The first time I watched the show "24," I was with other people. When one of the agents had a brown man on the floor, someone in the room said, "Why does it always have to be Middle Eastern people?" I replied, "I can't believe you guys are watching this show." That person responded, "It's fiction!" Then why would you say that it's always someone who is Middle Eastern if this fictional show is not reflecting reality?
Anyone with more than two brain cells can tell that this show has a blatant political agenda, with not so subtle arguments which justify racial profiling and the suspension of civil rights for the sake of "national security." I mean, what do you expect? It's on Fox, for god's sake!
So it comes as no surprise that the New Yorker recently featured an article discussing the politics of the show's producer, Joel Surnow, a self described "right-wing nut job" whose "politics suffuse" the whole show. The article has caused an earthquake in the media because U.S. Army Brigadier General Patrick Finnegan, the dean of the United States Military Academy at West Point, along with three military and FBI interrogators, met with the producers of the show in November- they think that fiction is blurring into reality way too much. Apparently, the show's gratuitous on screen depiction of torture "hurts" the image of the US and is encouraging torture practice:
...it had become increasingly hard to convince some cadets that America had to respect the rule of law and human rights, even when terrorists did not. One reason for the growing resistance, he [Finnegan] suggested, was misperceptions spread by "24," which was exceptionally popular with his students. As he told me, "The kids see it, and say, 'If torture is wrong, what about "24"?' " He continued, "The disturbing thing is that although torture may cause Jack Bauer some angst, it is always the patriotic thing to do."
Gary Solis, a retired law professor who designed and taught the Law of War for Commanders curriculum at West Point, told me that he had similar arguments with his students. He said that, under both U.S. and international law, "Jack Bauer is a criminal. In real life, he would be prosecuted." Yet the motto of many of his students was identical to Jack Bauer's: "Whatever it takes." His students were particularly impressed by a scene in which Bauer barges into a room where a stubborn suspect is being held, shoots him in one leg, and threatens to shoot the other if he doesn't talk. In less than ten seconds, the suspect reveals that his associates plan to assassinate the Secretary of Defense. Solis told me, "I tried to impress on them that this technique would open the wrong doors, but it was like trying to stomp out an anthill." [Link]
Yikes.
I agree that this is disturbing- how Hollywood often is the vehicle which mobilizes collective jingoism during war time, and how it justifies, safeguards, and defends the actions of the establishment. And while it is difficult to assess just how much TV fiction can and does seep into reality and vice versa, it is true that the mass media's has the ability to condition what we think and the way we see things. And '24' is one of the most popular shows on American TV. Scary. Apparently, the show is tapping into the sentiments of the average viewer.
But here is one aspect that many newspapers pick up on that I want to emphasize: racial profiling. And if you are of South Asian descent like I am, you definitely cringe when you hear someone say, "Why does it always have to be the Middle Eastern people?"
On screen torture after September 11, 2001 has multiplied to an excessive rate:
Since September 11th, depictions of torture have become much more common on American television. Before the attacks, fewer than four acts of torture appeared on prime-time television each year, according to Human Rights First, a nonprofit organization. Now there are more than a hundred, and, as David Danzig, a project director at Human Rights First, noted, "the torturers have changed. It used to be almost exclusively the villains who tortured. Today, torture is often perpetrated by the heroes." The Parents' Television Council, a nonpartisan watchdog group, has counted what it says are sixty-seven torture scenes during the first five seasons of "24"-more than one every other show. Melissa Caldwell, the council's senior director of programs, said, " '24' is the worst offender on television: the most frequent, most graphic, and the leader in the trend of showing the protagonists using torture." [Link]
USA Today reported in 2005 that "Fictional '24' Brings Real Issue of Torture Home:"
Alistair Hodgett of Amnesty International credits 24 and A&E's MI-5, which follows the British security service, with realistic depictions that provide "a clearer idea of what torture involves. ... They do more to educate than desensitize." [Link]
"Desensitize"? I'm not sure about that. It seems like it becomes glorified and justified: presumed suspects on the show- who are, of course, weeded out by racial profiling- can be tortured because when they are, they invariably confess to something; that is, they are always guilty (evidently, the show never throws light on the fact that torture can elicit coerced false confessions from an innocent person).
