Participants & Abstracts
Michael LattekFreie Universität Berlin
Paper:
'Do It Now!' The Politics of Immediacy in 24
24 situates itself in the "perpetual now" as producer Evan Katz put
it. When asked about when the show takes place he responded "we're
not really doing a show in the future. We're in the perpetual now."
However, audiences debate about 24's temporal setting and more or
less agree that each season plays one and a half to three years into
the future of its respective airing date. While the show negotiates
present issues, most prominently terrorism, national security and
torture, it does so with a futuristic slide of hand that can be
traced through character quotes and through the representation of
technological means of supervision.
The presentation will not attempt to read "24" as a utopian
narrative. Instead it will offer a comparison to the dystopian The
Terminator series to point out how both narratives use time
differently to promote conservative policies. The common denominator
here is the elapsing of time and how it affects the individual, the
family and the decision-making process. An intertextual approach also
offers insights into how 24 uses time as a philosophical framework.
The Terminator series maintains free will and self-determination in
the face of an ultimate annihilation that has already happened in the
future. (The Terminator 2's tagline is: "The future has not been
written. There is no fate but what we make for ourselves."). 24's
uninterrupted real-time storytelling doesn't allow for error
correction via time travel. The show promotes decisionism in the face
of immediate threats that temporarily suspends the individuality of
the acting subjects. The characters of 24 thus constantly try to
terminate both their personal motives and the margin of error of
their actions, i.e. they try to act in the best possible accordance
with the machines they use and from which they get their information.
|
