Full Spectrum...: May 2007

CounterTerror Culture: Subversion, Commodification of Anxiety, or Security Apparatus Recruitment?

Thematics of Terrorism/Counterterrorism in 24, The X-Files, The Agency, Alias, The Grid, and the Matrix Trilogy.

Paper prepared for presentation at the American Political Science Association 2005 Annual Convention, Washington, DC, September 1st, 2005.

Christian W. Erickson - Assistant Professor - Department of Political Science and Public Administration
Roosevelt University 430 S. Michigan Ave. Chicago, IL 60647
e-mail: cerickso@roosevelt.edu
web: http://faculty.roosevelt.edu/erickson/

Introduction:

In this paper I examine the themes of terrorism and counterterrorism as they are manifest in the popular culture of the United States, by focusing on six cinematic or televisual representations of the dialectics of terrorism and counterterrorism in the pre-, and then post-, September 11th, 2001 environment. In each of the six works I have chosen, the dilemmas posed by counterterrorist mobilization of the internal security apparatus are either implicitly or explicitly confronted in fictional spaces.

Three of the works (24, The Grid, and The Agency) are fictionalized narratives that attempt to simulate the activities of counterterrorist operations in, respectively: a fictional Counter Terrorist Unit (CTU); the fictionalized operations of the Central Intelligence Agency; or the fictionalized operations of a ad-hoc intelligence and tactical groups combing CIA, FBI, NSC, and MI-5 agents. The other three works are more removed from an explicit attempt to mimic reality: the X-Files, The Matrix Trilogy (The Matrix, Matrix Reloaded, and Matrix Revolutions), and Alias. In all of these works, the dangers to civil liberties, privacy, and human (and non-human) rights posed by both overt and covert internal security operations lie at the core of the narrative structure. Each of these works deals with issues of intra-organizational competition and factionalization within intelligence and law enforcement agencies. Additionally the X-Files, The Matrix Trilogy, and (to a lesser extent) 24 and Alias take a somewhat ambiguous stance vis-à-vis dissident and/or security agent tactics that may verge on terrorism or criminality

All of these works has received much critical attention and debate about their significance for interpreting the cultural aftereffects of the “war on terror”; the role of intelligence and military services; and violence, suspicion and paranoia in the current US political culture. These programs and films were in development or being broadcast during a time period which spanned the before and after of September 11th, 2001, providing an opportunity to detect cultural shifts or the durability of certain themes. Scripts and airdates were altered in certain instances, raising questions of censorship and the possible conflation of the real and the fictional. Additionally, at least in the case of The Agency (which was allowed to film scenes at the Langley, Virginia headquarters of the Central Intelligence Agency) and Alias (whose star, Jennifer Garner, recorded a recruiting video for the CIA), the role of these cultural products raises a number of interesting questions about the actual effects of such programming. Are they in the end subversive, or merely the commodification of anxiety, or may they contribute to the legitimacy of internal security and intelligence agencies?

Dialectics of Terror/Counterterror in American Culture.

In this section I detail seven major themes that can be found in these works. The themes resonate with the cultural attributes that define the manner in which citizens in the United States view: the activities of the state and agents of the state; legitimate and illegitimate dissent; and the limits of the use of violence to achieve political goals, and ensure political order. What is noteworthy, is that these works evoke cultural norms evident not only in the dominant political culture of the United States, but also, given their subject matter, either implicitly or explicitly discuss, and at times embrace, the cultural norms held by counter-cultures in the United States, including extremist political cultures of both the right and the left.

Indeed, this is one of the reasons why the field of interpretation opened by these films is so complex. They occupy a position in the American cultural field that lies at the nexus of a profound ambivalence about the forces of order, and the forces of rebellion, revolution, and liberation, and each of these forces’ utilization of methods of terror and violence to impose their political projects. One of the key conclusions I draw from my analysis of these cultural products is that while much has been written about how profound an impact 9/11 had in the immediate aftermath of the event (Denzin 2002), it has not fundamentally erased a certain sense of ambivalence regarding the security apparatus and “terrorism”, criminality, and dissident activities that defines American political culture.

The durability of this sense of ambivalence is perhaps an indication that the future impact of the global war on terror, including its domestic front, will continue to be characterized by this ambivalence because it is embedded in the deep structure of the American political system and culture. Despite the pressures of the immediate crisis, the fears of excessive state intrusiveness and centralization of the means of coercion that have fundamentally shaped Americans’ perception of the federal state’s security services and state and local law enforcement are evident in these works. Also evident in these works is the reflection of even more deeply seated fears regarding the possible perfection of instruments of surveillance and social/political control, and technology in general. The ambivalence towards certain forms of criminality and dissent that are particularly apparent in The X-Files and The Matrix Trilogy, and sympathy with “suspect populations” in new USA Network (2005) science fiction series The 4400, can be viewed as indicators that a “rally around the flag” effects does not permeate the culture industry.

Theme 1: Forces of Order and American Patriotism vs. American Antistatism.

An argument can be made that in the aftermath of 9/11, much of dominant American political culture turned a blind eye to its tradition of antistatism and suspicion of the forces of order, especially the security services of the federal state, and uncritically embraced patriotism and the rhetoric and actions to bolster homeland security. However, in these series and films, the internal security apparatus is not represented in a simplistically benevolent fashion. Organizations and individual agents, from the Central Intelligence Agency in The Agency, to the fictionalized Counter Terrorist Unit in 24, and the FBI in the X-Files, are presented as having complex motivations and competing loyalties. This is even the case for the Agents of The Matrix Trilogy who represent, in the virtual prison world, the agents of the central security agency who are policing a virtual world which distinctly, and intentionally, resembles late 20th century American urban spaces. The Agents in The Matrix Trilogy, in particular Hugo Weaving’s Agent Smith, are garbed, somewhat ironically, in the stereotypical clothing and mannerisms of FBI, CIA, Secret Service, and/or NSA agents, and are the most obvious and consistent villains or enemies throughout the Trilogy.

