I don’t have cable. So fortunately or unfortunately, I don’t have a lot of options when it comes to watching tv. My options are further limited by my distaste for the cop/doctor/lawyer genre of television shows. Between that and the goddamned reality tv phenomenon, there is precious little that I’m willing to watch anymore.
The thing is, I know my tastes aren’t typical in this area of entertainment. The simple fact that there’s almost nothing else on primetime tv except for cop/doctor/lawyer shows (especially cop/lawyer) tells me one of two things: (1) television viewers are actually interested in it, or (2) television producers think they can make money off it. Both of these obviously feed into one another in a closed loop. When I watch shows like this though, I feel something funny happening in my brain. The mythic-symbolic part of my brain recognizes that there is a third and perhaps hidden purpose to these shows: education - or if you want to be spooky about it, indoctrination.
If there’s any truth to that though, we ought to be able to identify at least what is being taught on a cultural level - even if we can’t necessarily pin down who is doing the teaching. Now, most people are too caught up in the cultural language and paradigms which they exist in. It’s almost like air. You can’t see it, but it surrounds and permeates you, and you need it in order to survive. On a different level, the same thing can happen with us culturally. So the best starting point might be to take a step backwards in time or to take a step outside of what you consider your culture, so that we’re confronted with language and values which are at least slightly foreign to us.
Have you ever watched any of the old public service messages from the 1950’s? These are often really weird to watch. Usually designed to be shown in schools, these short films teach lessons about personal hygiene, social decorum, and information about what to do in the event of atomic war. If you’ve ever watched any of these films, you’ve likely been struck by their overt, heavy-handed nature. They pulled no punches in explaining that women ought to stay in the home and that communists were pure evil. To us, they seem more like propaganda, but to people of the time, I’d wager that they were more or less invisible. It seemed just as natural and normal a part of culture as anything.
I saw a more recent example of the same thing at work while watching a Christian talk show the other day. The show was a take-off on the ABC women’s talkshow, The View - except it was pitched towards a Christian family-values audience. Now, I’ve not spent much of any time watching The View, or similar shows, but I’m comfortable enough in mainstream culture to know immediately when somebody is trying to pass off a low-quality forgery of it. What I mean by that is, when you hear a song on the radio, or see a show on television, are you able to know (or suspect) within mere seconds that it’s actually a Christian song in disguise? For the most part, I usually can. There’s usually something decidedly different about the production qualities of it that gives it away, even when they aren’t actually talking about Jesus.
In any event, on this Christian women’s talk show, an author was being interviewed who’d written a book about “the secrets of men,” or something silly like that. It was supposed to be an insider view for women to decode the mysteries of the male species, and was allegedly composed of hundreds of interviews the author did with real men. The so-called secrets this woman uncovered though sounded suspiciously exactly like Old Testament Bible values! If you weren’t paying attention to it, it didn’t sound like much of anything - just stupid advice for women, that may or may not be accurate. But if you listened to it with an ear to the underlying message they were teaching, it basically consisted of the following core components:
1) Honor and respect your husband
2) Perform your wifely duties (ie, sex)
It was essentially a cleverly disguised translation of something like the role of women as prescibed in the Book of Leviticus, or elsewhere. Except, the Christian media is smart enough to know that they’ll reach a wider audience if they dress up those values in more culturally relevant symbols, terminology and media language. Except, since I’m not a member of their target audience (married Christian women), the carefullly concocted media barrage failed. I don’t recognize or respond to the symbols they were using, and therefore the underlying core message was made painfully obvious.
Thinking along these lines though made me wonder: what am I being taught covertly in other media without realizing it? Chances are, if you can put your finger on it, then they aren’t doing a successful job of teaching it. I’d imagine that the most effective indoctrination is the type that you’re not even aware of. As I said above: it’s like air. It’s all around you; you breathe it in automatically without ever noticing.
Maybe that’s actually my problem with the cop/doctor/lawyer genre of entertainment. Either that I fall outside of the demographic which responds to the cultural symbols, language, artifacts and scenarios they are using, or I’m accidentally aware of the messages, which thus ruins their effectiveness, as well as the emotional enjoyment of the shows (simply because I feel as though I’m being manipulated).
So what are these hidden messages being transmitted to the masses via these shows? I tackled this a while back in an article comparing old school cop dramas with modern ones. From that piece:
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.
