Good lord! If you don't understand the Keystone Cops, what DO you understand?
The Keystone Cops weren't "cops as fun", they were objects of oppression being portrayed derisively as clowns. They were made for immigrant communities for whom seeing cops in this light was a very liberating experience.
The kind of casual misreading you show in this comment is just what really gets to me. You are damn secure in your high-and-mighty theory you wouldn't know the working class if it came along and bit you in the ass.
> _______
>
> 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'm not talking about "the television shows", I'm talking about SPECIFIC shows: "Homicide" and "Law & Order." Your statement is objectively false when applied to these two shows. BOTH of them have dealt with police violence & corruption, as well as with the repressive nature of the law itself.
But, I guess, if you've got a good enough theory, who needs evidence, right? And that makes you a hero, not a repressor, right?
> 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.
My responmse to this is rather technical: Well, DUH!
> ___________
>
> 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.
See above. I don't watch "television." I watch SPECIFIC shows. The shows I watch EMPASIZE 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.
Ah, now why am I not the least bit surprised with this elitist crie de couer?
So, in other words, you freely admit that you have NO idea what you're talking about.
> 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.
I guess this means that you've never heard of "The X-Files," either.
> _______
>
> 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.
"television" again. For umpteenth time, I'm not talking about television. I'm talking about SPECIFIC shows.
Do these shows DWELL on the institutional function of the police as oppressors? No, of course not. Do they BRING IT UP from time to time, in a dramatically compelling manner, as opposed to clumsily shoving it down peoples throats as your commisarrship would prefer? YES, definitely.
> _________
> 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.
Everything supports your point, Charles. That's because you're utterly impervious to evidence.
> Character depth in tv cops overemphasizes their humanity
> as compared with real life.
It's called DRAMA, Charles. You should read this guy Aristotle, he'll clue you in. I think he writes for the Star.
> Sure they are human in real life, but they are also
> the complete opposite of human.
Human IS the complete opposite of human.
> They are the teeth in the repressive apparatus of the
> bourgeois state.
And, of course, using that formula, we just KNOW what riviting TV *YOU* would make!
Bad revolutionary art, God SAVE me from it!
> So, television portrayls of cops are misleading
> and brainwashings. That seems complex, not simple.
In short, your mind is made up, don't confuse you with the facts.
I hear ya, boss!
-- Paul Rosenberg Reason and Democracy rad at gte.net
"Let's put the information BACK into the information age!"