These "suspects" on the show are defined as being of Middle Eastern origin (with accents that are a curious hybrid between Arab, Indian, and Russian). But what happens when the actors who play these suspects are of South Asian background? Kal Penn plays a villain on '24' who is part of an "Islamic" group and may be involved in a terrorist plot. Penn is actually of Indian origin. There are plenty of males in my family and social circle who have his phenotype. But according to '24', people of this phenotype always have something to hide. It's just a matter of time (or torture technique) that their nefarious plans come to the surface. You can chuck the constitution, civil liberties, and due process of law out the window because they are inconvenient obstacles to getting the job done. Innocent until proven guilty is no longer a legal right.You're guilty until proven innocent. The principle in practice now is: people of South Asian phenotypes are Muslim and therefore suspects; and these suspects are never innocent. So go ahead and torture them for the collective good- it's a "necessary evil."
It goes without saying that the fundamental problem is not that people of South Asian descent are getting racially profiled, but that racial profiling exists. No one ever puts up a picture of a white guy when they talk about "terrorism", even though many of the acts carried out by the US military can qualify as "terrorism" (such as bombing 3 million Vietnamese) and the guys on those "missions" are mostly white. Yet our brown faces serve as the symbolic mugshots of "terrorists."
So don't be surprised if FBI agents pay your daddy a visit-- if he's Desi, he just might be a terrorist!
- Desi Italiana's blog
- Login or register to post comments
-
kettikili (#5):
Boy howdy. But how to get people to actually care enough to spend time doing it? Besides putting billions of dollars into a new subversive form of mass media. Can we do that?
Huh, I didn't know you'd learned to belly-dance in Sri Lanka... thought it was the Burmese form you'd picked up...
AradhanaD:
What disturbing about Hollywood's 'agenda' is that its creative output is tied into an economic logic that reproduces its racist structures. I know of otherwise relatively thoughtful people who have found themselves thinking in those terms (of what will 'sell,' according to the racist, sexist and homophobic presumptions of largely white male hetero producers) in order to find work. Nevermind the people who think that way and don't think of it as a compromise.
It's frightening.
I know this isn't entirely related, but I just don't have that much sympathy for Kal Pen. Yes, it's hard out here for an actor of South Asian descent (and yes, I'm singing this in tune with "It's Hard Out Here For a Pimp"), but he also makes the kind of astonishingly bad choices that separate him from his other South Asian acting peers. I mean, "The Rise of Taj"? Double barf.
As for the neocon underpinnings of "24", well, what else is new? As Desi Italiana points out, it is on Fox, after all. It makes me very angry that on the few occassions when I turn on the TV, the images I see of "the enemy" are of my friends and family. It makes me angry that people like us are seens as automatically guilty of crimes simply by virtue of our skin color. This is the kind of racial profiling that has been happening against African and Latino Americans for many years, and in light of how much the South Asian community has tried to distance itself from those "bad", "lazy", "criminal", and "illegal" minority groups, it only makes sense that the chickens have now come home to roost. The key is to walk in solidarity with other minority groups and protest this kind of representational absurdity when we see it--both when it is directed against us and against others.
Desi Italiana:
Right, but too often it goes without saying, so I'm glad you did. Because the time to get angry isn't only when people who appear to be "one of us" is made the target. We have to think about how those lines are drawn, and they are drawn when we feel an affective response to specific instances of injustice but not others. We all do this. Why?
What this kind of "misrecognition"* does bring to light are new opportunities for strategic alliance in response to (representational, physical) violence. Especially when people can now see themselves as potential targets.
Padma:
This is an important point, and there's a lot I agree with more generally in your comment (including the point about Kal Penn's job choices). These stereotypical profiles are definitely products of a racist imagination, but I think it's important to be aware that the very act of labeling and being labeled "bad," "lazy," "criminal," and "illegal" is itself deeply inflected by class and gender. This is where anything that might be called a "South Asian" community is riven apart and has a lot of work to do if it wants to be able to proclaim, let alone achieve "solidarity" with other groups.