In each of these works the central security apparatus is not represented as either wholly positive or negative but is rather portrayed as: 1) engaged in protracted forms of conflict and the enforcement of normality upon a restive population within which lie a number of different enemies across the ideological spectrum; and 2) divided internally between different factions, some of whom respect the chain of command and standard operating procedures, and other factions who willfully violate both the chain of command and standard operating procedure.
Another consistent trope in the representation of the agents of the security apparatus is their persistent violation of the laws and standard operating procedures that are supposed to regulate their activities. The violation of normality by agents of the state security apparatus is done in order to either: contain threats to order with strategies and tactics that a more timid leadership is unwilling to use; or to protect either the general population, or specific dissident/terrorists, from the antidemocratic and at times explicitly fascist leanings of dominant factions within the security apparatus.

These television series and films could be arranged on a spectrum indicating agent autonomy and willingness to violate norms and standard operating procedures. In The Agency, and The Grid, both of which strived for a certain degree of verisimilitude with the actual activities of the US intelligence community , therefore showed most agents as acting according to standard operating procedures and the usual level of intra- and inter-bureau rivalry and factionalization. When agents are discovered to have been violating norms and procedures they are reprimanded, although even in The Agency and The Grid there are instances of corruption and/or violation of normality in the service of the expediency of successfully carrying out the mission that are overlooked and at times even rewarded.

24 is based on a fictional Counter Terrorist Unit, that is similar to, and in the first season anticipated, some of the intelligence fusion ad-hocracies that have been assembled not only under the bureaucratic rubric of the Department of Homeland Security, but also have been created to fuse the activities of the FBI, CIA, DIA, NSA, and state and local law enforcement. In 24, the lead character Jack Bauer (played by Keifer Sutherland) has a degree of autonomy that frequently verges on criminality, which might stand out, however the CTU and other components of the federal security apparatus and even the Presidency, are also penetrated by various factions, all of whom use naked violence to accomplish their goals of defending the United States from a succession of terrorist entities. While Jack Bauer has repeatedly tested the limits of his autonomy and deviance (including becoming addicted to heroin during an undercover operation), and has left the CTU to become and advisor for the Secretary of Defense for the 2005 season, he also is repeatedly reintegrated into the CTU.

In the X-Files the lead characters, Dana Scully (played by Gillian Anderson) and Fox Mulder (played by David Duchovny), are assigned to a wholly fictional unit within the FBI, and again have a certain degree of autonomy that allows them to violate norms and procedures. It could be said that Agents Scully and Mulder are more frequently and explicitly punished for their deviance than the agents in 24 or The Agency. It might be better to say that their punishment and the constant threat of the dissolution of the X-Files unit within the FBI is a more central theme in this series than the punishment of “rogue” agents in other series. For example, in the 2004-2005 season of 24, the exile and/or punishment and then later reintegration of Agents Bauer and Almeida into the Los Angeles CTU was a major theme In the X-Files, Agents Scully and Mulder’s superiors within the Bureau, other factions within the rest of the internal and national security apparatus, certain deep black Special Access Programs, and networks of entities who have penetrated the federal security apparatus, use the X-Files Unit within the Bureau as an arena of conflict. The unit’s dissolution and destruction and then reinstatement or reconstruction occurred seemingly once every season.

Finally, in the Matrix Trilogy, the security apparatus is represented in the virtual world by the aptly named Agents (the most prominent of whom is Agent Smith played by Hugo Weaving), who police the virtual human civilization in a manner roughly analogous to the role played by federal, state, and local security forces in the United States. These Agents have an incredible degree of autonomy from the norms of human governance in the Matrix because they are merely simulating the appearance of law enforcement and intelligence agents. At any time the Agents can slip out of their simulated roles and use the most extreme forms of violence and psychological manipulation to control their human subjects. Interestingly within the Matrix these Agents attempt to maintain human form, and behave as human security agents, until they are confronted with isolated instances of human resistance and dissent within the Matrix.
These Agents do not reveal themselves to their human opponents unless the human: 1) is isolated from other human presences within the Matrix; or 2) the human presents a serious enough threat that they will violate all norms of the Matrix in front of large numbers of human beings, and either explain their activities as counterterrorist or law enforcement operations, or erase/replace the memories of the human witnesses to their “excesses.”

The ability of the Agents to blend into the very fabric of the human population, at times hijacking the virtual representation of human beings, creates a transparent panoptic space where each human, who has not been dissociated from the collective hallucination of the Matrix is a potential Agent. This ubiquity of potential “agents” is a metaphorical representation of the actual function of confidential informer networks that security agencies put in place amongst the human population. The effortlessness of the Agents’ ability to hijack and mutate individual humans into instruments of perpetual and unpredictable surveillance, illustrates a perfectly functioning system of control and self-policing. If every human is a potential agent, then the intimacy of policing is total.

Before moving, on I must draw attention to the fact that in this paper I have avoided a direct examination of the (mis)representation of the Arab- and Islamic-American populations in these works and American cultural products generally (Akram 2002; Barratt and Erickson 2005; Shaheen 2001), not because it is unimportant, but rather because of this paper’s concentration on more general thematics, such as the demonization of enemies. It would be difficult to say that the “enemy” in each of these works is primarily and/or consistently associated with Arab or Islamic populations (for instance The X-Files, Matrix Trilogy, and Alias), although the recent controversy about representation of an immigrant Arab/Islamic-American family in this season of 24 illustrates the sensitivity of this issue (Muslim Public Affairs Council 2005).

Theme 2: Technology - Silver Bullet or Ultimate Threat?

Each of these works also investigates the impact of technology on the dialectics of terror and counterterror. Technology is represented as a critical force multiplier for both the agents of the security apparatus and the dissident/terrorist entities, but the role that technology plays for each of these sets of actors is ambivalent in many ways as well. Technology can almost be said to be a separate and distinct actor in each of these works, because the presence of advanced technologies of surveillance and weaponry puts each of these works in the realm of near (or in the case of the Matrix Trilogy distant) future science fiction. Both the agents of security and the dissidents/ terrorists are heavily reliant on technology. Additionally, the primacy of technology as a cutting edge tool of forensic investigation and the operations of undercover agents is evident in each of the works.

