Big, Bad Muslims: Part Three—24: Season Six

Bus bombing--morning commutes in L.A. are dangerous.

The action begins at 6am. Islamic terrorist groups have ‘victimized’ the United States for eleven weeks. At a Los Angeles bus station, a Middle Eastern man, late for work and distracted by news broadcasts of the latest bombing, chases a bus. The driver refuses to let him on, prompting the man to shout, “I have as much right to be on the bus as you!” Inside the bus, a wild-eyed man fingers an electronic device and the bus explodes.

            Minutes later in the White House Oval Office, President Wayne Palmer meets with his cabinet to dismiss a mandate created by Tom Lennox, his Chief of Staff, which would allow the government to hold Muslims in detention centers for questioning and possible deportation. Lennox says it will increase public safety and reclaim lost faith in the administration. Karen Hayes, the National Security Advisor, endorses the President’s refusal, stating it would destroy civil freedoms, to which Lennox growls, “Security has its price!”

Tom Lennox: this season's perpetual asshole.

            Meanwhile, CTU (Bauer’s Counter-Terrorism Unit) completes a shady deal. Abu Fayed, former partner of Hamri Al-Assad, the notorious Muslim terrorist, will give up Assad’s location if he can kill Jack Bauer and have 25 million dollars. Bauer, who killed Fayed’s brother, has been in a Chinese prison for the last two years, the twist on which season five ended. President Palmer, at his wits end with the attacks, agrees. CTU facilitates the deal with its newest employee, Muslim Nadia Yassir, who acts as translator between Fayed and CTU director Bill Buchanan.

Jack's Jesus phase.

            In another part of Los Angeles, a suburban family watches the morning news. A Culver City mosque has been bombed in retaliation for the bus bombing earlier that hour. Ray, the father, debates with his wife whether they should let their son, Scott, go to school.

Across the street, the FBI arrests Ahmed Amar’s father on suspicion of domestic terrorism. Stan, a neighborhood tough guy, intimidates Ahmed after the FBI leaves. Knowing Ahmed is his son’s best friend, Ray chases away Stan and offers Ahmed his home as shelter until his father returns.

Ray: father of a skater boy son, protector of neighborhood Muslims.

            24’s first stumbling block is Ahmed Amar, played by Kal Penn, the noted young Indian actor (yes, Kumar), and former member of the Obama administration. Popular for his stoner movie roles, his ethnicity is well known, and one cannot help laughing when he appears on screen. To be cast as a Middle Eastern teenage terrorist, Penn admitted in New York Magazine:

I have a huge political problem with the role. It was essentially accepting

a form of racial profiling…it’s repulsive. But it was the first time I had a

chance to blow stuff up and take a family hostage. As an actor, why shouldn’t

I have that opportunity? Because I’m brown and I should be scared about the

connection between media images and people’s thought processes? (Yuan)

Obviously, in accepting the role, Penn did not share the concerns of The Council on American-Islamic Relations. In Ahmed’s character, Muslims, even the quiet ones across the street, cannot be trusted.

At 7am, Abu Fayed reveals to Jack Bauer that he, not Hamri Al-Assad, is behind the attacks. Soon, Fayed calls Ahmed and asks him to deliver a package. Ahmed tells Fayed of his father’s arrest. Fayed replies, “If your father is meant to be sacrificed that is how it will be.” Ahmed nods. Of course, the slaughter of ‘infidels’ is more important than family.

Abu Fayed, this season Big Bad, chats with Kumar....I mean Ahmed.

Fayed continues, “I could have chosen other people. I chose you.” Not only does Fayed think Ahmed specially suited for the job, but he tells him he will kill him should he fail. Forget the idea that Muslims don’t kill Muslims and Arabs don’t kill Arabs.

The show reveals Ahmed’s motivations as ‘Arab Rage.’ “The roots of so-called ‘Arab Rage’ lie not in some purported cultural or religious peculiarity of the Arabs, but in the adherence by peoples of the Arab world to the universal claims of justice and equality which the rest of the world has propagated these two centuries past” (Halliday 22). None of 24’s Americans possess this deep-seeded anger (unless you count the depictions of “others” on this show).

After the phone call with Fayed, Ahmed tells Scott—remember, his neighborhood pal—he must leave. Scott says he is sorry about his father and that “the whole world’s gone crazy.”