Aside from that social control aspect though, perhaps there’s more to it. Maybe there’s something even more subtle at play here. In particular, I want to look at shows about forensics, and courtroom shows. Again, I don’t watch tons of these things, but every once in a while I’ll catch an episode of some CSI spinoff or Law & Order - nevermind all the commercials for seemingly inane shows like Bones.
In general, I would hazard a guess that the real purpose of shows about crime and justice has to do with social modeling. What I mean by that is that these shows aren’t about criminal activity, but about determining appropriate and inappropriate behaviors within society. Once upon a time, humans were taught such things by religious organizations. But nowadays, many people don’t belong to one, or if they do the values of their religious group may contrast (slightly or sharply) with the culture at large. Television and media in general then becomes a vehicle to fill in the gaps and provide people with a common context culturally.
I’d be interested in starting a more lengthy discussion on what court and cop shows teach (along with doctor and reality shows), so here’s a possible starting point. I’m not saying this is the singular message of these shows, but it’s one possible interpretation of the purpose they serve culturally. Cop shows focus on the investigation of people and events. And law shows focus on the interpretation of people and events. Things happen. We could call them crimes or simply events. Crimes are a type of event which have a formal set of concepts attached to it. We have perpetrators, victims, and witnesses. We also have a crime scene, a trail of evidence, eyewitness testimony, a modus operandi, motivation, and a slew of other terms.
A crime, generally, could be defined as an event in which an individual somehow diminishes the property or life-force of another individual. Thus it deals with person-to-person conflicts, and social interaction is heavily defined by ritual behavior and language. For example, when you meet somebody you shake hands, and say: “Nice to meet you,” etc. Rituals help smooth over situations by presenting a fairly standardized way of acting. In addition to the person-to-person nature of criminal social interaction, we have the added formal/ritual interaction of the state. The state itself is nothing if not a formal/ritual entity governed by a system of rules and offices. The way that a rule-based entity relates to and understands regular human interaction is by applying a set of rules and rituals.
So what happens is that when the normal low-level person-to-person rituals of every day life break down during the commission of a crime, in order to restore balance, the state comes in and injects a much heavier dose of more highly-stylized ritual, complete with “priests” (in the form of cops, lawyers, judges, etc), and “churches” or sacred spaces (jails, court rooms, etc). In these proceedings, each person is assigned a ritual role, so that they know exactly what is expected of them socially. This is a counter-point to a crime, in which roles have been violated or made unclear.
Ordinarily, we’re taught that police investigate crimes in order to find out “what really happened.” But perhaps this is really on a secondary part of their investigation. What I mean by that is that there will be more than one story about what happened in a crime (or any event, really). The police will create one narrative. The witnesses each have their own take on it. The criminals and victims see things very differently. The district attorney or public defender also create their own narrative, as do the private defense lawyers. The courtroom proceedings are an analysis and comparison of these many layers of stories. And in the end, the winning story is not necessarily the “Right” or “True” story, but it is simply the story that has been decided to be true (or not true, as the case may be). The judge and/or jury’s purpose is to sift through all these stories and choose which one will stand on a formalized social level, and what the ritualized response to that story is to be.
To me, crime drama in its many variations is essentially an encoded message about what’s called the Social Construction of Reality (or social constructionism):
Social constructionism is a school of thought introduced into sociology by Peter L. Berger and Thomas Luckmann with their 1966 book, The Social Construction of Reality. The focus of social constructionism is to uncover the ways in which individuals and groups participate in the creation of their perceived reality. As an approach, it involves looking at the ways social phenomena are created, institutionalized, and made into tradition by humans. Socially constructed reality is seen as an ongoing, dynamic process; reality is re-produced by people acting on their interpretations and their knowledge of it. Social constructionism is dialectically opposed to essentialism, the belief that there are defining transhistorical essences independent of conscious beings that determine the categorical structure of reality.
Within social constructionist thought, a social construction, or social construct, is an idea which may appear to be natural and obvious to those who accept it, but in reality is an invention or artifact of a particular culture or society. The implication is that social constructs are in some sense human choices rather than laws resulting from divine will or nature.
The closing line about human choice above divine will is I think the most important to our current discussion. Viewed in this light, these shows take on an entirely different quality. They don’t seem quite so nefarious as social control mechanisms, but may actually offer people an interesting and potentially worthwhile approach to understanding the choices that we make in our individual lives, and that we make culturally. But then, this is just one man’s opinion. I open it up to you, ladies and gentlemen of the jury to determine the truthfulness of what I’m saying, and to make a ruling on the very nature of reality itself.
