Cop Shows & Althusser's Law (was Re: surplusandotherstuff)

Paul Henry Rosenberg rad at gte.net
Wed Feb 3 12:31:25 PST 1999


Good old SnitgrrRl sure did a lot to clear things up, IMHO. So much so that, rather than respond to her, I want to hone in on what it loosened up in the way of a response from Charles.

Charles Brown wrote:


> Prof.K
> Then why were you complaining about social science research? It
> made no sense since Paul wasn't calling for a survey and I don't
> think he was disputing your claim that cops are disprop represented.
> Why do you elide the argument in this way?
>
> Charles I wasn't complaining about social science research. I
> was claiming that my social scientific research is very good and
> Paul's claims that I was overgeneralizing were inaccurate.

I'm glad you're into translating yourself, Charles, cause what you said sounded nothing at all like this to me.

But what you're doing isn't social science research, and so I guess this was the point of your pre-emptive attack on social science research, to legitimize your claim that your everyday observation -- and overgeneralization -- constitute social science.


> That I have a good social scientific generalization and the exceptions
> he mentions do not refute my facts.

How MANY ways is this sentence wrong, I wonder? One doesn't refute facts, but arguments. You didn't HAVE any facts in the first place, but overbroad generalizations, which I challenged. What's more, my exceptions undermine your generalizations precisely because of the rigidity and dogmatism inherent in your articulation of them -- a sure sign that your generalizations were NOT good.


> >Charles: I didn't dismiss all social science research. I would
> >dismiss some though. We have to be picky about it, critical
> >so to speak. For example, I don't need a survey to tell me
> >that there are a disproportionate number of cop shows as compared
> >with other occupations.
>
> Prof.K
> But Charles, was this the point? There was no discussion about this at
> all, but you tried to turn it into that discussion eliding any sort of
> engagement with Paul. Paul wanted to discuss the specificity of Law and
> Order asking how it works in more complex ways than earlier variants of the
> cop show genre. I think he's trying to examine how hegemony works in a
> more sophisticated way than those who embrace more conventional notions of
> ideology seem to think it does. Hegemony works by opening sites of
> resistance that can be elaborated and extended through political commentary
> of the sort Paul's been trying to engage in. Or maybe not. But going on
> to complain that TeeVee fails to represent the working class, that
> *wasn't* the point and it's much too simple a concern.

And, I would add (in view of what's to come) that this whole more complex process is what it's all about, not the social survey average of all cop shows -- though I don't deny for a minute the value of, for example, George Gerbner's work looking at who kills who on tv, for example. The point is, one must have both, and the value of the survey stuff lies in it being prescise, rather than impressionistic, so that you can use it in tandem with very specific analyses.


> Prof.K
> No cops aren't like steelworkers in the kind of work they do
> or who they do it for and who/what they 'work' on. My point
> is that people have, for quite a long time, seen cops as workers.
> After all, aren't the Irish associated with the occupation. Why
> is that? I'm sure you know the history of the Irish, right? There
> is a reason that cops are recruited from the ranks of the working
> class right?
>
> Charles: Now you are starting to catch on. Practical-critical
> thinking. Why are cops recruited from the ranks of the working
> class ? Why are most of the members of the armed forces from the
> working class ? How is it that the working class is convinced to
> be its own oppressor, to self-repress, to subject itself, to
> subjection ?

Here's my problem with Charles in style/substance nutshell. As if Kelly were an unwashed neophyte experiencing her FIRST REAL THOUGHT.

Reality check: Most of what you've been saying Charles is OLD. That doesn't mean I think that it's all wrong. Some of it is quite sound. But I don't go around saying my multiplication tables all day. Especially when confronted with a problem that screams out "GROUP THEORY!"

Your point about MOST cop shows was, to my mind, as true and trivial as the multiplication tables. But NOBODY watches most cop shows. They all watch SPECIFIC ones. It's as if you've got the drum track down and you think you've got the whole song. What's more, the meanings have ALWAYS been far more complex than you allow for -- just one of the reasons I referred to an oldie like The Keystone Kops -- which you STILL don't seem to understand.

Ooops! I forgot about this one!