After years of ignoring Native North American, African-American and Latina/o struggles -- as well as the hardships of the very people claimed or disavowed as "their own"! -- in favour of a model minority identity politics, can middle-class South Asians expect to be accepted into alliances now that the question is about their mainstream visibility and representation?
I'm inclined to say that there's a lot of work ahead for anyone among us (myself included) committed to an ethic of solidarity.
And I think it's going to have to be a process of mutual communication and education. Minority communities in the U.S. have been enclaved (and in some ways, enclaved themselves) to the point of mutual misrecognition. Our social relations are mediated through images and discourses created and disseminated by the state, Hollywood and the 11 o'clock news. They are fragmentary roles that cannot form a coherent narrative. So that I can actually find myself in the position of being asked, on first sight by another woman of colour, whether I've learned how to belly-dance in India. (Sometimes I'm too tired, but this time I actually took the time to relate the existence of Sri Lanka.)
* I'm using "misrecognition" in a loose sense, for the theory-heads out there, so don't jump on me, dammit. The quotation marks are still used to indicate that I acknowledge its entanglement in the dialectic of recognition.**
** Yes, I just made that footnote.
uh yeah, that first one wins for the strangest comment ever...
hey, look at our hit count, it just crossed 25k! woooooo!
Now stop lurking and start commenting! :)
Mullah Cimoc say all waziristan so like brittney spear for dancing girl. All children especially love her too much.
But now divorce and in public with not the panties. Is this the devil to show for the children such thing? For this should be ashame all of amerika. also the tattoo.
This child girl also astronaut girl go crazy this all prove much better in Waziristan and NWFP where girl stay pure and so happy and never take the LBT (low back tattoo).
You know in waziristan what happen one man put tattoo on daughter of taliban man? Bang bang. This wicked man them kill so quick make true justice. And ameriki man suffer for lesbian divorce court judge kick man from home, live in car, not see children go jail. even for all money in amerika this not worth it. better live happy pure in waziristan fight for family and children.
*puzzled by above comment*. I find it a very sad situation for actors of south asian decent to be in 24, they know that they are being typecast but it's no-win situation really. I recently went to an event where fellow Canadian, actor Sean Majumder performed and half his stint was about his experiences of being typecast in LA and on the show 24.
And then people believe "hollywood" doesn't have an 'agenda'... uhuh.
This is in response to kettikili's very perceptive post and vivek's question:
I would argue that a subversive and critical social consciousness that encompasses the "ethic of solidarity" is already being built through the grassroots activist movement in both America and the United States. There are plenty of organizations, activists, and academics who are working to move beyond the polarizing effects of identity politics and look at ethnicity through the lens of the overlapping experiences of discrimination, solidarity, and resistance against class and ethnicity-based inequality. (I would point out here that with regards to violence--representational or otherwise--ethnicity and class are inseparable.)
The real question is not so much whether these movements and acts of resistance are happening, but how to bring this discourse to the mainstream. It is not enough for radical and progressive politcal ethnic organizations to communicate solely with each other because, sadly, they represent such a small minority of the minorities. We have to make our "safe" and "acceptable" representatives start talking to each other: temples, cultural organizations, churches, mosques, regional clubs, and so forth. My dream would be to see the temple I grew up attending--a bastion of conservative Hindu tradition-building--do a cross-cultural performance event, or lecture series, or conference with members of other ethnic and religious organizations in New Jersey. Building the conversation at that level is the first step towards moving ethnic groups out of these self-imposed cultural ghettoes and towards a recognition of a shared struggle.
No please, anything but that!
What the heck was the first comment all about? :)
Last night I wrote a long ass comment, which got munched by cyber space and subsequently I went to bed all ticked off.
Anyway.
Kettikili:
Absolutely. I have often wondered whether Desis would have said anything if they hadn't been mistaken for the "target." This is another post in the making (just need a little time).