In 24 much of the action is set in the Los Angeles headquarters of the CTU and is represented as the idealized high-technology workplace of the early 21st century with a multiplicity of high power computer workstations, and ubiquitous and relatively flawless wireless communication (except when these systems are hacked/cracked by superior terrorist entities or autonomous agents working their own agendas or having been bought off by the terrorist or other corrupt entities). This ubiquitous and reliable technological infrastructure enables the members of CTU to execute elaborate and globe spanning counterterrorist operations that have thus far frustrated the assassination of a Presidential candidate (2001-2002 season), and thwarted two potential mass casualty terrorist events in Los Angeles, the detonation of a tactical nuclear weapon (2002-2003 season), and dissemination of a biological warfare agent (2003-2004 season). The 2005 of 24 season was based on an intricately timed sequence of attacks. This sequence of attacks included the kidnapping of the US Secretary of Defense, a cyberattack aimed at creating the meltdown of nuclear reactors across the United States, shooting down Air Force One with a hijacked F-117, and the attempted use of a nuclear tipped missile against Los Angeles.

What is striking about these works is that the terrorists are portrayed as being equally adept at utilizing the benefits of the force multiplication potential for technology. In the fictional world of 24, the acquisition of weapons of mass destruction by terrorist or criminal entities appears to be substantially easier than it is in the real world. While the anthrax attacks of October 2001 and the ensuing Amerithrax investigation has demonstrated the potential for entities to acquire and use weapons grade biological agents, it has (fortunately) thus far not been demonstrated that terrorist entities have acquired the ability to carry out mass casualty events using military grade weapons of mass destruction.

Computer hackers/crackers populate each of the seasons of 24, and the “cyber” front of the war of terror and counterterror is represented with dramatic graphical displays of cyberwarfare that do not capture its actual mostly mundane nature. The fundamental importance of information technology, from flawlessly integrated local area networks to satellite phones, represents the 21st century continuation of a theme of technological fetishism that has defined 20th century espionage film and television series.

Finally, the 2003-2004 season of 24 captures the increasing importance of the biological front of the war of terror and counterterror, by portraying a Mexican narcotics trafficking organization as acquiring and threatening the use of a biological warfare agent. The ability of the CTU and other internal/homeland security forces to penetrate the drug trafficking cartel and then locate and quarantine a hotel in central Los Angeles where the release of the virus is carried out, demonstrates an underestimation of the difficulties of such missions in the real world. The use of biological and chemical agents is of course a common theme in The Agency, Alias, The Grid, and other recent works such as Smallpox 2002 and Dirty War, both of which originally aired on BBC (2002, 2004) before being broadcast on FX Networks (2004b), HBO (2005), and PBS (2005).

In the X-Files, the threat posed by terrorist organizations and other dissident/criminal groups takes a back seat to the overall story arc involving Agents Scully and Mulder’s (and their ever shifting networks of allies within the US intelligence-military-law enforcement community and elsewhere) struggle against the shadowy elite network (know as the Syndicate) and its extraterrestrial allies. Nonetheless, in episodes dealing with the activities of either actual terrorist groups, or hackers who penetrate US federal computer networks to reveal information on the Special Access Programs that are attempting to hide the truth about the presence of extraterrestrial threats, the struggle between terrorism and counterterrorism takes on many of the same features of the other series. In the X-Files, the FBI and other security services possess surveillance, forensic, and weapon capabilities that at times verge on mid 21st century technological capability, again overestimating the real capabilities of the security apparatus in a way that belies the apparent repeated fallibility of the apparatus in reality.

Advanced technology provides one of the most important terrains of struggle in the X-Files. On the one hand, the series celebrates criminal forensics as a critical tool in the struggle against terrorism. But such proficiencies are at times blocked by the ability of terrorist, criminal, and extraterrestrial entities ability to cover up their tracks by utilizing technology as well. Agents Scully and Mulder and their allies, including the investigative journalist cell of the Lone Gunmen, are able to acquire and utilize special forces quality military gear and repeatedly penetrate and evade detection in the most classified of military and other federal facilities. When terrorist organizations appear, they posses similar abilities to penetrate federal facilities, such as in the multi-part story that comprises episodes 64 (air date February 9th 1996) “Piper Maru”, 65 (air date February 16th, 1996) “Apocraphya”, and 81 (air date 11/24/1996) “Tunguska”. In these episodes a white nationalist militia, with cells throughout the Great Plains, is able to enter and surveil an abandoned, but still alarmed, underground network of missile silos and rescue Agent Krycek (played by Nicholas Lea) from these missile silos. In episode 115 (air date May 3rd, 1998) “The Pine Bluff Variant”, yet another white nationalist terrorist network has acquired, and is able to disseminate, a biological weapon through a contamination of the money supply.

This episode is perhaps the most nuanced portrait of the complex interaction of the federal security apparatus with internal terrorist networks, because the terrorist group’s acquisition of the biological agent is assisted by an undercover agent working for a joint CIA/FBI investigation of this terrorist network. The conclusion of the episode raises the possibility of a deep black Special Access Program that has deliberately used the terrorist network in order to run a real world test of the effectiveness of this agent as a biowar/bioterror device, or to test federal response capabilities. This episode aired more than 3 years before the anthrax attacks of October 2001, and indirectly anticipates one of the veins of investigation that the FBI’s Amerithrax inquiry is following, that the weapons grade anthrax may have been lifted from small samples in the US biowar community, and some of the scientists who have been identified as “persons of interest” (e.g. Steven Hatfill) fit the profile of a member of the US biowar/biodefense community who staged the attack as a wake-up call to demonstrate the dangers of bioterrorism.