Ahmed hisses, “The world’s been crazy for a long time. You just haven’t been paying attention.” He hurries home and tears apart the living room wall with a claw hammer (this begs the question: how did Ahmed’s father not know his son hid something behind the drywall?). As he removes a small box from between the wall studs, Stan, the neighborhood bully, bursts into his home. Ahmed pulls a gun and shoots Stan.

From that point on, Ahmed becomes a volatile, wild-eyed madman.

Hearing the shot, Scott rushes into Ahmed’s house, sees Stan’s body, and Ahmed takes him hostage. Marching him back across the street, Scott asks him why he is doing this; they’re best friends.

“Friends?!” Ahmed shouts. “You can’t even pronounce my name. It’s not Ahmed. It’s AH-Med!”

First, Penn’s overacting is hilarious. Second, Ahmed will kill friends and innocents because they mispronounce his name? Oh, yeah, the irrational Arab!

"Go ahead! Call me 'Ahmed' again!"

            Taking Scott’s family hostage, Ahmed demands Ray, the father, deliver the box to his contact in exchange for another package or else he will shoot his wife and son. Ray, with wonder in his eyes, says to Ahmed, “You were a terrorist all along.” Well, yeah! He’s Muslim!

Ray complies with Ahmed and delivers the box to Ahmed’s contact. The man opens it, says there is not enough money inside, and demandss higher payment. Ray, in a fit of rage and fear, kills the man and takes the package. This scene exemplifies a thread throughout this season: contact with Muslims will inevitably cause rational Americans to lose their senses and harm not only themselves, but each other.

"I'm sorry," says Ray. "A Muslim made me do it!"

            Ray, with the package, demands Ahmed release his family or he will destroy whatever is inside it. Ahmed compromises, and releases the mother. She flees the house, calls Ray, and they decide to call the police, who then call CTU. Soon, fresh from escaping Fayed’s men, Jack Bauer and his partner Curtis Manning are on their way.

            As promised, Ray delivers the package to Fayed (the big bad terrorist) and is soon taken hostage. Fayed calls Ahmed and orders Scott’s death: “He’s seen and heard too much.”

Make your own caption, I guess.

Meanwhile, outside, Jack and Curtis sneak upon Scott and Ahmed. Just as Ahmed is ready kill Scott, Jack bursts in and shoots him. Scott tells Jack of the conversation he overheard between Ahmed and Ray about where his father took the package, but it is too late. The package, a detonator to a nuclear bomb, is used to explode the device. Ray is killed in the blast, leaving a kind, American family fractured by Muslim intrusion.

In Part 4, I’ll continue my dissection of season six’s other Muslim characters.

An actual affecting moment in the show--Fayed bombs Los Angeles.

Bibliography

“Day 4.” “Day 6.” 24. Fox, 2005, 2007.

“24 Under Fire from Muslim Groups.” BBC News. BBC News, 19 January 2007.

Armstrong, Stephen. "Rough Justice." New Statesman 136.4836 (2007): 36-38. 

Bauder, David. “TV Torture Influencing Real Life.” USA Today. 11 February 2007.

Dougherty, Michael Brendan. "What Would Jack Bauer Do?" American Conservative 6.5

(2007): 8-10. 

Flynn, Gillian. “24: TV Review.” Entertainment Weekly. 11 January 2007.

Halliday, Fred. 100 Myths About the Middle East. Los Angeles: University of California Press,

2005.

Irwin, Robert. Dangerous Knowledge: Orientalism and its Discontents. New York: Overlook

Press, 2006.

Lewis, Bernard. From Babel to Dragomans: Interpreting the Middle East. Oxford: Oxford

University Press, 2004.

McCormick, Patrick. "The Torture Show." U.S. Catholic 73.5 (2008): 17. 

McDermont, Jim. “A Trojan Horse.” America 196.7 (2007): 23-24.

Rossi, Melissa. What Every American Should Know About the Middle East. New York: Plume

Books, 2008.

Said, Edward. Orientalism. New York: Vintage, 1978.

Yuan, Jada. “The White-Castle Ceiling.” New York Magazine. 4 March 2007.

Social Warfare in Steven Spielberg’s Jaws?