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32 Comments
Though your update certainly merits a lengthy discussion, I’m about to head off to work so I’ll simply ask a question. Are you into any tv-shows at all outside of the cop/lawyer/doctor genre? I ask only because there are and have been some excellent series with depth and lasting-resonance that don’t in any way seem manipulative or like they simply exist to target a specific demographic. ie; Buffy, Lost, Futurama, BSG-75, etc.
Hi Tim, great site!
I would distinguish between crimes against people and crimes against morality. Robberies, murders, burglaries, etc. involve one person causing harm to another. Illegal drug use, gambling, prostitution, consensual sex between cousins involve people unintentionally offending the sensibilities of third parties.
I see the criminal law mainly as an instrument for diffusing the vengeance impulse, which I think is a basic part of humanity. Punishment by society, when performed according to “law,” allows the aggrieved to feel he has received “justice.” Without such a system we would have Sicily, with its organized crime and hundreds of years of vengeance killings. The first line in The Godfather, spoken by Bonasera the undertaker, is “I believe in America.” But then the undertaker goes on to explain how the American legal system failed his family, and asks the Don for “justice.” Meaning vengeance. Of course the Don’s whole currency is in providing justice to those who can’t get it, which is why many find the character so admirable, even given his “evil” methods. He is the defender of our most basic human values.
So, I suspect cop shows premised on interpersonal crime are intended to work up the audience by offending their notion of justice, and then to release them through a satisfying vengeance taken on the criminal. I don’t think a cop show about busting bookies or prostitutes would do very well because the enforcement of arbitrary rules isn’t as compelling as the perceived vindication of system that is a core part of our nature. For the same reason I don’t see those shows as educational or indoctrinational (?!) so much as they reflect back on us our innate sense of justice.
I agree that there is a lot of ritual in law enforcement and prosecution, and that often the essential truth about what happened remains undiscovered. I would just say that maybe the purpose of the criminal law is not to find the truth, but to maintain social order - and not so much by jailing the criminals as convincing those who are wronged that they have received justice and can forego the vengeance to which they are entitled.
Paul
Hey Paul, thanks for stopping by. This is a really interesting area, I think. Both in regards to entertainment & media, and legal philosophy, which I’d definitely like to get a more in-depth perspective on.
I think that’s a great distinction you made about crimes against people versus crimes that break arbitrary rules. It seems like a funny idea for a tv show to have a cop drama about the type of law enforcement that people universally hate - such as meter maids, IRS officers, copyright lawyers, or something like that. Seems like it would offer a lot of hilarious twists on the old cliches of justice dramas.
Yeah, I’ve been watching a lot of the old Clint Eastwood westerns lately, and I think this applies typically to his characters as well. He comes into a town which is either completely lawless or which in regular people have no recourse to vengeance. He then comes in and sets things back into some semblance of balance. Also just saw Batman Begins (again) and vigilante/superheroes obviously play into this issue as well.
Also a great point, which I didn’t touch on so much but should have done specifically - about the sort of diffusion of feelings of vengeance through the legal system. Since people are not usually allowed direct revenge, they undergo an elaborate ritual to enable them to feel avenged.
Thinking about that, it’s interesting to me about when people say the justice system is “broken”. Maybe part of what they mean is that it doesn’t effectively enough assuage people’s natural feelings of vengeance. In other words, it’s the ritual that’s broken rather than the actual justice system. I wonder if beyond simply just punishing criminals and compensating people somehow for losses, if the legal system would benefit from looking more at the feelings of people involved, and how to channel them more effectively into the appropriate social response.
A good example of what I mean: a friend of mine works as some kind of civil lawyer for the elderly. Not sure exactly what kind. But this one woman had her car stolen. They caught the guy that did it, and I think he received some punishment. But the weird thing about how this court is set up, is that you could potentially be riding the elevator with the person who committed a crime against you. The more violent and personal this crime might be (such as rape, etc), the more screwed up it would be for these kinds of social situations to occur. I’m not quite sure how you’d “fix” something like this, but it seems like there are probably a lot of smaller issues at stake here such as this - which if they were changed would really change people’s attitudes towards justice.
