Cop Shows & Althusser's Law (was Re: surplus and other stuff)

[Carrol Cox]

TV shows I should classify as propaganda -- they do not *create*
ideology but speak to and deepen ideologies that must be generated and
regenerated in the realities of daily life. For this reason I tend to
worry far less about the "media" than most on these lists do.

But insofar as TV drama counts, the most vicious of all the cop shows
ever filmed are precisely *Law and Order* and *Homocide* -- I have
watched many episodes of both, and rather enjoyed them, but gradually
their deep viciousness blunted my ability to sit through them and for
several years I have never watched more than about 10 minutes at a time
of either.

They present police work as *complex*; they present cops as *human*;
they show police forces doing nasty things. The message is loud and
clear: Life is terrible ... *not* repression is terrible, *not* the
military occupation of the inner cities is terrrible, *not* the purpose
of the police is to repress you and me, but the purpose of the police
(spoiled often by terribly complex problems and nasty individual
policemen) is to save what little bits of decency is possible within
this horrible world.

Kenneth Burke was wonderful on this (one of the essays in *Philosophy
oif Literary Form* I believe) when he showed that the films which would
most aid militarism were those that showed war as horrible.

Carrol