Enough has been written about Jaws’ narrative tightness, excellent acting, and technical prowess. Really, what more needs to be said? Spielberg’s shark tale is the 1975masterpiece that spring boarded him into our cultural spotlight as possibly the greatest director of all time and set the standard by which all blockbuster films should be compared. It’s essentially a man vs. nature film. A great white shark brings physical and economic carnage to the town of Amity, so three men must battle it mano-a-mano in chilly Atlantic waters. It’s a simple film, but when I recently rewatched it, I couldn’t help but find deeper social commentary.

            WARNING: SPOLER ALERT.

            WARNING: I am reading far too much into this.

  I’ve always found Jaws’ second half more interesting than its first. Don’t get me wrong, the first half is terrifying (the fleeting brutality of the Kitner boy’s death is probably what scares me most). Yet, the second half provides three rich characters (Brody, Hooper, Quint), each possessing internal demons, and the shark the catalyst for metaphorical confrontation.

AGAIN—I’m reading too far much into this.

            Okay, first we have Matt Hooper, the excitable shark scientist. From the town’s point of view, he’s an outsider, a rich boy, an aspect the film hammers home repeatedly. As Hooper says, he has money on top of his family’s money. Hell, look at his freakin’ boat! All that gadgetry!

Matt Hooper. Rich. Intelligent. Bearded.

            Anyway, during the film’s second half, Quint takes a special disliking to Hooper because he’s rich. When examining him to see if Hooper can work on his boat to catch this shark, he tells him he has city hands, that he’s “been counting money all his life.” Hooper immediately cries, “I don’t need this working class hero crap!” The scene is played wonderfully by Dreyfuss and Shaw.

            Quint and Hooper’s animosity only continues on the boat. Quint makes fun of Hooper’s shark cage and other expensive items he brings aboard the Orca. “Don’t know what he’ll do with it,” says Quint in reference to the shark. “Might eat it, I suppose.” On the boat, Quint constantly criticizes Hooper, from how he ties off lines and barrels to his steering of the ship. Quint to Hooper: “Don’t tell me my business.”They do have a night of bonding, the famous “Show Me the Way to Go Home” scene, but quarrel for the rest of the movie.

            Finally, when Quint’s methods for killing the shark fail, the three men agree to lower Hooper into the water in his shark cage to jab the fish with a poisonous needle. As Hooper is lowered, I can’t tell whether he earns begrudging respect from Quint or if the captain can’t wait for him to become shark food. Of course, the shark proves too much, breaking through the cage, causing Hooper to drop the needle. He escapes to hide behind a rock near the seabed, leaving Chief Brody and Quint at the shark’s mercy.

            For Hooper, the shark represents his own discomfort with his class standing, the constant reminder that his money makes him different than others and produces overwhelming hostility. In the end, he will always be running from this fear.

Da Chief.

            Next, we have Chief Brody, the middle-class hero of the group. He owns a nice house in a nice section of town. He has a nice truck, nice clothes. He’s average in all possible ways. In town, he’s an outsider because he hasn’t been born on the island, yet everyone treats him with respect because he is chief. He’s humble, self-deprecating, and reliable.

His wife jokes several times how scared Brody is of water. He never swims, just stays on the beach. She says he even sits in the car on the island ferry. For him, the shark not only represents this fear, but also his fatherly duty to his wife and kids. He has to confront the shark on open water to protect his family.

After it destroys Hooper’s cage and kills Quint, Brody is left on the sinking Orca with only a rifle and a few bullets. In the famous ending, he tosses a SCUBA tank in the shark’s maw, lets it circle toward him, and shoots the tank, blowing up the shark. Earlier in the film, he’d seen a picture of a shark in a textbook with a similar tank in his mouth. If he hadn’t had both the guts to get on Quint’s boat and the impetus to have studied sharks beforehand, he wouldn’t have been able to kill it. Brody must be pushed out of his comfortable middle-class existence to confront what these comforts have caused him to lose—primal-survivalist struggle with Mother Nature.  

"Smile you..."

Finally, we have Quint, whose story is undoubtedly the saddest and most disturbing. He’s a fisherman, a working class hero as Hooper puts it. He’s also crazy, made evident as he smashes the sinking Orca’s radio and their last chance to get outside help. In the “Show Me the Way to Go Home” scene, Quint explains he served in WW2 on the USS Indianapolis, the aircraft carrier that delivered the A-bomb. The ship was sunk by a Japanese torpedo and the survivors attacked for days by sharks. Many were eaten alive.