> Prof.K: ...
> ...<SNIP>...
>
> BUT, the representation of this working classness is more
> complex than this. For ex, there is always a cop--sometimes
> the genre encourages us to sneer at him, sometimes identify--who
> exhibits working class mobility, typically signfied by his
> threads. Jimmy Smits character comes to mind here as a
> character who dresses really well, while his partner looks
> like he shops at Sears what with those square pocketed polyester
> slacks and short sleeved shirts and all. And the ties!!
> Accck! The ties. Paul, what say you about the ties?

You're SoooO right about the ties, Kelly. I stopped watching NYPD Blue on account of the ties.

(Now, Charles, please decode that last remark of mine. How many levels of ambiguity and irony are warring with each other?)


> Now, as for Paul's concerns I think he's right to want to
> examine the ways in which the show works against the genre
> rules, to look at the places where people might grasp different
> interpretations that might *might* lead to some sort of critical
> examination. I frankly don't think people do this as much as
> Paul would like,

Hey, Snit, I KNOW that people don't do this NEARLY as much as I would like.


> but then teaching Media and Society can be pretty depressing
> given that attitudes polarize in terms of two postures:
> 1} Oh why can't I just watch and enjoy? Leave me alone. I
> don't want to be critical or 2} Everything's a big lie, a
> Grand Conspiracy, so who cares. Let me watch and not believe
> anything. I don't want to be critical in any sophisticated
> way. Attitude 1 is more typical of upper middle class
> students which I think is pretty interesting. BOTH attitudes
> lead to and reinscribe the desire not to have to think.

I'm with you 100%, Kelly. I hear this all the time from my sister about her students in similar situations. I know she does not lie.


> >Charles: Yes, this is ok, but it is still an accurate
> >generalization that cops' status as the teeth in the
> >repressive apparatus of the state is not at all featured
> >for any of the audiences.
>
> Prof.K
> But my point is: why on earth should you expect this to be
> the case. And frankly I do think that L&O addresses this at
> least a wee bit. But the maneuvers they make aren't altogether
> different than the contradictions I described above about working
> classness, good cop/bad cop, lone hero v. corrupt society/corrupt
> organizations
>
> Charles: Did I say I expected this to be the case ? I said the
> revolution will not be televised. Paul is the one who seems to
> be seeing profound and inciting political critiques on television
> shows.

There's no doubt that the revolution will not be televised. This is a perfect example of Charles uttering an old truth that everyone here knows only too well. I'm also quite sure that none of the producers of the shows we're talking about would think of themselves as revolutionaries. That's not the point. The point is that media works in ways that are far more comlicated than your paint-by-numbers approach allows.

I don't look to television for profundity (well, maybe on *The Simpsons*) or inciting critiques (I mean, I remember watching "Politically Incorrect" one night, and Alexandra Paul and some supermodel were far and away the heavyweights). That wasn't my point. Unless, of course, you mean an incitement to think, to question. This I DO think that both *Homicide* and *Law & Order* do, and I'd be happy to look at how they do this, or fail to.

I think Kelly is quite right that some of what I'm pointing to is common to cops shows in general (especially nowadays, when no one buys all-good or all-evil representations in this context). But I also think that these shows do something more. There are reasons that I like "Homicide" and "Law & Order" which have to do with many things -- writing, acting, casting, cinematography (mush moreso on *Homicide*), but also politics, even though mine are certainly well to the left of these shows.

Still, what I find in viewing them does not disgust me politically, and often interests me in terms of exploring how certain things can be talked about in this kind of commercial public discourse.

Finally, in another post Charles wrote:


> I move that "Homicide" and "Law and Order" be designated
> culturally revolutionary exceptions to the general dismal
> political fare of the tv copsnrobbers genre, and any others
> that Paul Rosenberg has investigated closely empirically
> and so informs us.

This kind of binarism really won't go in this day & age, Charles. You oughtta know better. 'Sides, I never claimed they were culturally revolutionary. A good deal of what's interesting in discussing them is precisely the fact that they ARE dependent on the genre which they in some ways critique. Walling them off as exceptions automatically flattens everything out -- both in the 'exceptions' and 'the rule.' Actually, it does more than that -- it makes the exceptions downright unintelligible. You can't possibly make sense of them EXCEPT in a larger context. This is, like, elementary, dear Watkins.

-- Paul Rosenberg Reason and Democracy rad at gte.net

"Let's put the information BACK into the information age!"



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