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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsCops Are Always the Main Characters
I stopped watching "cop shows" long ago. It blew my mind when new ones were created. I don't care if a new show gets good reviews, I refuse to watch another damn cop show.
Won't watch TV shows about lawyers either. Enough already!
https://www.vulture.com/2020/06/tv-cops-are-always-the-main-characters.html?utm_source=pocket-newtab
At 8 p.m. on Saturday, at the same time CNN, MSNBC, and FOX News were airing live coverage of the nationwide protests against police violence, cable audiences also had other options for what to watch. On PopTV, there was a marathon of NCIS: New Orleans. On WE, Criminal Minds. On WGN, Blue Bloods. On Ion, Law & Order: SVU. And on USA, a marathon of Chicago PD that began 11 hours earlier and continued until Sunday morning, followed by an episode of CSI.
These arent identical shows, exactly. Criminal Minds is about FBI profilers who try to anticipate crime before it happens. The NCIS franchise is about a team who investigate crimes involving Navy and Marine personnel. Blue Bloods and SVU are about New York cops; Chicago PD is about Chicago police. But they and dozens of other popular, profitable TV shows share a fundamental ideology: The cops are the protagonists.
TV has long had a polices-eye perspective that helps shape the way viewers see the world, prioritizing the victories and struggles of police over communities being policed. Order, a police imposed status quo, is good; disruption is bad. There are many, many reasons why a cops point of view has become the default way to frame national unrest, including institutional and systemic racism, the capitalist urge to prioritize property over human life, and a political system that benefits those already in power. But TV plays a role, too. The overwhelming mountain of cop shows amounts to a decades-long cultural education in who deserves attention, and whose perspective counts most. In stories of American crime, TV teaches us that cops are the characters we should care about.
(more at link)
SharonClark
(10,014 posts)done and people who watch crime shows think
there are more criminal acts happening than there actually are. If cops are always the good guys on tv shows it makes sense that tv watchers will give cops the benefit of the doubt.
Buckeye_Democrat
(14,854 posts)Most of real life would be too BORING to be considered entertaining, I guess.
Most people that I know in real-life, including me, would be boring as hell to watch for very long. Lol. At least that's the truth, though.
Even the so-called reality shows are nonsense, of course.
Buckeye_Democrat
(14,854 posts)I'll always remember when Geraldo Rivera did some special TV program about Satan worshippers in this country, full of testimony that they were pretty much EVERYWHERE and committing all kinds of torturous atrocities. I watched it while thinking, "What a crock of shit!"
To my surprise, I heard a bunch of people in public the next day talking about it like it was real! They seemed frightened by it, of course.
Beam me up, Scotty!
11 Bravo
(23,926 posts)But using their satanic powers, they magically disappeared themselves just prior to Geraldo's grand opening.
(In case it needs to be said, FUCK the Trump-humping douche nozzle formerly known as Geraldo Rivera.)
Buckeye_Democrat
(14,854 posts)Trump and him are a perfect match in that regard.
Rivera might "get real" if something could affect him personally, of course.
johnp3907
(3,731 posts)I like that the murderers are always rich and powerful, and they always get caught. Fantasy, I know.
Buckeye_Democrat
(14,854 posts)I hit "overload" sometime afterwards.