LITR 5535 American Romanticism UHCL 2005 sample student research project

LITR 5535: American Romanticism

Sample Student Research Project 2005

Michelle Gooding

29 April 2005

Film Noir and the Byronic Hero in 24

After noticing many examples of Romanticism in popular culture, particularly in movies and television, I realized the current of romantic ideas was particularly strong in the television series 24. It also has some aspects of the more realistic film noir style and mood. As I looked into film noir, I found many similarities to 24, particularly in the mood created by lighting, color scheme, setting, camera shots, and the presence of several femme fatales. However, there are also the present some very romantic characters, including the Byronic hero, Jack Bauer. These aspects of the show make 24 an excellent blend of Realism and Romanticism that is very attractive to a contemporary audience. 24 is a real-time show, where each hour-long episode is an hour in the life of the characters. The season as a whole makes up one 24-hour day. The show concerns a Federal agency called the Counter Terrorist Unit, or CTU, particularly the CTU office in Los Angeles. They handled terrorist threats—each season is one very long day of fighting the terrorists. The main characters are Agents Jack Bauer, Tony Almeida, and Nina Myers (the femme fatale), Jack's wife and daughter, Teri and Kim, Audrey Raines (his girlfriend in season four), President David Palmer and his wife/ex-wife, Sherry, and terrorists Stephen Saunders, the Salazar brothers, and Habib Marwan. The 24 website offers complete character profiles and episode guides for each season, along with many pictures.

The following are the “structural elements” and “conventions” of film noir, according to Andrew Dickos:

· An urban setting or at least an urban influence. This setting ... is captured mostly at night and often just after rain.

· A modern, twentieth century setting, from the Great Depression on, and usually of the 1940s, 1950s, or early 1960s, with latitude permitting its extension to the present day.

· A lack of comic structure, although the film noir may have comic elements (Dassin's Rififi) and often has humor (The Big Sleep). ...

· A denial by its main characters of conventional social and domestic happiness through unattainability or refusal.

· An assertion of individuality as defined by the killing (although not necessarily murder) of someone (including oneself) in defiance of modern social mores and the law.

· The iconic representation of the above-mentioined features by a definitive star of the screen or through a striking performance by a less recognized screen star or actor.

The conventions of the film noir ensconced in its narrative structure, which make it distinctive yet are not exclusive to the noir, include the following:

· The femme fatale or her counterpart, the homme fatal.

· The active/sexual and passive/nonsexual characters.

· The voice-over narration and the flashback. Both are usually from the male protagonist's point of view.

· Frequent portraits (Laura, The Woman in the Window, Scarlet Street).

· Telephones—ringing, answered, or dialed—that protend bad and often incriminating news.

· Temporary amnesia, often suffered by noir characters ... .

· Cars as indispensable devices of escape, from crime or a criminal past, one's pursuers, the law, or marital and domestic unpleasantness.

· Apartments or bungalows as the the dwellings of most characters in film noirs.

· Art and its collection—paintings, antiques, rare acquisitions, objets d'art—suggesting corruption, effeteness, and a European sensibility held in general contempt by the common American.

· The inclusion of nightclubs and lounges, neon signs, cigarette lighters, trench coats, hotel rooms both cheap and elegant, pool halls, boxing rings, gyms, guns, and smart fashion in the iconography of the film noir. (6-8)

This is an extensive list, but it still does not include every aspect of film noir. For example, this style also has specific lighting and camera techniques, in addition to generally being filmed in black and white. The lighting, designed to cast deep shadows, whether on the on walls or characters' faces, creates a sinister, dark mood. Often, characters are moving in and out of shadow, and all the viewer can distinguish are their silhouettes. Blinds on windows are commonly used to cast lines of shadows across walls or characters' faces.

