Introduction

If you’re anything like my mother, you ignore politics. You just despise it because politics is murky, tribal, and complicated. There’s too much bitterness, intra-family hostility. Now, you can’t blame people who tune everything out. Paying attention does take considerable time. It demands energy arguably better spent watching crime serials or rom-coms, online shopping or playing backgammon over Facebook. These habits bring joy. Who cares what they spend my money on today if it won’t trickle back inside my wallet? While seemingly sensible, it’s a dangerous mentality. This notion that by making politics background noise it will never hurt you is destructive. It seems many view politics like a static hum, some faint tone barely within earshot, annoying yet easy to ignore. Better in my view to equate politics to a clanging bell, something raucous and unavoidable. Politics sways opinion.

But how elected officials go about doing that, shaping public opinion in a lasting way, that’s what this paper addresses. I engage a communicative paradigm, a way incumbents and candidates for office alike reach out to apathetic folks like my mom. And that’s melodrama. I frame my discussion around one critical element, the standing and situation of heroes, villains, and victims. Focusing on 24: Day 2, I identify those characteristics we treasure most in leading characters like Jack Bauer and David Palmer, arguing that courage is the orienting faculty of great heroes.

Melodrama and Politics

Most common in popular culture, blockbuster movies and primetime television, melodrama provides a convenient mold for public debate. At times of strife, when people feel decision-makers have abandoned them, they seek simple solutions to complex problems. Melodrama caters to that approach. Donald Trump succeeded mightily in that respect, by distilling dramatic societal change into a conflict that he himself could end for good if powered to victory. He’s our president because he boiled anger and resentment and struggle felt across working-class America into a very basic societal battle, one between illegal-immigrant loving, overly mushy, ineffectual Democrats and say-it-like-it-is, growth-minded Republicans. As deceptive as his case-building was, it worked. It worked by relying upon many melodramatic conventions.

Over recent decades, politics has increasingly co-opted this melodramatic backbone. Elisabeth Anker observed how 9/11 news coverage and political discourse folded events into such a framework. She identified several characteristics representative of these narratives, worth exploring individually in a bit greater detail.

Under melodrama, all actions bear a moral quality. They’re good, evil, or fall somewhere in-between. Your side is virtuous, often standing behind values like freedom and equality. The enemy, meanwhile, represents radical views. They hold a foreign ideology entirely incompatible with our own. And so, by defeating them, we can defeat what they stand for, which might be intolerance, hate, or fanaticism. When these wrongdoers threaten violence or commit terrorism against us, leaders respond swiftly. They display clearheadedness and demonstrate deep affection for victims. These decision-makers then arouse folks by employing intensely emotional rhetoric. Often small offenses get cast as overarching injustices, civilizational clashes, wrongs which must be righted decisively, perhaps through military force. It is innocents who face injury, regular people like spouses, children, churchgoers. And that injury breeds unity. Leaders play up stories of suffering to rally constituencies behind otherwise controversial courses of action. Victimhood becomes immensely honorable. And ultimately, the heroes thwart villainous schemes and impose just punishment.

Lots of generalities there. It is a very grandiose, gooey system. And while quite fascinating in abstract, I’m driven here to isolate just one element for analysis. Before doing so, however, let me do two things. First, I’d like to cover how Anker employed melodrama to deconstruct news coverage from September 11, 2001. Going over one applied example should clarify those five primary conventions of melodrama that Anker identified. Immediately afterward, I’ll situate my definition of heroes within a larger cultural skeleton.

The events which took place on 9/11 shocked America. It was a harrowing day, the first foreign-orchestrated attack on American soil since Pearl Harbor near sixty years earlier. Most learned what happened through television coverage. And in that respect, one cannot compare these tragedies. Yes, on both occasions, U.S. presidents directly addressed a nation in mourning. But watching your fellow citizen scramble and cry and yell out of fear, listening as trusted television anchors convey complete uncertainty, has no precedent. Misreporting lingered. A state did not hijack American passenger planes, but rogue individuals operating within Middle Eastern countries. Patience for nuance is sorely low as chaos reigns. Effectively explaining that relationship was a herculean task. Anker wrote about the television broadcasts:

“The visual spectacle of nationwide injury by terrorist villains retrospectively generates the nation’s moral purity and nourishes a vengeful form of nationhood aiming to salve the nation’s gaping wound by asserting U.S. freedom through acts of global violence” (25).