Anyway, that’s a bit of a tangent, so yeah…
Oh, also, when I say tv is education/indoctrination, I realize there’s a bit of a chicken-or-egg situation here. Does tv reflect who we are or do we reflect what tv makes us? I think ultimately both happen, but for the sake of creative conversation in this instance, I find it useful to consider the possibility that there is some kind of social intentionality behind what we’re exposed to, beyond merely selling advertising or making an interesting story. Also, I think that we can be taught inadvertently even if that wasn’t the actual intention…
Another tangent:
I said above that maybe it’s the ritual that’s broken rather than the legal system. I wonder if maybe it’s not the ritual so much as our ability to experience ritual which is actually broken. Most of us today have far less exposure to the power of ritual social interaction as somebody one hundred to two hundred years ago.
Maybe though, what’s needed really is an update of the courtroom ritual. There’s a great Simpson’s episode where the smart people rule the town, and they modify jury duty notices so it’s more appealing to regular people. Moe reads his letter aloud, saying, “You have been chosen to join the justice squadron, 8 am Monday at the municiple fortress of vengence. Oh I am so there.“
The only cop shows I used to watch with any consistency were Columbo, Baretta, Starsky and Hutch, The Andy Griffith Show (which segued into Mayberry RFD) and maybe the early Charlie’s Angels (not sure if all of them could technically be considered “cop” shows though–for example, Columbo was more detective type). I do like my antagonists to be more than cardboard cut-outs though, so I have to agree with you.
Unfortunately the ritual in our society lends itself to cardboard cut-outs. That might be why people do bad things and think they’re not donig bad things, because they’re nothing like the cardboard cut-outs in the media who do those very same bad things.
Poor rationale, but plausible motive?
tim, as jake horsley points out in his book, the matrix warrior, there are humatons and those who are alive. this state of being alive is where we find ourselves…. answering the rhetoric and finding the subtext in media.
it is impossible to have a discussion with humatons, or sheeple, about subtext because they are asleep. the only reactions you may get are irritation or anger, if you persist in “ruining” thier shows for them. the truth is that most people don`t want to be woken up and i frankly have to admit that they do have a right to thier slumber.
regarding the criminal justice system (which is a perverse label if there ever was one.) it has become an industry supporting a large segment of the economy. everything from courts to police to the emerging franchise of privatisd jails to lawyers etc. the media sensationalises this industry by making cop/lawyer shows that romanticise and simpify the system for consumption by the humatons. we gladly nod when the cops increasingly militarise thier equipment and uniforms and build more police stations in subdivisions with low crime rates and deliver less services into the community. read marc stevens position on this at http://www.adventuresinlegalland.com. there is no contract between us and the police to provide protection, only a mandate to collect revenue on a civic, state (provincial) and federal level. you would have to be asleep to agree and continue to accept this arrangement, yet here we are.
Tim,
Great points all.
Clint’s westerns are high on my list of great films. What makes them so compelling to me is the ambiguity of our hero’s motivations - his decisions and actions often result in justice, but we are never really comfortable with why he does what he does, or who he really is. In High Plains Drifter and Pale Rider (in some ways the same movie, though both are great) it seems his motivation is personal vengeance, which just happens to produce justice for others. Troubling. Same for Hang ‘em High, which deals more directly with the relationship between legal and palpable “justice” and both the need for and the flaws of a sectarian legal system, and The Outlaw Josie Wales, which charts our hero’s journey from being wronged to seeking vengeance to moving on with his life. And in the great spaghetti trilogy his motivation seems to be money! What to make of that?
I think the best exploration of these themes is in Unforgiven, which is a must-see imho. It raises difficult questions about justice and both the nature of and our fascination with violence without attempting to answer them. In the earlier films, maybe the lesson was that two wrongs CAN make a right. Unforgiven leaves us pondering the wrongs and unsure if anything has been made right.
I love your idea for a TV show about law enforcement and petty crime. Could be hysterical in a subversive kind of way. I suppose it would exploit the gaps between arbitrary laws and “true” morality as each of us feels it.
I agree with your ideas on indoctrination vs. reflection. Maybe we like to have our beliefs crystalized and reinforced and the producers understand this? I don’t know.
Very interesting idea that our ability to experience the ritual is necessary for its effectiveness. It strikes me that Catholics, for example (substitute any other organized religion) have a “faith” in their system that transcends their ability to understand it, which allows them to accept the ultimate results without proof that they are just. I suppose some people have a similar “faith” in our legal system, but without a *very* strong faith things like the O.J. verdict could certainly affect a person’s ability to accept the ritual as valid.
