Fox’s hit 24: Jack Bauer’s PWNing away on a vengeance (finally!)
Written on May 19, 2010 by moe2love
Category: Art, Movies/Shows, Popular Culture
Jack Bauer pwning away on a vengeance!
I was watching the hit Fox show Twenty Four (24) and the way the season’s been turning out has given me some insights on the way Jack Bauer’s character has turned out. For those of you that haven’t seen 24 probably will not know the character names I talk about here, but hopefully understand the point of this post =).
Jack Bauer is (or was) a true protagonist of American cultural heroics (or the definition of “hero” in any culture), the good guy that avoids killing bad people but stopping them no matter the cost. Jack Bauer’s methods may have been questionable, but the audience always knew that he was doing it for good reasons. From my memory, Jack has lost several women in his past, including through death, and he allowed the justice system to take over after capturing said individuals. We all know the justice system has its disarrays of corruption. The bad guys with the connections have the best chance at getting away (example, Charles Logan). Its tough to change a bad guy into a good guy, so he/she will come back at you with revenge on their mind.
However, Jack’s just had it with losing the girls he loves. The recent killing of Renee Walker by the Russians hit his nerve. He just got fed up. He still didn’t kill the bad guys. He first tried the justice system, going to the top to get the president’s help. The president, although not a bad lady, had her reasons to not allow Jack to find the ones responsible for killing Renee Walker. So he got fed up. He’s basically like “**** this” and is now rogue-ing out, pwning all the bad guys, and killing them, slowly reaching to the top of the ladder to find out who’s behind it all. This is a different side of Jack that we see now. Not the Jack that was allowing people to live, but this Jack just doesn’t care about the lives of evil people anymore.
Here, we see a different side of this protagonist. For those of you that enjoy Superman or Smallville, you know Superman never kills. Same as Spiderman. They are depictions of the “true utopian heroic” protagonist, that disarms and sets the bad guy up for failure, but NEVER kills (unless third-party interactions occur). They see the value of human life, whether good or bad, and believe that evil can be converted to good someday. Then there are protagonists like the Punisher, Shaft, etc, who are on a vengeance run for the “right” reasons, but still kill. So here we make the distinction between a protagonist that “doesn’t kill” and ones that “kills”.
Jack Bauer is now on a vengeance run to pwn all the bad guys. He’s shifted from the utopian protagonist (to a certain extent), to just a bloodthirsty protagonist. Although it can be shocking to see a protagonist shift his direction since generally we think (or at least I think) an evildoer deserves punishment but not death, I still like the conversion of his character. He’s doing by what he feels is justice, since the judicial & political system wasn’t basically doing jack-crap about his situation, or wasn’t doing it properly.
I still like the guy. Only two more episodes to go.. check it out on Fox Mondays for those of you that don’t know what 24 is.
