> From: Louis N Proyect <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> > Subject: [PEN-L:11959] Re: Big mouth > The biggest problem with "Law and Order" is that poverty as a causal > explanation of crime is simply absent from the show. All of the gangsters, . . . You could take that two ways. You could take it to mean poor people are no less moral than anybody else, that crime is a choice, not an environmentally-instilled, irresistible impulse. > . . . > The homeless man, as it turns out, spent a semester at Bard College, my > alma mater. He was a dance major from an impoverished single-mother Harlem > family. He was also a schizophrenic whose illness manifested itself for > the first time after he came to Bard. After a few hospitalizations, the > social safety net began to unravel and this young man found himself on > the streets. The cops and DA's on Law and Order are incapable of > addressing this reality and the show's writers never present credible > characters who can. I know people like this myself and it's not an easy thing for anybody to address. The afflicted have sufficient faculties to refuse care that is good for them and society and the legal rights to enforce such a refusal. Often the only thing they will let you do is give them money to piss away. > I don't think there can be a "liberal" cop show. This is a contradiction > in terms. American society is in a fairly deep crisis and the police are > functioning more and more like occupation troops in communities where > injustice cuts deepest. Police brutality simply does not exist on NYPD, > Homicide, or Law and Order, etc. When Jerry Orbach grabs a guy by the In the climactic final episode of this past season (maybe the penultimate one, can't remember), a member of the Homicide squad executes a drug dealer after one of the other cops has beaten him to a pulp. The two cops plus an additional one all cover for each other. Another cop on Homicide (Bayliss) who is relatively unstable also frequently loses his temper on suspects. And of course, in "the box" the Homicide detectives routinely subject suspects to all manner of mental/emotional abuse to extract confessions. Finally, the higher-ups in the police bureaucracy in Homicide are some of the most evil shits you can find on tv. > collar and tells him, "You better tell me what I'm looking for or > else...", this is about as far as the show will ever go. But this will not > disturb the liberal yuppie enjoying his or her TV show. What will disturb > them is the sight of two cops holding a black man down while a third > sticks a toilet plunger up his ass. This is real life and will not appear > on "Law and Order". Like I said in my previous post, count on it. It'll be there. I don't know when cop shows started to depart from the squeaky-clean 'Dragnet' or 'FBI' model, but for some time police forces have been portrayed as including a generous share of crooks, murderers, lunatics, and assorted creeps. It's true you don't get much marxist analysis. As Harry said, the fallability of individuals underscores the legitimacy of the system, so it is a form of propaganda, notwithstanding the fact that everybody here seems to have some familiarity with the material that goes beyond social-scientific investigation. MBS =================================================== Max B. Sawicky Economic Policy Institute [EMAIL PROTECTED] 1660 L Street, NW 202-775-8810 (voice) Ste. 1200 202-775-0819 (fax) Washington, DC 20036 http://epn.org/sawicky Opinions above do not necessarily reflect the views of anyone associated with the Economic Policy Institute other than this writer. ===================================================