Great stuff.
Paul
Although I am not a big TV guy, I can’t help but notice that the CSI thing is out of control. There is a CSI show just about every night from one city or the other. The thing that gets me about that show is its obsessive focus on the minutiae of the crimes. Why the crimes were committed and by whom becomes secondary at best to the fact that they found some carpet fibers or a pubic hair.
What is the message behind this? Perhaps it is that the people and their lives and activities (crimes) are less important than the mechanics that are below the surface. For whatever reason, the whole concept rubs me the wrong way but I have never been able to put my finger on exactly why.
Another point of distinction that we might be able to make in this conversation: is the purpose of the legal system the same as the portrayal of that legal system in the media? If so, what’s the difference and what are the possible causes of it?
As for Clint Eastwood westerns, I thought it might be an interesting project to go through all of them and make a tally of all the people that he kills, plus all the money that he receives. Especially for the killing, the figures seem like they’d be extremely high. It’s also interesting to me that supposedly (according to some movie critic I read) Dirty Harry single-handedly invented the “rogue cop” stereotype.
Before that, the typical depiction of the police officer was as a straight as an arrow man with high integrity who stuck to the book, and acted as sort of a neutral force to bring people to justice. He wasn’t so much concerned with moralizing about the crimes as in catching the criminal and letting the courts sort it out. He also wasn’t usually personally involved (I mean emotionally) in the whole process. I’d like to see if Dirty Harry really was the first movie to change all that, and what others helped do so around that time (The French Connection, maybe?)
I was also just thinking of that old play/movie, 12 Angry Men. I feel like that’s probably pivotal to understanding how justice has been perceived and how that perception has changed over the past fifty years in America.
It would also be really interesting to look at what (if any) American cop shows are popular in other countries - especially countries which have decidedly different legal systems to ours. And do these shows positively, negatively or otherwise influence the perceptions of law & order in these countries. Seeing what people outside of our culture say about something that we take for granted could definitely highlight some things which are blind spots for us.
I’ll have to go back and watch Unforgiven again, now that I’ve seen so many of the old Eastwood westerns.
To take a Jungian sort of a perspective for a second… TV is still art, it can be bad art, good art, maybe very occasionally great art. (Northern Exposure, anyone?). I think at its basest level, the crime/cop drama, all the way from Andy Griffith to CSI, is pretty much just bad art, in that it basically operates on a level one step removed from pornography- its intent is to incite disgust or desire in people. The whole ‘bringing it to justice’ part of these stories is a way to save face and get out of it with social values intact. The function of it is to give vent to peoples dark sides in a safe way. Jungs theory of art is that it tends to contain the elements that aren’t socially acceptable in a societys daily life. Its a service people will pay for, just like porn.
On a maybe even more basic level, shows with violence and death address every humans basic anxiety about dying. Its crude but effective. It also addresses what people hope will save them from dying– in CSI, its clear we all hope that science will save us. In the seventies, maybe it was a hope that a suave, moral human character will save us. I guess in that sense it does point to a social construct. But I think you cant put the cart before the horse. People already were getting more into science as a great hope, what with all the new drugs and nano tech and the internet and all, and CSI is a success because it tapped into something that was already there. TV production is a crap shoot. For every succesful show, there are dozens that die. Anyone who thinks these people are ‘creating’ reality maybe isnt quite aware of how Hollywood really works– its about as precise as the stock market. Its all about throwing a bunch of stuff against the wall and seeing what sticks. Its gambling, not chess.
dirty harry was far from the rogue cop,he was representing the public`s dissatisfaction with the way the police and the criminal “justice” system was, and still is, dealing with increasingly violent crimes. i am constantly amazed at the politically correct way in which our police in toronto, canada, deal with the increase in gun violence, bank robberies, home invasions, extortions, etc. that we are seeing reported in the papers. the bureaucrats in the police administration must love the built-in excuses that political correctness and outcry from certain groups make over racial profiling provide for thier ineptitude.
the message that csi portrays is that the cops have such amazing technology that you`ll always get caught.
Dirty Harry fetishized His Big Gun in much the same way that CSI fetishizes its command of forensic science. The details might change but i think the general function of both shows remain the same. Dirty Harry says you’d have to be an idiot to go against that big gun.