Some of the above-listed plot devices are used in 24, including amnesia—Jack's wife, Teri, has temporary amnesia for part of season one; the femme fatale appears in all seasons; telephones/cell phones are of course a major means of communication between characters, and seldom do they bring good news; cars (often CTU SUVs) are constantly being used by someone on the run, either from CTU, the law, or the terrorists; and nightclubs and lounges are frequent in the dark underworld that comprises the show. Many of the structural elements are also present in the mood and style of 24.

24, set primarily in Los Angeles, certainly meets the criteria of an “urban setting.” Most of the action takes place within the city, on grisly streets, in abandoned warehouses, on piers and docks at night, in office buildings that appear empty and are too quiet. Action outside the city takes place in locations such as a desert, an underground top secret detention center in an abandoned wildlife preserve, and even a tried and true American forest.

Charles Scruggs, in his article about film noir, argues that “we should look at film noir not as confined to a specific time period in the twentieth century but rather as a resurfacing of a Gothic tradition that emerged 'entwined' with the republic itself” (681-82). As Americans began to write gothic romances, the gothic had to change to fit America's landscape. Americans no longer lived in and near the “haunted castles” of Europe—there were no deserted abbeys or ruins ready to house spectres. The American gothic was thus moved out into the American wilderness, a haunt with which the authors were familiar. Now, as most Americans live in cities, the gothic has the option to move back indoors, benefitting from dark hallways, labrynthine warehouses or office buildings, dark nightclubs, and many other sinister venues. 24 takes full advantage of the “indoor gothic” and noir-esque scenery of LA, as I have already mentioned.

Approximately half of the show takes place at night, a time that lends itself to noir techniques that use shadows to add to the uncertainty of the mood. Often, characters are in and out of shadows, emerging from them armed and dangerous. Their faces are particularly shrouded in shadow, so that the viewer often is unsure who will step into the light. In episode 18 of season four (11 pm-12 am), CTU learns the location of one of the terrorists involved in the day's attacks and send out a team to apprehend him. He is out at a marina meeting another man affiliated with the terrorists to help him. While the viewer watches this man wait, a couple of dark SUVs pull up and several men emerge, walking up silently. They are completely covered in darkness except for slight backlighting. Only as one silhouette approaches the camera closely and a bit of light falls across his eyes, do we know that the group is not more terrorists, but Curtis, a CTU agent, and his team. This classic film noir technique adds another layer of tension onto an already tense situation, keeping viewers on the edge of their seats.

The half of the show that takes place in the daytime manages to keep this dark feel by employing clouded skies, diffused sunlight, and by keeping the action in the “gothic indoors.” These locations include deserted warehouses, garages, a power plant, and inside cars, so that there is no direct light. Also, when they are outside, the characters are almost always facing away from the light, in order to cast their faces in shadow. Perhaps the best gothic/noir space that is inside is CTU headquarters. It has no windows, subdued lighting, and is almost entirely grey and black. The only color (and most of the light) in the room comes from computer screens, which sometimes mirrors the neon lights of a dark city street. Inside CTU, it always feels like nighttime. Many scenes take place in the interrogation room, as Jack and other agents press suspects for information. This room is dim, with dark grey walls, floor, and ceiling, a black table and chairs, and always an agent in dark clothing. The observation room, just outside the interrogation room, is completely dark, except the bit of light from monitors, computer screens, and the back of the one-way mirror looking into the interrogation room.

Though 24 is in color, it is color that approximates the black and white of film noir. The color scheme is dark and muted: the CTU office, where a lot of the action takes place, is essentially in grey-scale as described above. The clothing of the characters is also mostly consistent with the film noir ideal. Jack is nearly always in a very dark color—mostly black and dark grey, as are many of the characters. When Alfred Hitchcock made the first ever color murder mystery film, Rope, he “made sure that the color in Rope would be subdued,” and made sure there would be an “absence of brightness: it begins in a dark room with the shades drawn and with all three characters wearing dark suits ...” (Naremore 187-88). This seems to be the intention of the creators of 24 as well—and thus, it is excusable for this show to be in color, since the majority of colors are black and grey.