In other words, our mass victimization generated support for actions that would’ve otherwise been considered rash.

An appropriate word Anker later uses is “diagnosis.” Melodramas of terrorism, as America’s post-9/11 conduct constituted and 24’s second season depicted, diagnose “an experience of powerlessness into a comprehensible, narrative form” (35). Stories framed melodramatically helped our country reestablish strength, allowed society to heal, and eventually legitimated state power against those deemed responsible.

That’s really extraordinary. Melodrama plays off inherent and nurtured dispositions including our inclination toward simplistic answers and justice. Misinformation and fear sort of aids and abets its power. Having recognized that potency, I’d like to shift gears now. And I’ll do so by stating this: melodrama can be both a reactive tool and a proactive one. George Bush, Donald Rumsfeld, that whole crew, utilized melodramatic themes to generate enthusiasm for war. 24: Day 2 depicts preventative measures taken by fictional American leaders to avert a nuclear fallout in Los Angeles, California.

A Naturalistic Hero

Conjure in your mind a dirty blonde haired man, messy, unshaven. He’s endured a heavy toll. That’s clear from glancing in his direction. Short-statured but well-constructed, there isn’t much left that gives him pleasure. Just his daughter, who now lives independently, a ratty boyfriend hooked around her whenever she’s not babysitting. A strained relationship puts things mildly. Jack Bauer couldn’t save his wife in season one. She was murdered by someone Jack trusted, Nina, his second-in-command, shot square in her abdomen.

Jack resigned and went dark. One and a half years later he’s slowly repairing things with Kim, who simultaneously holds Jack responsible yet knows he couldn’t have done anything more. He left his post as a counter-terrorism field agent one and a half years ago. But now another threat looms, this time against his city, his country. Top intelligence officials, former colleagues, suspect that foreign terrorists will detonate a plutonium-enriched weapon over downtown Los Angeles. Millions face death. And nobody’s better prepared to avert said disaster than he who prevented it before. No, Jack didn’t save everyone. No hero can. But in season one, over twenty-four hours, that longest day of his life, Jack Bauer protected front-running Democratic presidential nominee David Palmer from Second Wave assassins. That very rogue group appears implicated again. He must confront Nina and be brought back into the fold.

Jack Bauer isn’t Batman or Superman. Comic books dive deep into backstory. Frankly, we’re not sure how Jack, at least after two seasons, first found himself at CTU. The textbook hero character, your comic book caped crusader and Kryptonian survivor who soars like a jet, they’re flawless, both morally and physically perfect, true specimens. In print media, that may fly, but when dramatizing for screen, creating media that must be watched and heard to be experienced, certain characteristics get enhanced for full effect. Manipulated variables could include the villain’s determination to cause harm, the hero’s struggle to prioritize his objective, or something else entirely.

A hero is a leading character whose actions determine whether good triumphs over evil. While not super, per se, Jack undoubtedly fits the bill. Again, it defies belief that one man finds himself so frequently in these situations. But that’s what great entertainment requires us to do: suspend disbelief. Although comics and primetime dramas are both usually serialized narratives, comic heroes are so much less willing to abandon moral perfection. Television heroes frequently defy expectations by rubbing against the moral grain. Jack is still good, don’t get me wrong. But the stakes are so much higher. Series showrunner Joel Surnow seeps events in realism. Putting a human face to things, having actors portray drama rather than colored ink enrich it, creates an added urgency and permits audiences to overlook violations of total virtuosity.