In The Agency, much of the episodes devote a substantial period of time detailing the intricacies of the CIA’s technological capabilities in the service of both counterintelligence and counterterror operations. The importance of technology in the construction of forensically accurate legends (false identities) to assist undercover agents is perhaps an area that is emphasized in this series more so than in 24 or The X-Files. Terrorist organizations, and of course competitor states, possess advanced technological capabilities that at times supersede those of the US intelligence community, or at least provide momentary advantages. The war of terror and counterterror in this series again spends more time investigating the minutiae of these technologies because they are often viewed as a silver bullet that can provide the necessary edge and supplement the lack of good human intelligence, or at least the difficulties of acquiring human intelligence. In The Agency, technologies perform well quite often, and are critical in the rapidly moving global network warfare that is portrayed. The Agency spends a bit more time trying to stay close to actual technological capabilities, but again often portrays the utilization of technologies that are at least ten to fifteen years away from actually entering into the normal arsenal of intelligence services. The TNT mini-series The Grid also struggled to maintain a reasonable degree of verisimilitude between the actions of the both security agents and terrorist networks, and even details a terrorist cell accidentally releasing sarin gas before the canister can reach its’ intended target due to the unintentional fall of ashes from the cigarette of one of the cell members onto the seal of the canister (Hart 2004; Keveney 2004; Levin 2004; Stanley 2004b).

Theme 3: Eschatology of Terrorism/Counterterrorism.

In each of these works both the forces of order and the dissidents and terrorists are acting based on very particular understandings of the end processes of historical dynamics. Except for The Agency, and The Grid, which again are the works that attempt to most slavishly imitate the real, each of these series is based on apocalyptic teleologies, or perhaps cyclical apocalyptic teleologies, especially in the case of The X-Files and The Matrix Trilogy. In The Agency and 24 the threat of terrorists acquiring weapons of mass destruction mimics the implicitly apocalyptic teleology of weapons of mass destruction making it into the hands of terrorist organizations that defines much of the debate in the real world about the dangers posed by terrorist and criminal organizations and networks acquiring such weapons.

As already discussed, two of the four seasons of 24 involve terrorist/criminal networks both acquiring and using a nuclear weapon and a genetically enhanced biological agent. The effects of the nuclear blast in the second season would have been limited to Los Angeles, and thanks to the efforts of the CTU the nuclear weapon was seized and taken out of Los Angeles via aircraft to detonate in the sparsely populated desert areas to the northeast of the greater Los Angeles metropolitan area. But the detonation triggered the escalation of a military confrontation between the United States and an unidentified Middle East state that was falsely blamed for carrying out the attack. 24 and The Agency are crafted around an international and domestic environment where the forces of order and disorder are constantly engaged in an unending war involving incredibly high stakes. In the third season of 24 the biological agent is given to cells that have dispersed themselves in major urban areas of the United States. The potential for mass casualties is presented as a stark option to then President Palmer (a presidential candidate who was the target of an assassination attempt in the first season, elected president and faced an attempted coup ï état in the aftermath of the nuclear detonation in the second season). This resonates with the material forms of the apocalypse that drive current homeland security and global war on terror concerns.

The Agency had a number of plots involving terrorist networks acquiring weapons of mass destruction but probably the most interesting episode was the aptly title “Anthrax” that originally scheduled to be aired on October 18th, 2001. The air date was delayed until November 8th, 2001 due to the actual anthrax attacks of early October 2001 (Wall Street Journal 2001). In yet another parallel between the real and the virtual, this episode involves a terrorist using anthrax in a small test case. CIA counterterrorist analysts and direct intervention teams intervene and apprehend the members of the small terrorist cell in order to forestall a larger scale release, which again resonates with the current mobilization of the internal security apparatus to deal with this impending threat in the real.

In both The X-Files and The Matrix Trilogy the interaction between the security apparatus and either dissidents within the apparatus or working against the apparatus takes on a wider and more directly acknowledged cosmological significance. In The X-Files the various appearances of terrorist and criminal entities takes place against a wider backdrop wherein the often alluded to final date for alien invasion is slated for 2012, a date that coincides with the end of one of the master cycles of the Mayan Calendar. The various terrorist and criminal entities within the narrative of The X-Files are often motivated by either Judeo-Christian eschatology or various forms of white-nationalist Christian Identity or new age apocalyptic ideologies.

In The Matrix Trilogy, the human opposition to the domination of the planet by a machine sentient race, embraces a variant of Judeo-Christian eschatology including the Christ figure of Neo and the utopian last redoubt of human civilization, Zion, deeply buried beneath the Earth’s surface in a complex network of tunnels that serve as the critical infrastructure for the machine civilization. This critical infrastructure also provides the vectors of attack that the humans have been using to launch raids into the Matrix. This is done by hacking into the computer system that is constantly producing the massive collective hallucination keeping the human population quiescent as they are essentially being used as bioreactors to feed energy into the machine civilization’s power grid. The Matrix Trilogy is the work that is most embraces tactics of resistance to the exploitation of the enslaved human race – including tactics that would clearly be understood as acts of terrorism if opponents to the United States used these same strategies and tactics of resistance. I discuss this in greater detail in a latter section of this paper “Terrorism and the Boundaries of Dissent.”

Theme 4: Demonology of Enemies and Threat.

All of the series traffic in the demonization of “enemies” and frame the real as being haunted by a ubiquitous threat of violence and chaos. The array of enemies, from terrorists to negative elements within the security apparatus and government, portrayed in these works, is quite extensive. In both 24 and The Agency the series stay relatively firmly in reality and include terrorist and criminal organizations and sole psychopathological “super empowered individuals” as representing the key threats of disorder in the United States. The Agency also draws upon the conventional array of rogue nations, placing an even emphasis on the threat posed by Islamic Fundamentalist terrorists, lone super-empowered individuals, and the activities of the intelligence and military services of both allied and enemy states occasionally working in conjunction with terrorist organizations.