As for camera work, the “window blinds” trick is used, but is largely replaced by something very similar. In season one, episode nine, Jack and a waitress (whose car he has hijacked to escape the police) are in an office, hiding out. As they are talking, Jack trying to explain why he has kidnapped her, he is peeking out of the miniblinds, and the shadow of the blinds is falling across the waitress' face. She is a waitress at a diner, giving the scene dated feel—this classic film noir shot, and the subject in a 1950s-style waitress uniform (see Figure 1). This type of shot is used sparingly, and instead of filming the shadow of the blinds across a wall and a character's face, characters are often seen through the blinds. Often, the camera is looking through a window at characters, so that, instead of the shadow of the window pane laying across the character, the window pane itself is across the character (see Figure 2 for a similar effect). In the CTU office, many of the doors and walls glass that are frosted in large blocks, leaving a few lines of transparent glass. The viewer is often peeking through these little strips of clear glass at the action behind closed doors (see Figure 3). Also, the frosted glass is used as a substitute for shadow when a character behind one of these doors or walls is filmed at more of a distance—the viewer sees the character partially through the transparent glass, but still half shrouded by frosted glass. As we watch the show, these techniques leave us with the feeling that we are spying on the characters, instead of just watching them, and will be caught at any moment; thus we are pulled into the action and tension of the show. This is especially true when the viewer espies a duplicitous character in the act of undermining the work of CTU. Unsurprisingly, these characters are always women.

In film noir, there are two primary types of women who grace the screen. One is the loving wife and mother, and the other is the notorious femme fatale. The femme fatale is beautiful, duplicitous, driven by power or greed, and succeeds in ruining the male protagonist. They are both usually dead, in prison, or mad by the end of a film noir. 24 has many of these female characters—at least two per season. Nina Myers is perhaps the most important one—in season one, she is a CTU agent working closely with Jack Bauer and Tony Almeida. She is also close to them in another way. While Jack and Teri were separated, Jack had a relationship with Nina, which he broke off in order to go back to his wife. Now, Nina is with Tony and appears loyal to both for the vast majority of the season. In the course of the season, a spy is discovered in CTU, and Nina and Tony realize that it is Jamey Farrell, one of the computer techs. They handcuff her to a desk in an office and question her. When she won't answer, they give her an ultimatum and leave her to think about it. When they return, a nearby coffee mug has been broken, and Jamey has slit her wrist with a piece of it. It is not until the second to last episode that a back up security tape (the original had been mysteriously erased) uncovers Nina as the murderer of Jamey. After she silences the one person who could break her cover, Nina looks up into the security camera with the coldest expression of malice, and the viewer is amazed that she was so duplicitous (see Figure 4). This moment and the one where we discover that Nina has killed the pregnant Teri Bauer are in the class of “moments of violence that jar us by their cold-bloodedness” (Dickos 122).

Nina returns in seasons two and three to show the viewers her full capacity for evil as she refuses to give up information about a nuclear bomb about to go off on American soil, helps terrorists smuggle in a biological weapon (a deadly virus), and unleashes a worm onto the CTU computer system, crippling the agents' ability to do their job. Nina certainly fits the bill for the femme fatale—she is dark and very beautiful (played by Sarah Clarke), incredibly duplicitous, fooling everyone by her act, and motivated strongly by the money she makes as a mercenary.