That’s not to diminish what Jack is willing to do and does onto presumed villains. Tomes have been written about this program’s representation of torture. Debatably, at some point, we can no longer overlook means for ends. And, it must be said, Jack crosses lines which other characters feel impermissible. He’s basically called a lunatic, a man without limits. He’s hyped up. And he lives up to our expectations of ruthlessness. But through it all, Jack remains a hero, because guiding his selective savagery is an astounding commitment to truth and justice. Like magnets or electricity or gravity, the guy possesses a stunning path coherence. Jack takes wrong turns but always winds up at his destination accomplished, exhausted, and exactly on time.

The phenomenon of antiheroes sucks up considerable attention in contemporary popular culture. It’s super prevalent. Jack Bauer is not an antihero. Take proper antiheroes like Walter White and Daenerys Targaryen. These two do unquestionably bad things. But we cannot help but like them and root for continued destruction when granted a glimpse into their motivations, deficiencies, and vulnerabilities. The cause that Jack pursues is just. He’s not pursuing wealth or power. He isn’t selling high-grade methamphetamine or burning lords aflame either. Admittedly, to bury this point, he executes his mission using untraditional methods, some arguably reprehensible. The means are sometimes questionable or outright bad. But the ends are always indisputably honorable. In elementary terms, antiheroes do bad things for good reasons; heroes do good things for good reasons.

To recap, Jack is neither a superhero nor an antihero. We can call him a naturalistic hero. He is willing to hurt bad guys, but not innocents. He follows orders and deals them out. He commands respect. He pursues righteous causes. He incurs pain and inflicts it. He uses whatever means necessary to protect his family and country. He breaks rules. He exercises caution. He trusts allies and leverages information. And the enemy of his enemy is, indeed, his friend. In a word, Jack Bauer displays courage. Everything mentioned above derives from it, that most fundamental heroic attribute.

Jack’s Journey: The Melodramatic Plot of “24: Day 2”

Joseph Campbell’s The Hero With A Thousand Faces condenses mythology, ancient history, and religious texts into one common structure. All stories, Campbell, argues, share certain elements, and all heroes follow similar journeys, consisting of departure, initiation, and return. Let’s break that down further. There’s a danger. It emerges suddenly. Only our hero can irradicate it. He eventually commits and ventures out, confronting familiar terrain or uncharted waters. Along the way, his confidence bends. But it never breaks. Friends, magical creatures, animals, and gods lend him strength. He keeps fighting, our hero, first confronting small challenges and then larger ones. He powers through all, buoyed by his will to live. After he prevails, he returns home forever changed by things seen and done.

Jack Bauer maps onto Campbell’s “monomyth” fairly well. He’s dragged, kicking and screaming, back into CTU headquarters, initially refusing to accept another mission, but relenting after mulling how many humans would perish. An unfathomable toll, he couldn’t ignore the call. Against instinct he intervenes, treks back to CTU, reconnects with Tony Almeida and George Mason, who console Bauer and loop him in. A powerful nuclear weapon will be detonated tomorrow by Second Wave, an internationally funded terrorist network. Mason has one lead and Jack is most qualified to follow it. He reluctantly agrees. CTU has changed in such little time. And so has Jack, beard be his evidence. Quickly they mobilize. They’re under-resourced and underprepared but virtue propels them.

As our hero, Jack always does what must be done, which shifts at any given moment. In episode one, his primary objective is to discover information. Who’s backing this bomb? So he goes undercover, plays cool with some bad people. The thugs plant explosives around CTU. Bauer tries to alert Tony but fails. They set them off. The building blows up and dozens die. We’re led to wonder whether that previewed what’s to come. Jack shoots two associates, tracks down the gang leader, Joseph Wald, and wrestles out information. Wald had been hired to attack CTU by Nina Myers, his wife’s killer. Feds transfer her back from a federal detention facility. More chaos ensues. Nina takes Jack hostage and demands unconditional immunity.

 Concurrently, a woman named Kate Warner helps prepare for her sister Marie’s wedding to Reza Naiyeer, who is Middle Eastern. She suspects something, hires a private investigator to track down a hunch. Disturbing revelations emerge. Reza maintains financial connections with a known terrorist, Syed Ali. And there, our storylines come together. Ali is located. Jack stakes out a mosque. They rush in and find a Muslim man set ablaze. Season two halfway completed now. We’re inching closer toward nuclear fallout.

