Reading 24: TV against the Clock (Reading Contemporary Television)

257 Pages·2007·14.35 MB·English

by  Steven Peacock

READING
24
Reading Contemporary Television
Series Editors: Kim Akass and Janet McCabe
[email protected]
The Reading Contemporary Television series aims to offer a varied,
intellectually groundbreaking and often polemical response to what is
happening in television today. This series is distinct in that it sets out to
immediately comment upon the TV zeitgeist while providing an intellectual
and creative platform for thinking differently and ingeniously writing about
contemporary television culture. The books in the series seek to establish
a critical space where new voices are heard and fresh perspectives offered.
Innovation is encouraged and intellectual curiosity demanded.
Published and Forthcoming:
Reading CSI: Crime TV Under the Microscope edited by Michael Allen
Reading Deadwood: A Western to Swear by edited by David Lavery
Reading Desperate Housewives: Beyond the White Picket Fence
edited by Janet McCabe and Kim Akass
Makeover TV: Realities Remodelled edited by Dana Heller
Reading ‘Quality’ TV edited by Janet McCabe and Kim Akass
Reading Sex and the City edited by Kim Akass and Janet McCabe
Reading Six Feet Under: TV to Die for edited by Kim Akass and Janet McCabe
Reading The L Word: Outing Contemporary Television edited by Kim Akass
and Janet McCabe
with an introduction by Sarah Warne
Reading The Sopranos: Hit TV from HBO edited by David Lavery
Reading Third Wave Feminist TV: Jane Puts It in a Box
edited by Merri Lisa Johnson
Reading 24: TV against the Clock edited by Steven Peacock
READING
24
TV AGAINsT ThE CloCk
Edited by
sTEVEN PEACoCk
Published in 2007 by I.B.Tauris & Co Ltd
6 Salem Road, London W2 4BU
175 Fifth Avenue, New York NY 10010
www.ibtauris.com
In the United States of America and in Canada distributed by
Palgrave Macmillan, a division of St Martin’s Press
175 Fifth Avenue, New York NY 10010
Copyright © Steven Peacock, 2007
The right of the contributors to be identified as the authors of this work
has been asserted by the authors in accordance with the Copyright,
Designs and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. Except for brief quotations in a review, this book, or
any part thereof, may not be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a
retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic,
mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior
written permission of the publisher.
ISBN 978 1 84511 329 2
A full CIP record for this book is available from the British Library
A full CIP record for this book is available from the Library of Congress
Library of Congress catalog card: available
Typeset in Goudy Old Style by Steve Tribe, Andover
Printed and bound in the United States
CoNTENTs
Acknowledgements vii
Contributors ix
Regular Cast List xiv
Introduction: It’s about Time
Steven Peacock 1
Part 1 – Splitting the Screen: Rewriting Television Conventions
1 24 and Twenty-First Century Quality Television
Daniel Chamberlain and Scott Ruston 13
2 24: Status and Style
Steven Peacock 25
3 Divided Interests: Split-Screen Aesthetics in 24
Michael Allen 35
4 Reasons to Split up
Interactivity, Realism and the Multiple-Image Screens in 24
Deborah Jermyn 49
5 Interesting Times
The Demands 24’s Real-Time Format Makes on its Audience
Jacqueline Furby 59
Part 2 – America under Siege:
Terrorism, Globalisation and the Politics of (American) Morality
6 ‘So what are you saying? An oil consortium’s behind the nuke?’
24, Programme Sponsorship, SUVs, and the ‘War on Terror’
Paul Woolf 73
vI READING 24
7 Days and Hours of the Apocalypse: 24 and the Nuclear Narrative
Daniel Herbert 85
8 24 after 9/11: The American State of Exception
Anne Caldwell and Samuel A Chambers 97
9 Just-in-Time Security: Permanent Exceptions and Neoliberal Orders
Torin Monahan 109
10 ‘Tell me where the bomb is or I will kill your son’
Situational Morality on 24
Sharon Sutherland and Sarah Swan 119
11 ‘You’re going to tell me everything you know’
Torture and Morality in Fox’s 24
Douglas L Howard 133
Part 3 – Unmasking Identities: Sexuality, Difference, Culture