Nina is not the only three-season femme fatale. Sherry Palmer, Presidential Candidate David Palmer's wife, is the other veteran. Played by Penny Johnson Jerald, Sherry is very beautiful, and is motivated by a greed for power—she is willing to do anything to get her husband in the White House so she can be the First Lady. In the first season, she directly contradicts her husband's wishes, while pretending that everything she does is for his benefit. She also leaks information to the press, knowing that it will endanger Kim Bauer's life, after both David and Jack plead with her to keep quiet. She even sets up one of her husband's young campaign workers to seduce him, probably hoping that she can use his infidelity as blackmail to make him obey her. However, David is not as easy prey as she thought he would be—he is a romantic character, standing alone in his principles. He fires the young woman who went along with his wife's plot, leaves Sherry, and wins the election. But that is not the last of her—she returns in seasons two and three like Nina, to show how bad she really is. Each time, she claims she has seen the error of her ways and is reformed. In season two, after such a claim, we discover that she is behind a plot to smuggle in a nuclear bomb and frame several countries in the Middle East. She finally admits that she did this in order to ruin her ex-husband's presidency out of anger that he left her and that she is not the First Lady. In season three, President Palmer makes the terrible mistake of calling on Sherry to help him out of a problem, while he is running for reelection. She proves her femme fatale worth when she watches a man having a heart attack, and keeps his wife from giving him the medicine that would save his life. When David disapproves of this method vehemently, she threatens to tell everyone that he had called her in to “take care of the problem,” implicating him in the man's death. She ultimately takes her story to Palmer's opponent in the election, Senator Keeler, who tries to blackmail him into backing out of the election. Once again, Palmer is a man of principle and will not be bullied. However, when Sherry is shot, Palmer decides that the world of politics is too dark and sinister for him, and he backs out of the race, his political career presumably over. While he does his best to keep his integrity and avoid the influence of Sherry, David ends the season defeated by her duplicity.

According to Dickos, “the femme fatales are interesting, intelligent, and often powerful, whereas the wives and mothers are dull and insipid” (202). Teri, Jack's wife in season one, is certainly the loving wife and mother, but she is not “dull and insipid.” The most incredible example of her loving nature occurs in episodes eight and nine. She and Kim (Jack and Teri's daughter) are being held hostage, locked in a barn on a wildlife preserve. In episode eight, as Teri learns that their captors intend to kill them, she comforts her daughter by trying to explain the love of a mother: “I'm trying to explain to you what a simple, powerful thing my love for you is. No matter how bad things get, or how good they get, that's not going to change. I just don't know how to do anything but love you.” In the next episode, one of the men holding them hostage comes in and starts to make advances toward Kim. Teri stands firmly between him and her daughter, until he throws her out of the way. Kim is fighting him off as Teri gets back up and walks toward him. She looks him in the eye, and says, “I won't fight you.” As he seems to be deciding between the two, she encourages him: “Come on,” to keep him from assaulting her daughter. Not only does Teri prove the love she had avowed for her daughter in this action, but also she proves that she is not “dull.” As she comes back out of the room that her attacker took her into, she has his cell phone to call Jack and CTU so they can track the call and rescue her and Kim. When their captors come back in to find the phone, Teri has heard them coming and has hidden the phone up on a rafter, so that it will take the men a while to find the phone, giving CTU more time to trace the call. Throughout the season, Teri emerges less as a boring noir housewife, and more as the central figure in her own “woman's romance.” Just as Mary Rowlandson, in her captivity narrative, is trying to protect and reunite her family, so Teri works to the same ends.

President Palmer and Teri Bauer are not the only romantic characters of 24—Jack is a highly romantic and Byronic hero. Like Teri's lack of “dullness,” this is an aspect of 24 that is not in the film noir tradition—Jack is not a typical noir man. Some of the conventions of the noir man suit him, but in general, he is more romantic and fits more neatly into the definition of a Byronic hero.

The film noir man is fatalistically destined to fall victim to the femme fatale's schemes. He is generally destroyed in some way along with her—sometimes he dies with her, perhaps as they shoot each other, other times he ends up in jail or goes mad. The noir man “cannot show too much emotion ... most intellectual, artistic, spiritual, or emotional proclivities must be held firmly in check” (Tuska 215). Another mark of this man is his inability to sustain any loving relationship, he is “... a man who is single, who has no sustaining relationships of any kind, who exists solely for his job and supporting the system of which he is a part” (Tuska 216), and “... he is not married, ... marriage is an impossible state for him” (Harvey 31).