Meanwhile, President Palmer tries desperately to keep things quiet. He detains a journalist, fearful that reporting will cause mass panic and undermine ongoing investigations. And an internal cabal is afoot. Top intelligence officials surrounding Palmer seem implicated somehow. He has Stanton professionally questioned, a particularly gruesome ordeal, and learns about an NSA-managed military organization operating outside his scope.

Marie Warner kills her fiance, Reza, and rides into Los Angeles to support her terrorist family. Jack has captured Ali, who confesses after witnessing hooded officers shoot his son to death. Ali is gunned down knowing that CTU faked it. Kate confronts Marie, wearing a black-banged wig, who explains, “nobody’s innocent in this country.” Bauer catches up just in time. He saves Kate and arrests Marie, who reels in pain from a gunshot wound.

They sweep an air hangar, locating the device within a storage container. It cannot be defused, manually or otherwise. Jack volunteers as a sacrifice. He’ll fly a small aircraft over Mojave, far enough removed from the mainland to contain the impact. Kim believes him dead when a warm glow envelopes their horizon. But actually, he survives. Having earlier been exposed to radiation and pronounced dead-man-walking, George Mason took Jack’s spot. Bauer parachuted down safely. He gets airlifted back to CTU and immediately commences his next mission: preventing an unjust war. A forged audio recording connecting three Middle Eastern countries, not rogue actors but state leaders, leads Cabinet membersto to prod Palmer into military action. He resists. His vice president and chief-of-staff turn against him, launching three fighter jets over Turkish airspace.

Jack obtains evidence connecting US oil tycoons to today’s events. Mercenaries capture him. He’s violently tortured. His heart begins to flatline. We almost lose our hero. Alas, he lives. They revive Jack, who hurries to Kate. They track down audio evidence revealing Palmer’s recording fabricated. But the chip was corrupted. An engineer, unable to reconstitute waveforms, flees and dies, leaving Jack with one plan left. The finale involves Sherry Palmer, notoriously untrustworthy, years separated from David, soliciting incriminating testimony from supervillain Peter Kingsley. He admits it was all over money. CTU descends on Los Angeles Coliseum as Jack squirms, his heart reeling in shock. He and Kim reconnect, and Palmer is restored as Commander-in-Chief. 

Deconstructing Courage

“24” is peak political melodrama. If there remains any doubt, consider what Sherry tells Jack in our penultimate hour. “You’re a very impressive man,” she says, “but you see the world as either good or bad, just like David. And the world is so much more complicated than that.” That quote serves several purposes. It showcases how cynical, conniving, and removed Sherry has become. It reveals how simplistic Jack’s guiding philosophy can be. And it admits that “24” does situate itself around a clear moral economy. Jack both responds to and enforces melodramatic tendencies. And I’d argue that courage allows Jack to service those functions. Courage marks a trait that great heroes display to overcome villainous schemes. Cowardice, by contrast, entails someone failing to act when action must occur or someone who acts either insufficiently or unscrupulously. Here are three ways courage manifests itself in Jack Bauer.

1. A Righteous Pursuit

First, no matter how risky or rough his day becomes, heroes always pursues the righteous cause. Jack hasn’t failed yet. He doesn’t always succeed as intended. But miraculously, as heroes do, he prevents the most alarming threat, the biggest bad from happening. If anything, Jack sometimes goes too far, becomes overly souped up in right and wrong, as Sherry correctly infers. Preventing millions from dying — that’s plainly virtuous. You do not need convincing. The extent of Jack’s commitment is something to behold. He not only faces Teri’s murderer but agrees to work alongside her because it will save lives. He goes undercover, witnesses friends die, neglects a whole additional saga with Kim cause more pressing than his lone daughter’s life, while difficult to accept, are countless other lives.