I think you’ve hit on a good point though with the use of ‘political correctness’ as an excuse for the police force to slack. It’s in TV shows and movies where the cops always get their man; police in reality are staffed by error-prone humans. In reality, no one is really able to wrap everything up neatly at the end of an hour of effort like in the shows. Hence their appeal…
Its appealing to the general populace that with these new tools the cops can maintain order; where in fact all these fancy tools are very far from infallible. Esp with police forces who are still on the learning curve.
Of all of the cop shows I have seen Law and Order comes closest to getting the actual law right - their 4th amendment analysis is usually excellent. But I don’t think the scripts touch on the real purpose of law, and no other show even comes close.
CSI is a fantasyland removed both from reality and the law. Strike a pose over the dead body! I am no scientist, but their methods are, well, doubtful. And the self-conscious mood lighting just detracts from what could be truly interesting explorations of human violence, and just for the sake of sensationalizing that violence. All imho of course.
If you do see Unforgiven again watch for the line “deserve’s got nothing to do with it.” It is the epiphany.
I would just add that Charles Bronson’s Death Wish is useful in its depiction of how an average joe abandons the legal system in search of real justice. Not a great film, but enjoyable.
Paul
I’ve been thinking about your idea that the portrayal of the legal system is not what the legal system is.
I agree that the system is not portrayed as it really is. But why? My only thought is that most people do not understand what the legal system really is, and are not particularly interested in finding out.
An example: I draft contracts for a living. My clients universally expect me to draft “bulletproof” contracts. But that is impossible. I explain to all of them that the essence of a contract is an agreement in principle between honest people who trust one another and understand what they are agreeing to, and that there is no way to predict how a court will interpret any given contractual provision in the event a dispute goes to litigation.
Nevertheless, most of my clients focus on the contract language to determine their level of exposure, even though their exposure is much more a function of who they are dealing with and whether the parties have actually achieved a meeting of the minds.
Their focus is on “legalisms.” I believe the law, at least in the hands of competent judges, is much more nuanced. It is a much more organic thing than many people realize.
Just some thoughts.
Paul
paul, you give judges more credit than i do. i see the legal system as a consensus between lawyers on three sides of the bench with, especially in civil cases, bank accounts to drain.
would you play a game where the rules were hidden,nuanced and plastic? would you play a game where the ref was biased toward the opposing team(s)? would you play a game when you are terrified by default and you are only allowed to join in for ten minutes in the third quarter, even though you are the main sponsor?
the answer is no on all counts. we find ourselves in a courtroom when our best-laid plans have gone horribly wrong, our ability to judge the caracter of our partners has failed and the marketplace has taken a downturn.
not a good place to be in.
contracts are only as strong as the cooperation of the parties involved and when you write contracts you are responsible for how the words work when they get to court.
the complexity of laws that go back, in some instances, to elizebethan england, are fertile ground for seperating the weak and the niave from thier money and allowing politicians, judges, bureaucrats and other advocates of the technocracy, to pretty much do what they want.
look at the tax code and it`s hounds, the irs, as a perfect example of a vast mechanism designed to terrorise the tax-paying public into giving up thier earnings to a faceless legal entity with no accountability or ethics whatsoever.
again, a quick visit to http://www.adventuresinlegalland.com will have it spelled out much more clearly, and with all the legal documentation and historic perspective in place.
In the TV shows the cops almost always get their man, and the forensic people have the most amazing ways to track down the criminals. I always wonder if the law enforcement agencies are really as effective in the real world. Do the shows help to keep us in line by teaching us that there’s no escaping the investigators? That those in power have the resources to track us down every time so we’d better not do anything wrong because there’s no getting away with it. Is this really the case? I’m too scared to find out.
The performing of rituals increases your mechanicality - exactly what The Archons want. Consider effect on cops, for example. But we are not lifeless machines, we are living systems.
Shows like Law and Order consistently have a subtext of ” The problem is the constraints on govt., and the solution is to remove those constraints. ”
Also, I think the huge number of such shows gives people the feeling that you could be attacked by your fellow humans at any time. Constant, low-grade fear.
Intense emotion makes thinking impossible; that is why it is done.
emotion is the barrier to thinking.but thinking is the barrier to action. that`s why the french are at odds with america and britain for our actions in the middle east. we thought already, whereas the french make a cultual ritual out of intellectualism.
the shows do give the impression that “resistance is futile”, and many other unconscious commands to obey, consume, remain in your cubicle after curfew, work relentlessly and be intensly dissatisfied with yourself and what you have………..