Padma:
Hmmm.... I hear what you are saying. But for me it is a structural problem, in that the industry is made a certain way, and entertainers/artists who fit the cut get launched to stardom, ie mass exposure and etc. Surely there are South Asian actors/actresses who we don't see because they don't play roles that stereotype Desis, such as cab drivers, convenient store owners, and now, terrorists. Kal Penn would have never become famous if he hadn't done roles that play with mainstream stereotypes. In that stoner movie (Harold and Kumar, was it called?), he and the other guy totally played the model minority myth that pervades the mainstream; they just like to get high like the next guy.
When you try to sidestep roles like the above, it becomes very frustrating because you hardly get any work, and if you do, it is at much lower profile. In the end, it's almost like that saying, "Don't hate the player, hate the game."
Again, I hear what you are saying, but I kind of steer clear of "minority group" coalitions. I'm of the belief that whenever there is an injustice, you combat it with other like minded folks, whether they are minorities or not.
And the term "minorities" is interesting, because it is not an objective term, but something constructed by which our identities, politics, and location are mediated. And in this, I have seen this happen:
1. construction of the "group" (who is a part of the group, etc. and "Muslim community," "Hindu community" and so on)and inversely, which groups you are not a part of. This is a shame, because what could be a fruitful solidarity with people who are not a part of your "group" is already corked.
2. since the group has to have unified platform to present to the powers that be, a tendency to standardized politics occurs (ie "African American politics," and so on)
3. In this standardization, usually the majority threads that run through the group get priveleged
One of the biggest problems I have with US politics is this special interests mentality that is fostered by group politics and multiculturalism. It seems like each group is vying for their interests; and when you foist a platform through a group, it inevitably sets up the political stage with this group wants this and this group wants that. I think one of the unintended consequences of this kind of politics is that things are reworked or reconfigured within a framework, rather than changing the entire framework, since usually the problem is with the framework.
I'm not sure if I am making sense....
Wow, all of our comments and discussion make me feel like I am in grad school again :)
I think that the term solidarity itself has taken on some very unfortunate practical manifestations.
With the vast number of disparate causes out there all competing for resources (mainly money, labor, and attention/interest - interest being a huge commodity these days), I find that solidarity is less about genuine support/empathy and more about strategic compromises.
I was pissed off when I attended an anti-war rally in Washington, DC and the speeches had nothing to do with bombing Afghanistan and the imminent loss of life. Instead, every cause under the sun was given 15 minutes at the microphone to give their speech because it was the ONLY WAY that the rally's organizers could turn out that many people; everyone has a cause and an organization representing that cause, and we live in such a specialized world that even the majority of progressives/leftists will only turn out for their own cause. In order to get public shows of solidarity from other groups, one has to give over the platform to their various causes.
So instead of hearing about how blowing up Afghanistan's already decrepit infrastructure and spawning hundreds of new Osama bin Ladens were going to make the world a much worse place, I heard about how Mumia Abu Jamal was languishing in prison.
What was advertised as a rally with a specific purpose was in fact essentially a mela for progressive social causes to speak to numbers they wouldn't dream of being able to address otherwise.
I remember venting to someone about it and being told that all of these causes were related in that they were grassroots responses to the oppression of global capital and empire. I don't disagree with this, but it was a bullshit explanation for a very clearly strategic move.
Then of course the next day there was no national coverage except for the Washington Post, which carried on its front cover a picture of three anarchists burning a flag.
All right everyone...no need to get y'all's collective panties in a wad!!! no matter how much you scream about marginalization and neo cons, the fact is, majority of terrorist bombs attacks or planes being hijacked are done by browns following an autocratic,religio-fascistic worldview.Being an Indian,Im a bit annoyed myself at being looked at with suspicion when Im travelling with a back pack even though Im not remotely connected with any of the bomb happy nutcases from the middle east.
[...]The first time I watched the show “24,” I was with other people. When one of the agents had a brown man on the floor,[...]
This is my other blog! Feel free to submit other movie/TV reviews there.