While both 24 and The Agency spend a fair amount of time discussing potential enemies within the security apparatus, such as competing factions, 24 takes this intra-apparatus competition to often absurd lengths, including early in the second season (2002-2003) when the fictional President Palmer orders the torture and interrogation of his national security advisor. What is noteworthy is that not only are the terrorists portrayed as the obvious enemies of order, but there are factions within the security apparatus who represent yet another form of threat haunting the larger apparatus charged with being bulwark of order and the defender of democracy. In terms of the motivations of intra-apparatus disorder and deviance, they range from sexual motivations of attraction, seduction and revenge, pure financial motivation, and at times ideological affinity for, or control by, terrorist/criminal networks or an enemy nation-state. In these two works, and in the X-Files and The Matrix Trilogy, the presence of deep cover agents in both sides of the dialectic of terror and counterterror, are used to provide plot twists, but also ground each of these works in an incredibly murky moral and ethical universe, where actors on all sides of the interaction are suspect and can potentially be turned.

In The X-Files and The Matrix Trilogy, the threat posed by enemies within, or allied with, the security apparatus, or the security apparatus itself, represents at least as great a threat as the forces of disorder, if not the primary threat to the nation, but it would be a mistake to read either The X-Files or The Matrix Trilogy as being nationalist narratives. The threat that hovers and repeatedly makes its presence felt in both of these series is actually posed at the civilizational, and perhaps cosmological and metaphysical levels. In both The X-Files and The Matrix Trilogy the viewers are encouraged to identify with main characters that either represent an opposition within the apparatus in the case of the X-Files, or are attacking the hegemonic machine civilization in the case of The Matrix Trilogy, a machine civilization that, at a metaphorical level, may be a stand-in for industrial and cyberneticized global capital.

Theme 5: Terrorism and the Boundaries of Dissent.

In some of these works, the stance of the narrative vis-à-vis questions of the boundaries between permissible dissent and act of terrorism are explicitly addressed. In both the X-Files and The Matrix Trilogy, activities of dissent, up to and including criminal acts and acts that could be described as acts of terrorism, are portrayed as being necessary in support of political struggles aimed at preventing the colonization of the planet in The X-Files and the continuation of the rule of Earth by artificial intelligence programs and sentient machines in The Matrix Trilogy. While at first glance both of these works may be viewed as being quite separate and distinct from the others, they are included in this discussion because they all represent the durability of themes after the events of 9/11 reflecting ambivalence toward, if not outright fear of, a future dominated by technologies of social and political control that are under the control of a tyrannical elite network. These thematics, which are also evident in the other works, are more deeply embedded in the American political culture than the momentary uncritical embrace of cultural representations of the security apparatus, and critical representations of any forms of dissent, that some analysts expected to occur in the aftermath of 9/11.

As noted earlier, in The X-Files Agents Mulder and Scully often find themselves allied with dissidents either outside or within the US intelligence-law enforcement-military apparatus, or even factions within the Syndicate and the various extraterrestrial entities who are attempting to colonize Earth, or alternately to prevent its colonization. In numerous instances the agents find themselves hacking into federal computer systems by calling on the expertise of either the Lone Gunmen or other dissident cells, or disrupting federal experiments on the human population, some of which are justified as being part of counterintelligence/counterterrorist investigations (see especially “The Pine Bluff Variant” episode discussed above). As an example of sympathy with dissident and suspect populations, in the concluding two part series finale “The Truth” aired on May 19th, 2002, Agent Mulder is imprisoned in a Marine brig at Quantico, Virginia after having penetrated a federal facility at Mount Weather, Virginia, and killing a US Marine (character Knowle Rohrer -- a human who has been replaced by an alien penetration agent). Agent Mulder’s orange jump suit, the harshness of his interrogation, and the military tribunal empanelled to investigate and sentence Agent Mulder, bears a striking resemblance to the prison garb and interrogation and prosecution routines faced by the detainees at Guantanamo Bay and throughout the CIA’s overseas prison network used for “extraordinary rendition” (Mayer 2005). That these final episodes in the series were taped following the events of 9/11, and are open to interpretation as being sympathetic to the plight of those who are unjustly accused of committing crimes against the federal state, is emblematic of the durability of the themes of suspicion of the security apparatus that I have pointed to throughout this paper.

Theme 6: Torture as Necessity and Norm.

One of the most pervasive themes in each of the series as they touch upon issues that could be understood to be directly related to the both the domestic and international fronts of the “global war on terror”, is the representation of the dilemmas, or perhaps more disturbingly the lack of dilemma, posed by questions about the necessity of torturing suspected members of terrorist organizations, or dissidents who may or may not be considered terrorists. Representation of interrogation and/or torture of course are part and parcel of the genre, and classics like the Battle of Algiers delve into the complexities of the relationship between the interrogator and interrogated (Crowdus 2004; Orlando 2000). It is perhaps understandable that a culture industry based in a democratic polity would find the dramatic elements surrounding questions of the use of torture as a compelling subject for inquiry. The parallels between the fictional dilemmas posed by the use of torture, and the dilemmas faced by US military, law enforcement, and intelligence personnel in the “real”, is a fertile terrain of inquiry. What bears investigation is the possibility that way in which the normalization of torture occurs within the narrative structure of the works examined in this paper (and others), may contribute to the loosening of the restrictions on the use of torture which seem to be occurring in the real as is evidenced by the Abu-Ghraib photographs and many other allegations and demonstrated instances of torture. By assuming that the pressures of counterterrorist investigations make the use of torture a foregone conclusion, are the fictional representations of the normalization of torture shifting the general cultural norm of prohibition or at the very least restriction of torture?

While it would certainly be difficult to isolate the impact of fictional works from the real world pressures that lead to the use of torture, the manner in which torture is portrayed as an intrinsic and necessary component of counterterrorist (and counterespionage/subversion) investigations is represented in these works is not a trivial question. The pervasiveness of a cultural norm of the acceptance of the routinization of torture in post-9/11 television and film, must give an analyst pause, for it either represents the leading edge of a greater cultural shift, or indicates that the global war on terror has had an important impact on shifting general norms to the point that the spectacle of torture has become so routine that it does not elicit anything more than warnings that the content may be unsuitable for children.

