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

[Michael Hoover]

> Paul Rosenberg wrote:
> >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.)
> 
> Cop shows interpellate us not by making cops lovable but by askig us to
> frame our questions in terms of 'innocence' and 'guilt.' This is so even
> when these terms are 'deconstructed' by plots, characters, acting, dialog,
> etc.
> Yoshie

certain *political* ambiguities are possible on commercial tv...where 
there are two acknowledged 'sides', a narrative may take neither, 
leaving choice between indeterminate...some episodes of _Homicide_ have 
had protagonists discuss intersection of race and class as insoluble 
'American dilemma'...commerical tv can contain such didactic exchanges, 
it may sometimes require them as substitute for sustained narrative 
suspense its fragmented segments never develop...

interesting, too, that celebrated Emmy-winning two-part episode
of _Homicide_ was a paean to 'law and order' and to the effort
of those who pursue it on our behalf,...episode was about an 
interrogation of a suspect who 'walked' in the end...failure of 
police here symbolized their humanity, after all, no one is perfect, 
especially when forced to endure 'life on the street'...story
conveys that cops don't always succeed but as one detective
remarked, 'the great thing about being in Homicide is that there's
always more of them'...this is inverted version of Hollywood 
realism, realized in gritty urban look...yes, episodes
of _Homicide_ have confronted US apartheid, but 'good guys'
remain on one side of the interrogation table and 'bad guys'
are on the other...Michael Hoover