Jack Bauer, though given many opportunities to take his revenge on Nina and kill her, avoids the pitfall of the noir man who falls into the trap of lowering himself to the level of the femme fatale. At the very end of season one, when he catches Nina in her escape and has a gun to her head, he struggles with the dilemma of whether or not to take her life right then, even though he knows CTU should question her. He longs to punish her (as all femme fatales must be punished) for all her lies and misdeeds that day, but he takes the high road and keeps himself free from blame.

Emotionally, Jack is often closed off, and the emotions most commonly seen in him are anger, moodiness (a Byronic quality), and intensity. However, his tenderness is evident many times in season one for his wife, for his daughter in seasons one through three, for his girlfriend, Audrey Raines, in season four, and many other women throughout the series. We even get tears from him at the very end of season one, as he finds his loving wife murdered by Nina, and in season three, when the reasons abound, but are harder to pin down. This tenderness to women points toward a more Byronic Jack: “the Byronic Hero ... is invariably courteous toward women, often loves music or poetry, has a strong sense of honor, and carries about with him like the brand of Cain a deep sense of guilt” (Thorslev 8).

In regard to Jack's love of music and poetry, we never see any indication of those feelings in the show, but on the 24 website, backgrounds are given for all the major characters. It is interesting to note Jack's undergraduate degree: a BA in English Literature. There is not any reason for this in terms of the show—he is never required draw on his knowledge of literature—this fact is simply offered to make him more sensitive and Byronic.

Jack also has a “strong sense of honor”—in season three, he finds out that the terrorist, Stephen Saunders, is a former military man with whom Jack had been on a mission. Jack was the leader of the mission, and he thought that Saunders had been lost, so the team left. With the realization that Saunders was alive and Jack had left him, Jack feels terrible for leaving a man behind—he never would knowingly do such a thing.

Jack carries with him an overwhelming sense of responsibility and guilt in seasons two and three for the death of his wife. In the first episode of season two, Jack goes to see his daughter, Kim, because she hasn't been returning his calls and he misses her. She is still upset about her mother's death, explaining to her father: “Every time I see you, I think of Mom.” She goes on to say, “It wasn't your fault,” to which he responds, “Of course it was my fault. I know it was my fault.” This guilt haunts him after season one.

Because of Jack's deep feelings of responsibility, sadness, and guilt, he is very convincing when he speaks emotionally. In season three, episode eight Jack goes back undercover with a family of criminals, the Salazars, one of whom he had sent to jail a few months before. He has to convince them that he has defected from CTU and is no longer their enemy. The speech he delivers to them is laced with unfeigned bitterness and frustration:

A few years ago, my wife was killed because of my job—my daughter's never been the same since. This last year, well, you know what I went through to to bring you in. What'd I get for it? A pat on the back? In the end, a demotion and a heroine habit. I'm tired of putting my ass on the line for nothing. I'm done putting my ass on the line for nothing.

The presence of Jack's true emotion is what makes the lie work. Instead of always having to keep his emotions “firmly in check,” they are sometimes a benefit to him in the field. Eino Railo comments on the Byronic hero's loneliness, obvious here in the character of Jack: “... the Byronic hero gazes into his own soul as at the smouldering embers of some conflagration, as at the deserted and dreary world which whence life has fled. ... his soul is lit by a graveyard moonlight, cold, dismal and disparing” (308).

Part of this loneliness stems from Jack's noir-ish lack of ability to sustain a relationship. In season three, episode two, as Jack learns that his partner, Chase, is dating Kim (his daughter), he is angry that his daughter is dating a field agent. His conversation with Chase about relationships is telling of his own frustrations and sadness:

“You see what this job can do to you. You've seen what it's done to me—it's ruined every relationship I ever had ... Dammit, Chase, you cannot have a normal life and do this job at the same time.”

