Fifth Global Conference

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Session 9a: Narrative Reflections on Evil, Crime & Solidarity
Chair: Diana Medlicott

Jack Be Evil, Jack Be Quick: Reflections on the Necessary Evils of "24"
Theodore A. Turnau, III
Charles University, Prague, Czech Republic

In September 2001, searching for a show to replace the popular “X-Files,” America's Fox Network launched “24,” a show about counter-terrorist agent Jack Bauer and his quest to save a presidential candidate from assassination. Though it struggled in the ratings, it garnered critical praise, and several awards. Jack Bauer was portrayed as a proficient, inventive, at times ruthless operative who only wanted to protect his family. He got the job done despite impossible odds. In season 2 (taped after the September 11 tragedy), the show started to explore ominous ethical questions, and showed a dark side to Jack's personality (that had already been uncovered toward the end of season 1). This ethical exploration subtly made the case for the necessity of evil in the pursuit of good (in this case, preventing a nuclear bomb from detonating in Los Angeles ). This paper explores the ethical world of Jack Bauer, a world devoid of any overarching religious or moral framework, save protecting his family, protecting one's own. Lacking the ethical restraint provided by such frameworks, the question is: how bad can the hero become and still be the “good guy.” There are interesting parallels between Jack and a post-9/11 America (both have suffered losses, both are now in a reactive mode, feeling the need to think and act quickly). I will argue that in this way, “24” gave Americans a sentimental education in necessary evil, that is, they were being prepared to accept the unacceptable.

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The Cultural Work of the Popular Literary Genre True Crime in America
Jean Murley
City University of New York, Graduate Center, New York, USA

This paper examines the cultural work of the popular literary genre True Crime in America through a close reading of Helter Skelter, Vincent Bugliosi's 1973 text about the Charles Manson Family murders in Southern California . True Crime as a non-fiction genre is defined by conventions of a narrator who is both an objective reporter and an ‘insider' with special knowledge about the killer and the crime, a sense of simultaneous distance from and identification with the killer(s), the seamless blending of aspects of fiction and non-fiction, a four-part narrative structure of murder-pursuit-trial-execution, a preoccupation with the killer-victim relationship, the portrayal of murder in a social context, and an overriding sense of the inevitability of evil. True Crime is one of the only public sites in American life where the term ‘evil' is used without irony or self-consciousness. Helter Skelter is a seminal text within the formation of the genre, both for the way it coalesced these conventions and for its reinvigoration of the rhetoric of evil.
A confluence of cultural elements during the 1960s and 70s gave rise to True Crime, and in its pages, writers wrestled with the fears and tensions of the age. A steep and rapid rise in American murder rates and in the category of ‘stranger killings,' the phenomenon of the ‘high-profile murder,' the great social, economic, and physical mobility created by the post-war economic boom and a rapidly growing car-culture, and the rapid social changes of the 1960s and 70s were elements of the culture which writers of True Crime attempted to both highlight and contain. True Crime heralded a return to the use of a rhetoric of evil, thereby reinvesting that rhetoric with new meanings within popular culture. This paper examines the rise of True Crime through Helter Skelter , a text which brought together the sociological and narrative elements which would define this literary genre in years to follow.

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Censorship and Narrative Shift in the Tale of Paul Bernardo
Dianne George
Department of Law, Carleton University, Canada

In 1993, Paul Bernardo was charged with the murders, abductions and sexual assaults of two girls, Kristin French, 16 years old, and Leslie Mahaffey, 15 years old. Bernardo was subsequently convicted for these two murders but was known to be the Scarborough rapist who had viciously assaulted many young women in the Toronto area over several years previous to the murders. His wife, Karla Homulka, was convicted for her part in the murders but given a reduced sentence for providing evidence for the Crown's case.
Needless to say, this case was the most sensational case ever heard in Canada , but became even more notorious because the lawyer representing Paul Bernardo, during the course of the legal proceedings, revealed that Bernardo had directed him to find video recordings of the sexual assaults inflicted upon the two young women. A furore arose over the publication of the videotapes. The parents immediately moved to have a publication ban and the media responded with the argument for freedom of the press. The parents won this battle at the beginning of the trial and a permanent publication ban has remained in effect prohibiting any publication of any parts of the videos or material known only from them.
What makes this confrontation between the media at the time and any subsequent attempts to make public anything related to the videos is the level of public response to the arguments made by the mothers of the murdered children. Debbie Mahaffey has remained vigilant. At each subsequent attempt to publish anything that could be known from the videos, especially on the internet, she has rallied Mrs. French and other family members and has appealed directly to the public not to buy or read or watch any depictions of the assaults or murders. In 2002 a book was published about Homulka and a direct appeal was made through a press conference held by the mothers asking the public not to read it and not to look at the website. 94 charges were laid against the author in 2003. My contention is that the legal remedy is not nearly as effective in turning the public away from the consumption of the material as the request by the mothers.
In analysing the place of this story in the public consciousness, I shall compare two narratives: the first one I call the thriller narrative and second one is the mothers' narrative. I shall rely upon Bruno Latour and Richard Rorty for their discussions of narrative shift and for Richard Rorty for a theoretical construct of sentimentality and solidarity and a tip of the hat to David Hume who started all this way of thinking with his theory of sympathy.