>>> Paul Henry Rosenberg <rad at gte.net> 01/25 1:49 PM >>>
Charles Brown wrote:
> I'm on page 80. I'm a presenter on the Althusser chapter,
> nice since he seems to be bringing in the law with the
> turning-to-the-cop-when-he -calls issue, which seems to
> be THE LAW. What I thought of last nite , when I saw that
> Arsenio Hall is now a tv cop, is that tv and movies have
> always been heavily disproportionally cop shows, since
> cowboys sheriffs and Dragnet. Don't you think that
> cops as heroes/oppressors is Judy's subjection of us ?
> Television, which I call Big Brother that we watch instead
> of BB watching us, is a main site of subjection. Think of
> how many cop shows there are, where they make cops such
> lovable people ? Ain't that Judy ? Cops, the very teeth
> of the repressive apparatus of the state, the Force in the
> Power, are like our best friends and selves in the American
> mind control machine.
Paul: Just because a program has cops as protagonists doesn't really say much. (Remember "Car 54, Where Are You"?)
Charles; Yes, and The Keystone Cops. I don't quite follow you, because funny cops makes my point even better than serious cops. Cops are fun is really the opposite of cops as repressors. _______
Paul: For one thing, back in the real world, there's a difference between cop as person and the police as state power.
For another, oppressed communities are often quite hungry for effective, honest law enforcement. It's not a revolutionary demand, perhaps, but then their own physical safety does have a legitimate place in the scheme of things, don't you think? ________
Charles: Yes, I do, and you seem to be missing the point that I am calling this contradictory. Cops are both repressors and heroes to people who live in a crime ridden society. The televisions shows only portray them as oneside of the contradiction, as heroes. I assume Judith Butler is analyzing a contradiction too. The first sentence of her book is "As a form of power, subjection is paradoxical." You know, dialectics, contradictions. Cops are repressor/heroes. ___________
Paul Then there's the passage in "The Drum Major Instinct" where King talks about his conversations with his white jailers -- not beat cops, but surely part of the same apparatus -- and his assertion of their common class position, telling them that they should be marching with him, considering how poor and exploited they were.
All of this is to say that whether or not the police function solely as means of oppression is something to be questioned and contested. TV programs can gloss over this, they can celebrate oppression in the name of justice, or they can open up these kinds of questions, etc. _______
Charles: See above. Television emphasizes one part of the contradiction. _________ Paul Now, I don't spend all my TV time watching "Buffy, The Vampire Slayer." When it comes to TV dramas, the top of my list is cop shows: "Homicide, Life on the Street" and "Law & Order". Both shows DO consistently question the nature of law, justice, morality, power, and their own roles, as well as that of the system they serve. (William Kunstler even appeared as himself on "Law & Order" about a year before he died.) _______
Charles: Actually, I don't watch tv much these days, because it makes me sick and it feels good to pull the electrodes out of my head. But over the years, it seems there are much more shows in which cops are heroes and likable than shows that raise questions about the state. _______
Paul: I wouldn't call either of them revolutionary, but they are thoughtful, disturbing and illuminating -- as well being consistently well-written and well-acted.
In contrast to them, you have the total moral/intellectual collapse of Steven Bochco, whose work in the 90s (except for Murder One) I find unwatchable.
If you compare what's going on in Bocho's work vs. "Homicide" and "Law & Order" the differences are overwhelming. They don't have any lovable racist cops, I can tell you straight out. In fact, "Homicide" just had an really excellent show that really got into deconstructing and problemtizing racial/ethnic identity. They do have an old-line Irish cop who's got his prejudices, but he's used in a way that's light years removed from NYPD Blue Land. That show was not the first time he was used to pry at the relationships between racism, prejudice, bias, professional experience, etc. There was no hint of his prejudice being accepted or forgiven. ________
Charles: yes, this seems to be consistent with what I am saying. Television does not portray cops as repressors, when in reality that is the function of the police as an institution, regardless of the personalities of the individual cops. _________ Paul: And, of course, NYPD Blue has just one black in the regular cast, who is a total cypher. "Homicide" just lost Andre Braugher (best TV actor of the 90s) this year, but it gained another great black protagonist, whose given incredible material to work with.
In short, the meaning of cop shows can't be written off so simplistically. I think that, as a GENERAL phenomenon, it can be pointed to in terms of the issues that obsess us, but NOT in terms of the attitudes expressed toward those issues, or the ideologies embedded in them. That requires a case-by-case examination. ________
Charles: I don't follow you. Everything you are saying supports my point. Character depth in tv cops overemphasizes their humanity as compared with real life. Sure they are human in real life, but they are also the complete opposite of human. They are the teeth in the repressive apparatus of the bourgeois state. So, television portrayls of cops are misleading and brainwashings. That seems complex, not simple.
Charles Brown --