Perhaps because Kiefer Sutherland and I went to the same high school in Toronto, I have spent a lifetime watching from afar the ups and downs of his acting career. And being the star of 24, the US media company Fox's hugely successful anti-terrorist drama series, has been his longest winning streak. The series has captivated me since its first season, which premiered two months after the fateful terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001. It is now into its seventh season.
Part of the series' success is that it captures the ethos of post-September 11 America, and the Bush administration's avowed need to join 'the dark side'. I am especially intrigued by how torture works as a central theme that runs through every season and practically every episode.
The latest shown on Pearl TV on Tuesday takes it into the realm of caricature. This time, Sutherland's alter-ego, super agent Jack Bauer, took a torture session into the heart of the White House. A senator's chief of staff turns out to be a rat and has information about a terrorist attack, with the White House being a possible target. Against the US president's orders, Bauer barricades himself in and repeatedly electrocutes the guy with a Taser for information.
In series after series, whenever Bauer is captured, he is invariably tortured - but always manages to escape and kill his tormentors. But whenever he desperately needs a piece of vital information to prevent an imminent mass killing, he would, without a flinch, inflict whatever pain necessary to get that information - always in the nick of time.
Indeed, his gung-ho attitude to torture led the US Defence Department to request Fox in 2006 to tone it down because some of its operatives - and the CIA's - involved in real-life interrogations were a bit too taken with Bauer's methods. It was a case of life imitating art (or television).
Despite the different plots, conspiracies and storylines, a single conceit serves as the foundation for every seasonal series: the necessity for torture. Torture, in the universe of 24, is an epistemology, a how-to method to obtain vital and certain knowledge or accurate information.