12 Damsels in Distress: Female Narrative Authority and Knowledge in 24
Janet McCabe 149
13 Father Knows Best? The Post-Feminist Male and Parenting in 24
Joke Hermes 163
14 Techno-Soap: 24, Masculinity and Hybrid Forms
Tara McPherson 173
15 ‘She may be a little weird’: Chloe O’Brian
Paul Delany 191
16 24 and Post-National American Identities
Christopher Gair 201
Afterword
David Lavery 209
Season Guide 213
Film and TV Guide 217
Bibliography 221
Index 233
ACkNoWlEDGEMENTs
I would first like to thank the authors – Daniel Chamberlain, Scott Ruston,
Michael Allen, Deborah Jermyn, Jacqueline Furby, Paul Woolf, Daniel
Herbert, Anne Caldwell, Samuel A Chambers, Torin Monahan, Sharon
Sutherland, Sarah Swan, Douglas L Howard, Janet McCabe, Joke Hermes, Tara
McPherson, Paul Delany, Christopher Gair, and David Lavery – for providing
insightful, engaging, and distinctive contributions, adhering to time-sensitive
deadlines, and corresponding with boundless energy and enthusiasm.
The idea for this collection developed out of equally energetic discussions
at the international conference on ‘American Quality Television’ at Trinity
College, Dublin, in 2004. Thanks to Joke Hermes, for her encouragement
and belief in the project, as well as her invaluable support in the early stages
of the project’s genesis.
Special thanks go to the series editors, Kim Akass and Janet McCabe. It is
a pleasure and a privilege to work closely with two such supportive, generous
and enthusiastic people. Their good humour, counsel and encouragement
were crucial throughout all stages of the project’s development.
At I.B.Tauris, special thanks also go to Philippa Brewster for her patience
and guidance. Additional thanks go to David Lavery for being extremely
generous with his time.
I would also like to thank all members of the Departments of Film
Studies, and Film and Television Studies at Southampton Solent University,
especially Karen Randell, Jacqueline Furby, Darren Kerr, David Lusted and
Claire Hines. Equally, I am indebted to Sarah Cardwell at the University
of Kent for giving me the opportunity to discuss 24 in the form and forum
vIII READING 24
of undergraduate lectures and seminars. This leads me to another special
thank you, to my students at both Southampton Solent and the University
of Kent. Their enthusiasm for 24 sustained my belief in the project, and
their insightful observations and sensitive criticism of the series inform my
introduction and chapter.
My friends and family are a crucial source of inspiration: thank you to
Thalia Baldwin and Matthew Roach, to my parents, and to my brother,
David, whose view is always the clearest.
This book is dedicated to Leigh, with love.
CoNTRIBUToRs
MICHAEL ALLEN is a lecturer in film and electronic media at Birkbeck
College, University of London, where he teaches masters students on the
MA course History of Film and Visual Media. His publications include
the books Family Secrets: The Feature Films of D. W. Griffith (BFI, 1999) and
Contemporary US Cinema (Longman, 2002), as well as numerous articles
on the history of media technologies. He is currently working on a book
detailing the relationship between film, television and the Space Race of
the 1960s.
ANNE CALDWELL is an assistant professor of political science at the
University of Louisville. She writes on contemporary theory and feminist
studies and has published work in Hypatia and Theory and Extent. Her
current research projects focus on the use of the concept of the exception
to understand sexual difference, and the ways states invoke human rights to
expand their own power.
DANIEL CHAMBERLAIN is a doctoral student in the Critical Studies
division at the University of Southern California’s School of Cinema-
Television. His research is focused on the cultural impact of film, television,
and new media, particularly on how emergent media technologies produce
new types of urban spaces. He previously earned a Master’s degree in
Critical Studies from USC and a Bachelor’s degree in Economics from the
University of Michigan.
SAMUEL A CHAMBERS is a senior lecturer in Politics at Swansea
University. He writes widely in contemporary political theory, with particular