“So, you're saying I shouldn't have a relationship with anyone?”

“That's exactly what I'm saying.”

Jack's marriage was cut short by one of his own coworkers, as we have already seen. We get a glimpse of the beginnings of a relationship with a character from season two, Kate, but at the beginning of season three we learn that it has already ended. During season three, we find out that he had an affair Hector Salazar's girlfriend, Claudia, while he was undercover, and had promised her that he would help her and her brother and father escape from the Salazars. In the escape, she is killed, and we understand Jack's belief that his job makes love an impossibility. In this capacity, Jack does follow the noir tradition, with the exception of the current season (number four). The season begins with him out of CTU so that he can have a life, and he has found love in Audrey Raines. However, as he is called back into CTU and Audrey sees what his job there entails, their relationship is tested, giving more weight to the idea that it's not he that is the problem, but this job.

The problem for Jack is that he wants a normal life, but he is very good at his job. His gift is heroism, which is what definitively sets him apart from the noir man, who is simply not heroic. The noir man is a realistic character, and heroes are, by nature, romantic. Jack does not succumb to the pitfalls of the noir man because he is largely not that man—he is a hero, and usually a Byronic one. Jack's world is not the deterministic one of film noir because he is the determinant of his own fate. He is powerful and pushes through whatever boundaries stand in his way, defining him as a romantic hero: “the Romantic hero types ... are fundamentally and heroically rebellious ...” (Thorslev 66).

Jack is constantly fighting the system, red tape, and policies, because he knows what needs to be done and how quickly it must happen to avert whatever crisis is on the way. The viewers are acquainted with this side of Jack quickly. In the first episode of season one, Jack realizes that his superior, George Mason, is withholding important information, so he shoots Mason with a stun gun. While Mason is out, Jack checks some financial files on an old case, because he always suspected that Mason had taken some of the money for himself. As he finds out it is true, Jack wakes Mason and asks him again to tell him the information, this time threatening to use the financial information against him. Mason gives in and tells Jack the information, and the viewers have learned that this man does not wait for bureaucracy, but blazes through all boundaries to accomplish the necessary task.

In season four, episode 19, Jack needs to obtain information from a suspect, Prado, who has been brought into CTU. There is one major glitch: Amnesty Global has been called in to protect the man's rights and keep CTU from using any extreme interrogation methods. Jack notices that the lawyer from Amnesty Global arrived at CTU very shortly after Prado did and Prado had no chance to call anyone. Thus, he realizes what we already know—the head of the terrorist group attacking America that day has called in the lawyer. Jack and his superior, Bill Buchanan, try to get the President to allow them to override Amnesty Global's authority, but he is unsure of his judgement and will not give them an answer yet (he is actually the Vice President, sworn into the Presidency because the President was injured when Air Force One was attacked by the terrorist group). Jack suggests that he resign from CTU, and CTU set Prado free. Jack then gets the location of Marwan (the leader of the terrorists) out of Prado in the parking lot, beyond the borders of CTU. His girlfriend, Audrey, warns him: “You are acting against the President. Jack, you can't keep working outside the law and not expect consequences.” Jack answers, “No one knows the consequences better than me—no one.” When the President's aide finds out what has been done, he gets angry with Buchanan for not restraining Jack, to which he answers, “With all due respect, restraint is a luxury we can't afford right now.” As Jack is about to apprehend Marwan, the Secret Service pull up to arrest Jack immediately by order of the President because Jack undermined his authority. The mission to capture Marwan fails because his men notice the officers outside, since they are forced to move when the Secret Service arrive. As the terrorists have just escaped and the Secret Service officers are reluctantly arresting Jack, he says, seething with frustration, “You blew this mission.” One of the officers answers, “I'm sorry, sir, I'm just following orders.” It is clear that Jack's frustration is less with the President for giving the order, and more with these men for blindly following it. They clearly see that the arrest could have taken place after the mission was completed, and Jack gives his word that he will turn himself over to them at that point, but their orders are explicit to arrest him immediately, and they follow those orders despite their misgivings.