As an example of the pervasiveness and routinization of torture one need only examine the last two seasons of 24. In the 2002-2003 season the President of the United States orders the torture of his soon to be former National Security Advisor, because he is suspected (a suspicion that is later verified) of plotting with the Vice President to carry out a coup against a vacillating President. One of the factors driving President Palmer to choose torture is the need to determine if a tactical nuclear weapon that was supposed to have been detonated in the middle of Los Angeles, was an instance of state sponsored terrorism that required launching a military retaliation against a coalition of generic middle eastern states (which could stand in for Iraq, Syria, Libya). The ease with which the President is able to order a senior member of his Secret Service detail to torture his National Security Advisor belies the sense of normalization of extreme inter-elite violence that lies at the core of the narrative structure of 24.

In the fourth season of 24, the use of torture is quite widespread, including the kidnapping and torture of the Secretary of Defense by a terrorist network, and CTU’s use of extreme forms of chemical, electro-shock, and sensory deprivation torture against: the son of the Secretary of Defense who is suspected (wrongly) of assisting in the kidnapping plot; a CTU agent who is suspected (also wrongly) of being a mole within CTU; and then finally the torture of a contract employee of CTU who is found to be the actual terrorist mole within CTU. Again the prevalence of torture, and the seeming lack of consequences for the erroneous use of extreme measures of interrogation/torture, should give one pause about the potential for slippage away from a cultural norm against torture that still seems to be relatively durable amongst the American general population.

Theme 7: Conspiracies without/Conspiracies within.

The moral universe inhabited by each of these programs is terribly murky and complex at the best of times, and the final thematic that runs through these works the way in which this moral ambiguity permeates not only the interaction between the counterterrorist and terrorist forces, but also governs the relationship that agents and terrorists/dissidents have with one another, or have with their families and significant others, who are not necessarily involved in the central struggles of the narrative structures of each of these works. The danger posed by the defection of security agents to either the terrorists or to other networks of actors within the security apparatus, or conspiratorial networks that span the enemies without and enemies within, is a ubiquitous threat, and intimate relationships do not necessarily offer any refuge from this dark moral universe. This pervasive sense of nihilistic betrayal firmly places all of these works within a genre that has many of the elements of classic noir cinema and other works and genres of fiction such as cyberpunk, and is therefore perhaps not unique in terms of this narrative structure (Begley 2004; Novotny 1997; Oliver and Trigo 2003, xiv). What is worthy of note, however, is that, as previously discussed, the various works here do not offer a simplistically heroic depiction of security agents, and of the homefront generally. Terrorist or dissident networks and cells are also portrayed as being rife for opportunities for defection and factionalization.

Another interesting commonality to these works is the fatigue and alienation that the costs of the struggle impose upon the actors. The agents and terrorists/dissidents are commonly represented as having moments of indecision and lack of commitment to the struggle. Certainly in 24 the levels of alienation are portrayed as creating extreme moral fatigue in the agents, including substance abuse for Agents Bauer (heroin) and Almeida (alcohol). The ever present threat of double agents is evident in each of the works, and provides the fodder for more than a few episodes of The X-Files, when either Agent Scully or Mulder suspects that their partner has been turned, and is now spying for either dominant factions within the Bureau, or the Syndicate, their extraterrestrial allies, and their penetration networks within the US security apparatus. I now progress from a consideration of the common themes that are evident in these works, to a discussion of the impact of events and institutions in the real world on the content and cultural impact of these works both before and after the attacks of 9/11.

Terror/Counterterror Before 9/11, Between Oklahoma City and 9/11 and Amerithrax: Fighting the Future or Predicting the Future?

One of the reasons I have selected these four cultural products as emblematic of broader cultural shifts in the United States regarding representations of both terrorism and counterterrorism is the fact that all were either released, in production, or being broadcast both before and after the events of September 11th, 2001. At the time of the attacks the X-Files had been in production for nearly 10 years (its first broadcast date was September 10th, 1993). The first Matrix film was released in 1999, and the two sequels were in production during 2000-2002. 24 was in production in late 2000, and the first episodes were aired in late September and early October of 2001. The Agency was also in production in late 2000 and 2001, as well as Alias. Before moving on to examine the impact of 9/11 on each of the films and television series let us return to the themes which I outlined earlier in the pre-9/11 versions of these films and television series.

American culture had of course reflected the impact of terrorism long before the major terrorist attacks of the 1990s and 2000s that took place on the US homeland. The domestic terrorist attacks and violent incidents of the 1980s and early 1990s, such as the first World Trade Center bombing, a succession of violent standoffs between the federal security apparatus and white-nationalist, Christian Identity, and religious cults such as the Branch Davidians, provided much of the factual backdrop for each of the works considered here. This was perhaps most strikingly the case for the X-Files, and another series by X-Files producer Chris Carter that is not explicitly discussed in this paper, Millennium. This indicates that perhaps these previous instances of terrorism and political violence had as important an impact as the events of 9/11 themselves. While perhaps contradicting other points of this paper, the mere presence of highly complex and elaborate instruments of social control that have been developed and deployed to govern human populations through a variety of possible and actual crises, has had an independent and long term cultural impact, that is working at a much deeper level than the momentary spikes in cultural preoccupations that are occasioned by catastrophic focusing events such as the attacks of 9/11.

Whatever the case, during the mid to late 1990s there were indications that representations of terrorism in a fictional realm could perhaps cut too close to the bone, as was the case of a scene in the 1998 cinematic adaptation of the X-Files (Maslin 1998). In one scene that created a minor controversy (the third scene), the protagonists, Agents Mulder and Scully, are searching an office building which houses the local FEMA offices for the Dallas, Texas area. The office building resembles the predictably bland architecture of federal office buildings erected in the mid 1960s to mid 1980s including the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City. The resemblance between the building in The X-Files movie and the Alfred P. Murrah building may have been coincidental, but the aftermath of the explosion of an elaborate IED device bears a striking resemblance to the aftermath of the Oklahoma City bombing. This was noted by media critics, as either inconsiderate exploitation of the tragedy of the bombing, or as a sign that the shock of the violent events of 1993-1995 (World Trade Center I, the violent end to the siege at Waco, TX, and the Oklahoma City Bombing) had worn off, or at least that the American public had moved past the shock of the events (explain why it indicates this?).