:)
Not that it's bad that this discussion make me feel like I'm back in school! :)
It's just that now that I'm out of academia, it's hard to get back into the groove of speaking with a certain language, because to be honest, I don't hear people talk like this everyday. Academia socializes you to be a certain way, ya know? :)
Ha.
Totally unrelated, but when I was at the World Can't Wait rally on Oct. 5, 2006 in LA, no one spoke about Afghanistan. Everyone talked about Iraq, but not Afghanistan. I asked one of the organizers of the rally why they didn't mention Afghanistan at all, and he said that it's because some of the public could argue that the military intervention in Afghanistan was justified, whereas the one in Iraq wasn't.
Hi, thanks so much for this great critique of one of the worst offenders of this trend that I have noticed on TV and in films over the past few years. Course, Hollywood has been giving us the "Rambo" genre for years now, but when the US invaded Afghanistan, it seemed to me there was a sharp uprise in films that glorified imperialist violence--"Black Hawk Down" is the one I can think of right at the moment, I remember being so appalled at the trailers and commercials I saw for that one. Also on TV in the US it's extreme--how many shows are there that make various law enforcement and military officials into heroes? "Without a Trace" has the specific agenda of making the FBI look like good guys saving the poor white kidnapped folks. There are two or three shows about military investigators--JAG is the only one whose name I can remember, but again, it's all about the military officials being the good guys. And then they started a show that came on after "Without a Trace" that was about the CIA doing such good things in foreign lands! Gah. I'm sure there was blatant racism in all those shows; I tried not to watch them. And that is without even mentioning the almost constant violence against women in shows of the CSI variety. So glad I gave away my TV.
Oh, and how about the torture bit from the first season of "Lost"? They managed to have it done by a good guy--Sayid--in the service of the "good guy group," but he was still a "bad guy" because he was Iraqi and therefore obviously knew all about torture? How very, very convenient for white people, I must say.
[...] couple of months ago, I blogged about how the TV show 24 plays on and sustains stereotypes of brown people being [...]
Damn it Amy!!!! I've been contemplating doing a review for the entire first season of Lost - it's full of deconstructionist goodies. Oh it will happen one of these days... LOL
There's some interesting media clips on youtube from the user ChallengingMedia.
Sample RE: how hollywood vilifies a people.
"Make it so."
Sorry, I love star trek. And benign military fascism with undertones of racial superiority and liberal inclusiveness, in general.
Okay, maybe not so much the second one.
Anyway, what I was going to say before I started prattling on about myself and how wonderful I am is that you should check out 300. It pretty much the best thing ever if you're into cultural crit and may have generational significance in the field of kitsch crit. My friends and I laughed through much of it, and I hope that the underlying message--America must stay in Iraq because of the sacrifice of the fallen, courageous, "free" (no helots here!) soldiers who came before the current crop of people that were bamboozled by the elite into fighting a war in whcih they have no business--was entirely lost in the extreme and moronic way in which the historical facts, current debate, and all else were portrayed. To put it bluntly, I wasn't sure if the piece was supposed to be conscious or subconscious self-parody.
I hope the former.
Smoke before you go. Referring specifically to 300, but that applies generally.
Speaking of the movie "300", here is a piece by an Iranian writer:
http://www.iranian.com/Daryaee/2007/March/300/index.html
And a sarcastic take on the reaction of "300": http://www.iranian.com/Shorts/2007/march2007.html#18
The sarcastic one has something offensive in it, but I'm sure you guys will pick it up :)
Hahaha Dr Anonymous - I did a review for 300 already... feel free to comment and add. I was going to put the review up here too, but wanted to revise it before I did - and didn't get a chance.
Okay, maybe I will put it up here for you! :)
oops sorry, I meant to mention vivek's already linked to the review in his comment. TY
Psh, where have you BEEN, Dr. A??
check it
[...] play a terrorist as well. In any case, I’ve always thought that to a certain extent, we should hate the game and not the player. Hollywood casting directors are looking for minority tokens that they can scatter around to spice [...]