These are just a few examples of the Jack's constant testing of boundaries and borders. The defiant spirit is a definitive characteristic of the Byronic hero, according to Atara Stein, who writes about modern-day Byronic heroes:

The Byronic hero is a figure of autonomy, self-reliance, defiance, and power, and he is an outlaw who lives by his own moral code. I would argue that the appeal to the audience is the same in Byron's times and ours: Manfred and the heroes I've described here can successfully act on their desires to defy authority and can successfully confront obstacles in their path. They do not have to bow to institutional power or to oppressive forces, for they have both the supernatural abilities and the attitude required to fight them. (par. 12)

She also notes that Byronic heroes are given “superior capabilities” (par. 3), which is certainly true of Jack. He is incredibly courageous, the most intelligent person on the show—he is always one step ahead of the rest, and fatally deft with any weapon. He also meets a physical criteria that Stein points out: “The contemporary Byronic hero is almost always dressed in black” (par. 9). Another interesting aspect of Jack's physical appearance is the fact that it has changed over the seasons to make him more dark and Byronic. We have already seen how he is the “handsome, haunted man of genius,” (his handsomeness is obvious to most) but how is Kiefer Sutherland “dark”?

The 24 website (http://www.fox.com/24) has promotional pictures of all the principal characters that are different for each season. The changes in Jack's pictures are stark over the seasons. In the first season photograph (Figure 5), he is in front of a white background, with his fair hair and eyes and a near-smile on his mouth making him seem kind and concerned. He has a bit of light facial hair and part of his face is in shadows, to indicate his darker side, but he is mostly wholesome in appearance.

The season two picture (Figure 6) is taken outside where Jack has turned his back on the sun and seems lost in some troubling thought. Season two establishes him as a “haunted” individual because of the death of his wife at the end of season one, and his expression reflects that fact.

In season three, we see Jack at his most Byronic—he is addicted to drugs because of an undercover job with heroine dealers. Also, he finally kills Nina, shooting her first to keep her from killing his daughter, and then finishing her off as she makes a very slight move for her gun—it is a borderline crime of passion. He is required to kill one of his superiors and maim his partner to keep a terrorist threat from becoming reality. At the end of this season, he steps into his car and can no longer hold back the torrent of emotion from the day—he cries for reasons too numerous to name. In his picture for season three (Figure 7), Jack is not facing the camera, and only the half of his face that is away from the camera is lit—the rest is in shadows. He is scowling up at the camera with a sinister expression that indicates his ability to break the rules and inflict pain, with which he has become well acquainted. His blonde hair, darker than in previous seasons, cannot be seen in this picture, and his eyes look dark. In season three, not only does Jack push boundaries, but the creators of 24 push the limits as well, testing the audience to see how bad they can allow Jack to become before he falls out of favor. The answer is pretty bad. We like the rebellious bad boy image so keenly displayed in his season three picture.

The picture for the fourth season (Figure 8) shows his whole face in a shadow, except for a bit of light illuminating one eye. The lighting makes the picture appear to be in black and white instead of color. Jack's mouth is set in a straight line, perhaps indicating that he is keeping all emotion hidden.

24 is a film noir setting with a Byronic hero transplanted into it. The use of a romantic hero makes the show itself very romantic—we have boundaries crossed, a hero rescuing damsels in distress and defying authority against a grim, realistic background of dark and sinister Los Angeles. The blend works well—realism keeps the story believable and keeps us interested because of our understanding that this could happen, but we are so glad to see a hero who can rise above this deterministic backdrop and blaze his own trail through it to save the world. Realism keeps our feet on the ground while Romanticism makes our hearts soar. People claim they want realistic entertainment, but the fact remains: Romanticism is the stuff of good stories.

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