CounterTerror Culture in the Shadow of the Towers: Self-Imposed Censorship, Questions of Relevance, and the Culture Industry Gets Recruited.

After the attacks of 9/11 the culture industry was confronted with questions of whether or not the reaction of the American (and global) audience to these events would signal a discontinuous change in the cultural zeitgeist that each of these works represents. The fall 2001 television season had already been referred to as the “A Season of the Spies” before the events of 9/11, because three of the major networks, Fox, CBS, and ABC, were rolling out dramas involving intelligence service and counterterrorist themes with hopes of high ratings (Bernstein 2001; Bianco 2001; Britton 2004, 252-255; Sciolino 2001; Taubman 2001). Almost immediately after the attacks, the networks began to reconsider whether or not the rolling out of new series related to terrorism/counterterrorism or the activities of intelligence services, namely 24, Alias, and The Agency, was appropriate (Fahri 2001; James 2001; Keveney 2001). This represented an interesting nexus of fictional “near-future” television series being brought into question by the eruption of real attacks that represented the materialization of future threats. Indeed, after 9/11 it could be said that the minds of the terrorists were more imaginative and less predictable in their plans than the most perceptive futurologists of those two centers of cultural gravity of the United States, Washington DC (policing center) and the intertwined cultural production apparatus of Los Angeles and New York.

An example of the editing of series in the aftermath was the removal of a scene of the explosion of an airliner in the opening show of the first season of 24, which aired only weeks after 9/11. A premiere screening of The Agency at CIA headquarters in Langley, Virginia was cancelled in the immediate aftermath of 9/11.

While some of the series, such as 24 and the X-Files, did not receive technical advice and other support from the public relations departments of the US federal security apparatus, other shows, especially Alias and the Agency, received not only production support, but became actively involved in recruiting agents for the Central Intelligence Agency. The Agency was invited to film scenes at the CIA headquarters and was also offered other forms of production support.

But in addition, Jennifer Garner, the actress who plays the protagonist of Alias, was selected to assist in CIA recruiting. Garner’s character, Agent Bristow’s, is a graduate student originally working for a rogue CIA faction SD-6, who is then is recruited by the CIA to help it disrupt and destroy the rogue faction. Despite the complexities of Alias and representations of rogue factions of agents operating within the CIA, Garner was asked to record a series of recruiting videos for the CIA, which not only touts the general opportunities for employment within the Agency, but also a subset of more specifically targeted recruiting videos for Analytical, Technical and other positions with the Agency. The recruiting pitch for the primary video explicitly frames the career opportunities at the CIA in the context of the events of 9/11. Below I have quoted at length from the main recruiting video that Garner recorded for the CIA:

“I'm Jennifer Garner. I play a CIA officer on the ABC TV series Alias. In the real world, the CIA serves as our country's first line of defense in the ongoing war against international terrorism. CIA's mission is clear and direct: safeguard America and its people. And it takes smart people with wide-ranging talents and diverse backgrounds to carry out this mission...people with integrity, common sense, patriotism and courage. The kind of people who have always worked for the agency. But since the tragic events of 9/11, the CIA has an even stronger need for creative, innovative, flexible men and women from diverse backgrounds and a broad range of perspective. Right now, the CIA has important, exciting jobs for US citizens...especially those with foreign language skills. Today, the collection of foreign intelligence has never been more vital for national security. If you're an American citizen and seek a challenging, rewarding career where you can make a difference in the world and here at home, contact the agency at www.cia.gov. Thank you” (US CIA 2004).

The use of an actress, who plays a graduate student recruited by a rogue intelligence operation and then the CIA, to engage in the actual recruitment of agents, represents a fascinating case study of the slippage between the real and the simulacrum in the global war on terror. Indeed the CIA Office of Public Affairs points to the Sydney Bristow character as representing the qualities of an ideal CIA agent, “the character Jennifer Garner plays embodies the integrity, patriotism and intelligence the CIA looks for in its officers” (USCIA. Office of Public Affairs 2004b). It should, of course, not be surprising that the security apparatus of a democratic polity would use popular actors and actresses to bolster a war effort, and again the Garner recruitment video may signal noting more than a continuation of this tradition.

Is The “New Normal” Nothing New?: Continuity of Themes of Terrorism and Counterterrorism.

“To anyone familiar with the spy life, these plots sound anywhere from faintly to patently absurd. "It's in the boredom that important stuff gets done," says MI-5 consultant Mike Baker, a 14-year CIA veteran who now serves as CEO of Veritas Global, a risk management service provider. "But if you showed them people debating in a conference room and filling out forms in triplicate, they'd turn it off after five minutes." So instead, shows keep their characters squirming with ever looming catastrophes, often conveniently timed to coincide with commercial breaks. But the fans, who have grown accustomed to the last-minute rescues and sudden shootouts, may find themselves more surprised than usual by the developments this season” (Hallet and Silver 2005).

The above characterizes a media critic’s portrayal of the opening of the new seasons for 24, Alias, and A&E networks’ broadcast of the series MI-5 that is the US title for the BBC series Spooks. It captures the sense that perhaps the cultural impact of the immediacy of 9/11 has faded, and that the chief factors that determine shows’ popularity relates to the quality of the work itself rather than the relevance of these fictional works for capturing the zeitgeist unleashed by the terrorist attacks of 9/11. The quote also reinforces the distinct boundaries between the fictional representation of the activities of the security apparatus and terrorists and dissidents, and the banality of the bureaucratic functions of the war on terror in the real. It remains to be seen if the current popularity of series that directly relate to the impact of terrorism on American political culture will fade. A number of works, both those discussed in this paper and others, had short runs, or have been cancelled, including The X-Files, The Agency, and ABC’s Threat Matrix (Stanley 2003), among others. And yet, it seems to me that the popularity of these cultural products may not fade and that there are a number of recently broadcast series, or relatively new series, that are attempting to tap into what the producers of the works feel are the unique properties of American political culture as it has been impacted by the “global war on terror.”