This is not the face of a sane man.

Quint swears he’ll “never wear a life jacket again,” preferring to rely on his know-how/intuition. Thus why he dislikes Hooper’s expensive tools and prefers to kill the shark “old school.” As the film progresses, he becomes more like Ahab, seeking revenge against the great white for the killing of his mates and the emotional destruction such an experience has cost him.

Ironically, Quint is killed by Hooper. Yes, the shark jumps onto the boat and Quint slides into its mouth. Brody tries to catch him, but Quint slips through his fingers. Quint does grab the edge of a table, but one of Hooper’s SCUBA tanks rolls over his fingers, causing him to jerk in pain, lose grip, and slide to his demise. So, yes, the shark kills him. But Hooper’s tanks give him that unfortunate push. Quint is then consumed by his painful past, the demons that have followed him all his life and now manifest in the shark itself. Really, this is the only logical end for Quint. What, was he gonna go to therapy? Get over the whole shark thing? No. No life jackets, remember?

Another picture of Quint. Never a bad thing.

So, what is the film trying to say?

Is Hooper—the rich boy—doomed to run from his money all his life?

In Brody, does the middle-class policeman provide the means for heroism?

Does Quint represent the working man, who provides the bulk of the hard work, yet is doomed to be rolled over by the rich and consumed by his spot in the socioeconomic structure?

In a movie about a killer shark, I don’t know if it is posing any of these questions.

But I find myself asking them just the same.

Big, Bad Muslims: Part Two—24: Season Six

The show's most uber-patriotic DVD cover.

If Jack Bauer represents American ‘values’, then 24’s villains reflect his global ‘others’.

In season one, Serb warlords try to kill the first African-American presidential candidate. Season two sees Middle Eastern terrorists financed by American oilmen attempt to detonate a nuclear bomb in Los Angeles. Mexican cartels and a vengeful Mi-6 agent spread a lethal virus in southern California during season three. Terrorist group Crimson Jihad (what a name—ooohhh, like blood!) kidnap the Secretary of Defense, rupture a nuclear power plant, shoot down Air Force One, and almost destroy Los Angeles with a nuclear missile in season four (damn, those guys had a plan).

In these seasons, 24’s villains were less of a vehicle for pushing politics and more focused on providing Jack Bauer strong antagonists. Playing it safe like this was a strength and weakness. Yet that changed in season five.

            Season five (2006), 24’s best, had Russian, British, and American terrorists take hostages, release nerve gas, and attempt to kill the Russian presidential family. All were violent, greedy, and blinded by anti-American ideologies. That is, until the season’s big twist. The true villain behind the attacks was the President of the USA, who believed provoking war between Russian dissidents and its military would gain America Asian oil interests.

24, once a simple thriller, moved into the realm of political commentary and succeeded wonderfully. Although it rightly condemned its villains, each was allowed to speak, to touch the deeper issue at hand. Here, 24 questioned the Bush administration at the height of the Iraq War and did so not in black-and-white terms, but in prevalent grey. It made a continual thematic point to state even hardliner patriotism can be treason. Flawed, human, characters and sharp, economic writing elevated the season to critical acclaim. It won Best Drama Series and Best Actor at the 2006 Emmys.

President Charles Logan: Yes, this dude's an asshole.

In 2007, the stakes were incredibly high for its sixth season. 24’s producers, buoyed by the response to season five’s weighty matters, decided to tackle a delicate subject: Muslim extremists operating in America. The stakes were high, but the slope was too steep.

            Obviously, 24 used Muslim terrorists in seasons two and four. The difference between those seasons and season six are paramount to condemning season six’s depictions. In season two, the terrorists worked for American oilmen for profit, not for ideological gain. They had no real political purpose, only greed, grounding their actions in a universal temptation the American viewer could accept as applying to everyone. In season four, Crimson Jihad, led by Habib Marwan (an excellent Arnold Vosloo), proclaimed the exact purpose for their attacks in a homemade video:

People of America, you wake up today to a different world. One of your own

nuclear weapons has been used against you. It will be days and weeks before

you can measure the damage we have caused. But as you count your dead,

remember why this has happened to you. You have no knowledge for the causes

of the people you strike down or the nations you conquer. You choose to meddle

in their affairs, without respect. You follow your government, unquestioningly,

toward your own slaughter. Today, you pay the price for that ignorance...Unless

you renounce your policies of imperialism and interventionist activities, this attack

will be followed by another...and another after that.