As top government workers rely upon misinformation, Jack searches for facts. Everyone seems eager to abandon them. They’re ready to start a war under false pretenses. Characters tell Jack, “your searching for a ghost.” He’s never deterred. CTU cannot supply him resources without higher authorization. Jack rushes on vigilante-style. The odds are so stacked against him. Yet some internal voice commands Jack to carry on. He must scrutinize what doesn’t add up. He must find that evidence. And he does. His conviction pays off. The hero never gives up, never betrays principle, until he’s exhausted all available avenues. Even when no such avenue exists, Jack unearths one. That’s courage on display.

2. Pain and Sacrifice

Secondly, heroes demonstrate courage when they incur pain and maintain resolve. Jack notably also inflicts pain, but never without first prefacing, for the record that he’d really rather not. You could say Jack doesn’t ever impose unwarranted pain, obviously a subjective standard. Villains repeatedly use Kim to break Jack down. She tethers him to reality. His inability to have saved Teri never stops hurting. With her gone, only Kim preserves Jack’s sanity. Throughout these two seasons, Jack regularly tasks CTU staff with contacting his daughter. They certainly have more pressing responsibilities but obey nevertheless. Jack is our hero. They’re deputies, assistants, helpers. And uncertainty over Kim’s safety distracts Jack from tracking down evidence or weapons. The man must focus. Too much on the line. So it is only fitting, after Jack saves the day, uncovers the truth, for Kim to invert things. She tells Jack, “Dad, I’m gonna take care of you.” And he smiles. They embrace.

Sacrifice is the ultimate expression of heroism. Campbell observes reincarnation and rebirth across old literature. He boards a lift and carries nuclear cargo over the sea expecting he’ll perish for it. Jack connects with Kim, tells her how proud she makes him, and sheds some tears. But it wasn’t his time to die. Later on, Kingsley’s bandits torture Jack, but he never sells out his friends. He concedes them no information about that audio file, transcoder and chip. He is willing to die assuming others can finish the job. His heart stops beating. Three defibrillator thrusts bring him back, and he fights through total anguish to escape and recommit to his righteous cause. That’s courage on display.

3. Selective Trust

Thirdly, heroes know whom to trust and whom to doubt. The relationship between Jack and Muslim characters has been subject of considerable debate. Day 2 depicts Islam with nuance and maturity. We’re led initially to believe Reza complicit in terrorist acts. But his innocence pans out. He aids intelligence workers, supplies them what he knows, and dies for cooperating. Jack also befriends an Afghani intelligence agent named Yusuf Auda. Again, we’re initially distrustful. But circumstances require them to share knowledge. Kate Warner infiltrates Syed Ali’s mosque wearing a hijab. She greets its imam speaking Arabic.

Withholding information as needed is also something great heroes do. They’re character is so intrinsically virtuous, that Jack can keep vital information to himself and others will just go along. Tony and Jack have a fascinating relationship. Mason puts Tony in charge of CTU. Jack’s loyalty isn’t to Tony. It is to his mission, his president, his daughter. Sometimes aligning with Tony doesn’t move him closer to defeating Ali and Kingsley and those who threaten innocent lives. So Jack doesn’t loop him in. Heroes never lie about the stakes, the risk. “It’s possible you may die,” Jack tells Kate. But everyone has a role to play to prevent the villain from succeeding. Kate does her part. The hero, in this sense, is a masterful delegator, guided by a strong gauge of character. How Jack selectively uses trust to advance the plot and foil the villain, that’s courage on display.

Conclusion

“24” as my case study, I amended political melodrama, a genre and framework for cultural analysis, suggesting courage is what powers heroes to triumph over villains. What makes great heroes? Jack Bauer doesn’t wear a cape. He can’t fly. He’s not a superhero or an antihero, but what I’ve called a naturalistic hero, someone uniquely capable to defeat enemies through wit and strength, a perfect match for gruesome realities. Jack obeys conventions of melodrama, believing certain actions decent and others morally wicked. His courage shows itself when he pursues righteous causes, tolerates pain, and uses trust selectively. Taken together, Jack is able to save the day.