An example of this is the science fiction series The 4400 (USA 2005), which features the Department of Homeland Security as the central federal agency involved in the management of the arrival of 4400 abductees/returnees who suddenly materialize out of a ball of light at a lake in Washington state. The representation of the “suspect population” of “the 4400” is quite sympathetic, and they are first processed through as series of interment centers for reintegration back into American life, and then are placed under constant surveillance by DHS due to suspicions that they may still be under alien influence. In the current season the 4400 are being threatened with quarantine and detention again due to a disease propagating through the returnee population. Domestic terrorism or hate crimes against “the 4400” returnees plays a role in the fourth episode of the first season, “Trial By Fire,” (air date 08/01/2004), which details not only a string of assassinations of returnees by car bombings, but a thwarted suicide truck bombing of a returnee compound by two men who blame the returnees for a death of a family member.

Another example of the continued subtle impact of the global war on terror can be found in the SciFi Channel’s reworking of the ABC series from the 1970s Battlestar Galactica. Again, while at first glance this series may not seem like a work that would demonstrate shifts in the American political cultural landscape that might be a byproduct of the global war on terror, the presence of Cylon suicide bombers conducting critical infrastructure attacks aboard the military craft the “Battlestar Galactica” (principally aimed at destroying the fleet’s water supply and disrupting research and development efforts aimed at perfecting surveillance technologies to detect enemy agents within the human population) may demonstrate this. Additionally the show’s depiction of interrogation and torture scenes represents a much harsher and darker aesthetic than the first version. This includes an extended scene depicting the extraction of information from Cylon sleeper agents and subsequent execution by ejection (or threatened ejection) through an airlock into space, on order of the President of the human federation, despite the President’s assurances to the prisoner that will be freed. Both the first and the current seasons’ narrative revolves around fears of penetration of the fleet by Cylon sleeper agents who mimic humans, and attempts to utilize weapons of mass destruction to destroy the fleet or assassination aimed at the command nucleus of the fleet (SciFi Channel 2005). It does not take too much analysis to see that this series again is at least evocative of a zeitgeist in which potential enemies, in the real form of Al Qaeda sleeper cells, can activate seemingly without warning and shatter the complacent surface of normalcy. Of course this may be a fear that will never materialize into an actual threat in the real, but it is a fear that defines the cultural milieu within which these series exist.

Another consequence or effect of some of the works that I have examined in this paper is the manner in which they introduce certain metaphors and or heuristics for discussing activities of the security apparatus or terrorist organizations. An example of this has been the debate over the MATRIX database development effort. While I have not up to this point found any evidence that the acronym MATRIX was chosen for the “The Multi-State Anti-TeRrorism Information Exchange” (emphasis and capitalization borrowed from the website for the project) state level database sharing project because of the movie (Krouse 2004; Institute for Intergovernmental Research IIR 2005), certainly the criticism of the project by the ACLU has borrowed from the popularity of the film and the understanding that it has now become a signifier for a number of disparate elements of fear raised by counterterrorist surveillance and database fusion projects. The title of one ACLU report “The MATRIX: Total Information Awareness Reloaded” borrows directly from the title of the second film of the trilogy The Matrix Reloaded (ACLU 2004a, b).

Conclusion:

By examining the thematics at play in works that are emblematic of representations of the dialectics of terrorism and counterterrorism in the 1990s and early 21st century, one can detect momentary spikes in preoccupations with terrorism and counterterrorism. But at a deeper level, the works demonstrate concern with more general themes relating to the policing of the boundaries between enemy and other that apply not only to the “global war on terror” but perhaps reflect the general impact of the legacy of the era of total war and the Cold War. Additionally there is a deep-seated ambivalence in all of these works regarding representations of both agents of the security apparatus, and dissident activities.

Security agents are represented as complex human beings with a range of motivations and willingness to violate their standard operating procedures and code of ethics in pursuit of counterterrorist and counterespionage/subversion missions. The apparatus itself is represented as being characterized by rampant internecine and inter-bureau competition, and directed by networks of elites who are at times as corrupt as enemy terrorist networks, or pose the threat of fascistic enemies within. Dissidents’ (at times labeled “terrorists” by agents of the security apparatus such as in the first Matrix Agent Smith referring to the protagonist/hero Neo’s mentor Morpheus as “a known terrorist) actions including deviance and low-level criminality, attacks on critical infrastructure, and the killing of agents of security apparatus controlled by tyrannical human and in certain instance non-human entities, are not uniformly condemned in these works. In fact violent and criminal tactics of dissent and resistance are at times celebrated, even in the works that have been released, if not produced, following the attacks of 9/11.

In answer to the question that structured this paper, do these shows represent “subversion, commodification of anxiety, or security apparatus recruitment?”; the answer is yes to all three parts of the questions. By definition each of these works exists (or existed) in a capitalist marketplace that has long demonstrated the ability to turn fears into a profit center (Birchall 2002). Yet, some of these works can be regarded as subversive, or at least lending themselves to a reading that subverts a simplistic hyper-nationalist embrace of the security forces’ internal and external activities. In certain instances, especially in the case of The Agency and Alias, the works have been explicitly linked to and used by components of the security apparatus, namely the Central Intelligence Agency, to bolster recruiting efforts. The use of both of these works to change the image of the Agency and enhance its recruitment efforts was part of a CIA perception management project initiated five years before the events of 9/11 (Bernstein 2001), but 9/11 certainly intensified the self-conscious cultivation and nurturing of contact between the culture industry and the intelligence-military-law enforcement community. Despite these efforts to cultivate a positive perception of the US internal security apparatus, there are other works whose intent is to cast internal security agencies as subject to abuses by malevolent agents and forces (such as the critical representation of the DHS in The 4400). In the end, despite the catastrophic effects of 9/11 and the ensuing controversies and violence of the “global war on terror,” American culture is not in lockstep, but reflects the dark complexities of both the domestic and international security environments, and the promise and peril of science and technology, which define the early 21st century.

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Tuesday, May 8, 2007

May 11 - ICP 351 Blog Discussion Question.

Posting Paper Example: CounterTerror Culture (Erickson 2005 APSA Conference Paper)

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