Crimson Jihad criticized the Bush regime’s foreign policy. Marwan, intelligent and well spoken, killed only when necessary, and Vosloo, so charismatic in the role, captivated the screen. Although Marwan was evil, he was not a Muslim stereotype. His religion, like the terrorists in season two, was moot. His motivations were purely political, and for much of the season, largely ignored.

Nevertheless, when his character emerged, The Council on American-Islamic Relations cautioned the show on how it portrayed Muslims. In a BBC News statement, the CAIR said: “Repeated association of acts of terrorism with Islam will only serve to increase anti-Muslim prejudice.” Kiefer Sutherland appeared before 24’s next episode with this announcement:

Hi. My name is Kiefer Sutherland and I play counterterrorist agent Jack

Bauer on Fox’s ‘24.’ I would like to take a moment to talk to you about

something that I think is very important. Now, while terrorism is obviously

one of the most critical challenges facing our nation and the world, it is

important to recognize that the American Muslim community stands firmly

beside their fellow Americans in denouncing and resisting all forms of terrorism.

So in watching ‘24,’ please bear that in mind. 

Yes, a nice sentiment, maybe weightless, maybe forced. Still, such intention was lost on the creative team behind the show’s sixth season. Religion—evil, evil Islam—is the only motivation of its Muslim villains.

24: Season Six has, coincidentally, six major Muslim characters. All become mired by Middle Eastern/Muslim myths. As discussed by Edward Said in his seminal work, Orientalism, the roots of Islam’s clash with the West was caused by its misconception and demonization by Western powers. Robert Irwin summarizes Orientalism as the “discourse of imperialism…[one] that constraints everything that can be written and thought in the West about the Orient and more particularly about Islam and the Arabs…The West possesses a monopoly over how the Orient may be represented…[carrying] implications about Western superiority” (3). Bernard Lewis, in From Babel to Dragomans, states “[The West is] accused of distortion, not just distortion of this or that individual theme, but a systematic, deliberate distortion conducted as a profession or, more precisely, as a conspiracy” (437). I don’t buy the conspiracy part of Lewis’ assessment, but feel rather that now ignorance has fallen over our views of the Middle East. When it comes to artistically depicting the region and its people in accurate (ie: multi-faceted) light, unfortunately we often find laziness and a reliance on outdated archetypes. 24’s Muslim depictions in season six explicitly exist in Orientalist branding. Specifically, the show depicts a ‘backward’ behavior considered abnormal to the West which inhabits these strange ‘others’ Jack Bauer must defeat.

Return for Part 3, where I’ll begin to analyze season six as it unfolds.

Bibliography

“Day 4.” “Day 6.” 24. Fox, 2005, 2007.

“24 Under Fire from Muslim Groups.” BBC News. BBC News, 19 January 2007.

Armstrong, Stephen. "Rough Justice." New Statesman 136.4836 (2007): 36-38. 

Bauder, David. “TV Torture Influencing Real Life.” USA Today. 11 February 2007.

Dougherty, Michael Brendan. "What Would Jack Bauer Do?" American Conservative 6.5

(2007): 8-10. 

Flynn, Gillian. “24: TV Review.” Entertainment Weekly. 11 January 2007.

Halliday, Fred. 100 Myths About the Middle East. Los Angeles: University of California Press,

2005.

Irwin, Robert. Dangerous Knowledge: Orientalism and its Discontents. New York: Overlook

Press, 2006.

Lewis, Bernard. From Babel to Dragomans: Interpreting the Middle East. Oxford: Oxford

University Press, 2004.

McCormick, Patrick. "The Torture Show." U.S. Catholic 73.5 (2008): 17. 

McDermont, Jim. “A Trojan Horse.” America 196.7 (2007): 23-24.

Rossi, Melissa. What Every American Should Know About the Middle East. New York: Plume

Books, 2008.

Said, Edward. Orientalism. New York: Vintage, 1978.

Yuan, Jada. “The White-Castle Ceiling.” New York Magazine. 4 March 2007.