspectives on evil is indeed underway, and has been for some time. To my mind, this means that the kind of reflective reading of popular discourses on evil is all the more timely, all the more exigent. We need to know the lay of the land, the way the terrain of evil is being changed by this popular discourse. Otherwise, friends, you don’t know Jack.
19 I am using the masculine hero here as an example. There are examples of this sort of undermining of reflection with female heroines (the film version of the Lara Croft character would be one such example). But typically this visceral role is filled by male characters. The typical heroine is configured very differently in Western popular discourse.
20 I would argue that religion has been the main carrier of moral discourse not only in the West, but the world over. But my focus here is how we evaluate evil in the West.
21 Opinions over how best to understand secularization vary greatly. After the 1980s and 90s, when religion became once again a very public presence in various parts of the world, few of the “classical” secularization theorists remain. But those who do (such as Steven Bruce) are vocal. See Steven Bruce, God is Dead: Secularization in the West (Oxford: Blackwell, 2002), and Religion in the Modern World: From Cathedrals to Cults (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996). Others critique the notion of classic version of secularization as overly simplistic. José Cassanova, for example, believes it is crucial to differentiate between secularization as social structural differentiation (which is indisputable) and secularization as religious decline (which is very disputable). See José Cassanova, Public Religions in the Modern World (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1994). Others, such as Danièle Hervieu-Léger, see secularization as a sort of social amnesia that breaks the chain of tradition (but religion has a way of repairing those chains in creative ways). See Danièle Hervieu-Léger, Religion as a Chain of Memory, translated by Simon Lee (Rutgers, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2000). In one case, Peter Berger, a notable theorist for the classical secularization view, reversed himself after the notable resurgences of religion in the 1980s and 1990s. See Peter Berger, “The Desecularization of the World: A Global Overview,” in The Desecularization of the World: Resurgent Religion and World Politics, edited by Peter Berger (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1999). For a helpful synopsis on the debate, see David Lyon, “Faith’s Fate,” chapter in Jesus in Disneyland: Religion in Postmodern Times (Cambridge, UK: Polity Press, 2000).
22 This is also one of the reasons why I prefer receptor-oriented readings of popular texts over sender-oriented readings. In cultural studies, sender-oriented readings tend to focus on how texts (such as TV shows) manipulate passive readers (or viewers). Receptor-oriented hermeneutics (like Ricoeur’s) tend rather to focus on the active appropriation of texts by readers, that is, how readers use texts to make meaning (in this case, meaningful perspectives about evil). I would argue that this activity of meaning making (or, more precisely, meaning re-making) lies at the heart of religion.
23 Further, I would argue that moral discourse must assume a personal absolute (that is, the type of God worshipped in Christianity) if it is not to dissolve into relativism or abstraction. But arguing that in detail would, I am afraid, take us too far afield at present.
Berger, Peter. “The Desecularization of the World: A Global Overview,” in The Desecularization of the World: Resurgent Religion and World Politics. Edited by Peter Berger. Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1999.
Bruce, Steven. God is Dead: Secularization in the West. Oxford: Blackwell, 2002.
___________. Religion in the Modern World: From Cathedrals to Cults. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996.
Cassanova, José. Public Religions in the Modern World. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1994.
Chau, Thomas. “24: Season Two’ DVD Review.” DVD Fanatic. 9 September 2003. <http://www.dvdfanatic.com/review.php?id=24-season2> (27 February 2004).
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Hervieu-Léger, Danièle. Religion as a Chain of Memory, translated by Simon Lee. Rutgers, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2000.
Internet Movie Database. “24 Awards.” Internet Movie Database. n.d. <http://imdb.com/Tawards?025331> (27 February 2004).
Lawrence, John Shelton and Robert Jewett. The Myth of the American Superhero. Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2002.
Lyon, David. “Faith’s Fate.” Chap. in Jesus in Disneyland: Religion in Postmodern Times. Cambridge, UK: Polity Press, 2000.
Redwine, Ivana. “24 – Season Two’ DVD Review.” What You Need to Know About Home Video/DVD. n.d. <http://homevideo.about.com/cs/tvondvd/gr/24_S2_DVDreview.htm> (27 February 2004).
Ricoeur, Paul. “Time and Narrative: Threefold Mimesis.” Chap. in Time and Narrative, vol. 1. Translated by Kathleen McLaughlin and David Pellauer. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1984.
__________. “The Self and Narrative Identity.” Chap. in Oneself as Another. Translated by K. Blamey. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992.