24 as torture porn

A FB friend updated his status with the assertion that 24 was torture porn. Is 24 in the same league as horror movies like Hostel and Saw? I don't wish to defend 24 on this score; do people really derive pleasure from watching terrorists and villains get tortured on television? Maybe some do; I would hope that the majority of 24 viewers do not. The show may appeal to Republicans and some Democrats; the use of torture may epitomize in a way Uhmerican efficiency and pragmatism -- getting results matters above everything else, when lives are at stake. Still, some may be pleased that the bad guys are getting what they deserve through torture. In that respect, 24 may be better than those horror movies, in which the torture seems rather undeserved (even if the victims are guilty of sexual sins or of doing other bad things).

The allegation that viewers do become desensitized to that sort of violence (and torture as a policy) should be taken seriously. I believe Kiefer Sutherland has defended the depiction of torture in the past by saying that it has a dehumanizing effect on the torturer as well, whether it be Jack Bauer or Renee Walker. I do note that so far this season, torture has not really be shown, although former FBI Agent Walker did free a Russian criminal from his tracking device by cutting off his thumb. Some bloodthirsty fans did applaud that action online (see AICN, for example). Will torture be excluded the rest of the season? (So far CTU has only used interrogation with fancy machines monitoring physiological changes.)

If the torture were removed from the show, would it be the same? Could a counter-terrorist "real-time" procedural survive without this plot device to move it along? How else could intelligence be credibly shown as being collected and verified in a very short time? (Would there be much of a protest if ordinary Americans were shown snooping/doing surveillance on other Americans, whether suspicious or not? There would probably be complaints of racial profiling if 24 had some ordinary American spying on his darker-skinned neighbor who is of another religion.)

This season has been rather slow, in comparison to others, and there have been complaints both about this and the idiotic side stories. If those were removed, the story would be a bit better, and I think criticisms that the season is lacking direction is a bit unwarranted. It seems appropriate that there is chaos, rather than a single conspiracy, though perhaps the Big Bad has yet to be revealed.