Tim,
I think the tangent you posted at 5:26 pm about the ability to experience ritual being what is broken is worth pursuing further. And I think it has to do, to a large degree, with the failure of modern myth.
I think that’s a great point. Here’s a personal anecdote as illustration. I lived in Baltimore for several years - a very high crime city. I had my own house broken into, along with friends, and their cars stolen again and again. I was actually away when my own house was broken into. But I had friends who dealt with cops first hand who would freely admit that they weren’t going to look for the people who’d committed the crimes - essentially because they weren’t important enough. The most they would do often was to dust for prints a little, presumably to establish a pattern on certain individuals for the future, if and when they stepped up their game.
I couldn’t agree less. I think the ability to experience ritual and deeply feel transcendent symbols is a natural, healthy, powerful expression of humanity’s deepest essence. While you say it makes people mechanical, I say it cuts people off from their source to not be involved in it in some way; it makes us frantic and distant from one another.
Alistair, you clearly have a very negative attitude towards all things legal. Is there anything about these matters which you see as beneficial to people or perhaps worthwhile on some level?
Yes, I play this game every day - it’s called life. I find it very enjoyable.
Back to the original topic about shows in general and less about crime dramas… (they really bore me too), I really enjoy reality television, and shows that make me engage in conversation with friends. I guess I have a more social personality when it comes to television… And I guess I also prefer non-fiction.
I’d rather watch The Apprentice, root for people with good qualities, criticize the other peoples’ business/managing-abilities, and then be happy when they get fired. (And make myself more motivated and confident in my own business practices.) Or be really happy to see people be dedicated and lose lots of weight on The Biggest Loser. But I can separate myself from all of these shows and realize that they people are … almost real… but still crafted, scripted, and directed (script or not) in the end. So, I can recognize that they’re probably portrayed innaccurately for dramatic reasons, and instead try to see through the facade and analyze what I think is really going on. Sociology, perhaps.
One thing that really makes me frustrated is when I turn on a sitcom with laugh tracks. That’s television at its zombie-best, teaching us when to laugh and what is funny. I never really thought about it until I stopped watching television for awhile (around the time that I had gotten digital cable and just watched the movie channels late at night)– and then I eventually started watching again during the Everybody Loves Raymond phenomenon. It made me realize how creepy the sitcom demographic had become. Here was a blatantly unfunny, uninteresting show about really annoying people; and it just… wasn’t good. But those laugh tracks sure were hearty as ever! And that’s why actual good shows like Curb Your Enthusiasm and Dead Like Me get cancelled… because there are no laugh tracks, and I think people don’t know how to unteach themselves that things are only funny when other people are laughing. I dunno, I guess it could always just be that my sense of humor is very different from the rest of America…
Those are some of my insights, coming from someone who only watches about 4 shows a week.
the legal system serves as a mechanism for providing a thin veneer of respect and value on the property of others. this veneer is wearing thinner by the day, especially in urban environments. the police and the parent legal system provide no protection to the community other than the fear inherent as a deterent to lawabiding citizens. those who exist outside the law have a virtual free reign on thier activities. this includes bureaucrats, other cops, judges, etc. it is a system that has functioned as our society has developed and as such has worked better than most other types of government control. any look middle eastern policing or african justice will confirm this.
i don`t see my attitude as bad frankly, merely considerate of the facts. take the gun control legislation in canada as an example. a wholesale cull of all guns in private ownership. a multi-billion dollar bureaucratic clusterfuck ostensibly designed to reduce gun violence. it hasn`t taken one gun out of the hands of those who would use one in the perpetration of a crime. why would it?
and regarding playing games where the rules are hidden, nuanced and plastic; the distinction between the judicial game and one called life is plainly that in life the rules aren`t enforced at the point of a gun, for the most part.
on law: to the extent that law=property i say: fuck em and their law (uhoh i’m predictable). but, like it or not, the system is part of life and i have to deal with it, it’s part of the game. and if you’re talking about “rules” of life, well that’s just more law, and not unadulterated life at all. then again, if life is a free-for-all, people are free to decide for the rest of us, on the basis of force, that it’s not free at all, and round and round we go…
on laugh tracks: imagine how shitty the simpsons would be with a laugh track. but csi could use one: “the bullet mushroomed as it entered his abdominal cavity (rriiip, ha ha ha!)”
things that tv shows have taught me:
1) when (and only when) you’re bathed in flashing blue and reds, everything’s gonna be ok. “oh thank god the system’s here at last.” cut to commercial.
