the timboucher experience

A few days ago, I tuned into some reruns of cop shows from the 70’s. One was an episode of The Streets of San Francisco, with a young Michael Douglas, and the other was an episode of Hawaii Five-O, called “Paniolo.” Somehow, growing up, I’d missed out more or less on both of these shows, so it was nice to catch them on some weird local tv station.

The thing that really struck me though was how drastically different they both were from contemporary cop shows - especially the Hawaii Five-O episode. I’m not sure if they were all like this, but the episode centered around an old man who owned a ranch who accidentally killed a real estate agent who was trying to muscle him out of his land. The man didn’t intend to kill the agent, but when it happened, he went to great lengths to cover it up. They actually painted him as not just some monstrous mindless killer, but he was somebody you could sympathize with, even though he made mistakes. You could easily understand his side of the equation. And the portrayal of the cops was much more in the background and neutral. The show was about the man and what he’d done and the consequences of how his life changed as a result.

It was just so much more subtle and full than these bullshit cop shows I catch a couple minutes of here and there on primetime tv. These modern shows I can barely sit though. So much fucking empty moralizing and bombast - they just infuriate me. And it’s always about the police and how great police are; and the cops are never just doing their job - acting as a neutral force of justice. The criminals are never addressed as though they were real people with real circumstances which lead them to their crimes. It’s always just some unequivocal bad guy/cartoon villain - like a guy who kidnaps little girls and sodomizes their dead bodies. I mean, there’s pretty much no possible sympathizing with the criminals on these shows. If they aren’t outright evil, then they’re just stupid.

The difference between the two styles of cop show, then and now, seems to cut right to the heart of whatever changes have taken place in our culture over the last generation. No longer are criminals people with motivations and rights. They are cartoon terrorists who “hate freedom” and want to rape children and who need to be locked away in the deepest darkest hole you can find. Philip K. Dick wrote some 27 years ago:

Sometimes when I watch my eleven-year-old daughter watch TV, I wonder what she is being taught. The problem of miscuing; consider that. A TV program produced for adults is viewed by a small child. Half of what is said and done in the TV drama is probably misunderstood by the child. Maybe it’s all misunderstood. And the thing is, Just how authentic is the information anyhow, even if the child correctly understood it? What is the relationship between the average TV situation comedy to reality? What about the cop shows? Cars are continually swerving out of control, crashing, and catching fire. The police are always good and they always win. Do not ignore that point: The police always win. What a lesson that is. You should not fight authority, and even if you do, you will lose. The message here is, Be passive. And—cooperate. If Officer Baretta asks you for information, give it to him, because Officer Beratta is a good man and to be trusted. He loves you, and you should love him.

And the fucked up part is he saw that trend as insidious way back when we only had cop shows like Hawaii Five-O. How much worse is it now, the messages which are being sent to us, and how much worse will it get? My bet: much much worse. And that just means we need to fight all the harder to put out other stories which counteract the insanity of the garbage being pumped into the homes, hearts and minds of people everywhere.

• There is a Policeman Inside Our Heads
• Hidden Symbols in the Da Vinci Code Movie
• Law & Order
• The American Dream
• Picture pages