TERRORVISION

Abstract

Since 9/11 there has been a proliferation of TV dramas on both sides of the Atlantic featuring Muslim characters in situations involving terrorist activities. In most instances, those Muslims from whom the threat is deemed to emanate are rhetorically placed at a distance from the nation. This essay argues that these dramas construct what we would call an ethnonormalized implied viewing subject: that is, one who is imagined either as part of, or sympathetic to, a white western consensus often organized around notions of family and patriarchy seen as under attack from the irrational nihilism of Islamist terrorism. In Fox's popular US thriller series 24, this consensus is valorized through the actions of the hero, Jack Bauer, whose instrumental violence is seen to underwrite and allow for the liberal rhetoric of his black president, David Palmer. Bauer is the bulwark standing against the dangerous infiltrations of those hostile to the workings of liberal democracy, foremost among whom are Muslims. By contrast, as an African-American, Palmer's role is to act as a father to an unruly national family and to embody a racial rapprochement through which the modern enemy, the Arab, can be more clearly identified, in the process eliding a much longer history of black and Arab anticolonial collaboration.