2) if the system is revealed to be flawed, it is solely the fault of people, and the ideology of the system is still sound. “if only people would adhere to the ideology of the system.”
3) nobody ever votes the system off the island
4) the swaying traffic light above the crossroads in twin peaks: the system is an illusion, light is usually flashing amber, go if you want to, the wind does. things can cross the veil at the crossroads in the dead of night, and do.
5) northern exposure, whooee! on the face of it, a simple-assed boring/cute show. but… watching northern exposure resulted in a series of synchronicities (issues arising in my life thematically addressed in that week’s show) that were so accurate and recurrent from week to week that i realised the show had taken my soul on a journey. the themes underlying NE’s story arc became the themes underlying my life for that season (different plot details, same myth). true art, fucking awe-inspiring.
i guess the point is that the mythology/ideology of the show invades your mind, then manifests in your life. so when you watch csi (or the news) and the boogeyman fills the screen with gore and only the system can save you…
or maybe all mythologies are manifest, and choosing to identify with a show is choosing the mythology you want to take for a ride in the “real worldâ€.
That’s a great point. What if on Survivor or some other dumb show, everybody voted to stop voting people off the island. Or they voted Jeff Probst and the camera crew off the island, so they could all live in peace.
Example of ritual: Run out the back door, spin around 3 times, piss on the Magic Mushroom, and shake the dwarf’s hand.
Why? And yet this is essentially what all rituals are like: some actions in a particular order, allegedly to produce a specific result. But what is the connection between the actions and the result?
Instead of a 12 step program, I recommend a 1 step program: be willing to let the experience of finding out for yourself what the truth is no matter what it turns out to be transform you into who you really are. No robes, no candles, no Magic Words, no specific actions in a particular order.
Alistair, how do you feel about murder?
Should anyone be able to do it without consequences? If yes I see where you are coming from (though I take a different view).
If not, who should be in charge of the consequences?
paul, good question. my personal feelings toward murder are buried within anglican morality, a mild squeamishness toward bloodletting and a fear of repercussions within our legal environment. there are those who are unfairly charged with murder and convicted and there are those who, for whatever reason, walk. i also don`t think that murder is the highest crime. there are actions that have been perpetrated against society that have far more negative effects than some murders. i do not think that there should be a wholesale tolerance for murder and i really don`t think compassionate humans will ever tolerate such a thing.
the contract that we tend to share here is a tacit one made of morals, ethics and compassion. it`s in the dna of the anglo-saxons to be this way in numbers that hold up to around 150 or so people, the size of a medium sized agrarian village of 150 years ago. as the cities have absorbed the villages over time, the mixture of peoples, population density, income disparities etc. have knocked this balance to shit. what has taken the place of the lack of opportunity for crime in a small, tight-knit community is the burgeoning industrialised judiciary and it`s agents.
this is the very tip of a discussion that we don`t have room for here, but suffice it to say, this situation is only going to escalate as the judiciary becomes increasingly autocratic and self protecting, as is true with all branches of government.
simply put, all bureaucracies, once they reach a certain tipping point, will begin to put more and more resources toward self-preservation. it is a frightening thought, but one that is witnessed by anyone who attends meetings. the business at hand quickly takes a back seat to power plays to the point where business is forgotten entirely.
Alistair,
Interesting points. But we still have a problem - what to do about murder?
(which I’m sure occurred even in agrarian villages of 150 years ago…)
how have societies dealt with murder for centuries? there are no new ways of doing sociology. people come together and decide, in a judicial manner, the facts at hand, and work towards a solution. my point was and still is that as groups become larger, the mechanism of all forms of government become autocratic and further from thier initial mandate. eventially a greater portion of internal resources goes toward internal issues and protection from the power games of other agencies. murder will always be dealt with in the same way by moral, ethical societies. it is morally and ethically reprehensible and needs sanction at the highest level, if not as a deterrent so much as a balancing mechanism.
my view is that these higher moral and ethical positions fall down when applied in larger populations but as broken and as self-serving as our system is, it is far superior to sharia for instance, a particularly savage, paternalistic muslim legal system that the deep thinkers here in canada were seriously thinking of allowing ethic groups to utilise in canada. welcome to multi-culturalism. just think; we could be the first country to be so ethnically sensitive as to allow the first public stoning at mel lastman square in torontograd.
The capital of Soviet Canuckistan?