What can Perry Mason tell us about modern times?

[PatrickforO]

My wife and I are both crazy about Perry Mason, so we took the step of buying the entire 9 seasons on disk, and we've been watching them appreciatively.

So...you ask...quite justifiably, why I'm even telling you this.

I have been thinking about it this morning. Now, we are both white, in our late fifties, and were raised in suburbia during the 1960s and 70s by relatively decent WWII generation parents (both dads born 1916, both moms 1920).

Now, in those days if parents, especially WWII generation parents, were decent, they genuinely believed that there was a right and a wrong, and that they could teach it to their children. Part of this teaching was to instill the belief that if we always tell the truth, then things will always work out OK for us.

The old Perry Mason episodes are the epitome of that. Perry, Della, Paul Drake, Hamilton Burger and Lieutenant Tragg are all honest and interested in justice. They are incorruptible and the unfortunate people accused falsely of murder could count on Mason to find the truth and free them. The whole group is sort of like a 'feel good' family - at least those are the feelings they evoke in me. Yep, I think, good will prevail.

It doesn't now, though. Does it? Good doesn't always prevail, and the institutions we used to trust, like (if you were white) the cops, firefighters, banks, schools, businesses, the military, the government, don't always give people, especially the old, poor, sick or different, a fair shake. And, if you were a little yankee doodle dandy like I was, the first realization that sometimes evil wins is very painful.

Because evil has been winning for decades now, and we've all been getting fucked.

I suppose Perry Mason allows me to escape from the corruption for an hour at a time and imagine a better, more just world.

[angstlessk]

1. Ah, yes the days of innocence...

The 60's really did change our perceptions of things, between the civil rights movement, the Viet Nam war, and the assignation of Kennedy, but not the reality.

I think what happened was we were made AWARE of skullduggery in every aspect in American life (and I include ALL the Americas).

The corporations did not change, the government did not change, though they have been evolving, and not for the better..but we began to see that all was not as rosy as we believed it to be.

I too loved Perry Mason...we watched it religiously in my family.

[Samantha]

7. I watched the original series when I was a child and loved the whole show

I have rewatched the series on ME TV and it was a thrill to see these guys again. That show is truly a classic.

Sam

[trof]

2. The 2000 sElection did it for me.

That's when I lost faith in this country.
Been downhill ever since.

[librechik]

3. This might interest you

Last summer our house burned down and the insurance company is putting us up in a sky rise apartment building nearby the old house. This enterprise noticed that the last aging seasons of Perry Mason, when he was an old man, were mostly filmed in Denver back in the 80s and 90s.

Believing (wrongly) this would be universally known to Denverites, they named the buildings after Perry Mason characters: The Berger, The Mason and the Drake. The driveway that curls around the complex is called Della Street. They decorated the lobby of the leasing office with giant framed posters of Raymond Burr, the house where Father Dowling "lived" etc. We are big Mason fans, too, so that was a kick for us. And now we live in the Berger building.

We were there for only a few weeks when our jeep was stolen from the Della Street parking area. We were soon visited by earnest detectives, who figured out the crime and got our car back. Two glamorous female car thieves were charged with the theft. (not very glamorous, but close enough)

There is some justice, indeed.

[PatrickforO]

9. What an awesome story!

It's outstanding that you got your car back. That doesn't always happen.

[longship]

4. I love this post.

And Hamilton Burger never won a case against Perry.

But what a great cast that was. I especially remember Lt. Tragg, the consummate professional policeman.

Paul Drake was the private eye, always poking his nose into things and getting results.

Thank you for this look back.

[csziggy]

17. Well, Berger did manage to get a couple of convictions against Perry's clients

But in the long run, Perry Mason cleared them and found the real perpetrators.

http://www.perrymasontvshowbook.com/pmb_c209.htm

[FSogol]

5. Lots of people talking about liberal politics mention "The West Wing", but like Perry Mason, it is

a work of fiction. While it might seem that Perry or President Barlett are making a courageous stand and taking the correct path, they are not. It isn't courageous since there are no ramifications if they do the wrong thing. Regardless of his actions, Barlett only gets reelected if that is how it is written. His actions (even in a fictional universe) do not affect the outcome. Perry Mason is a similar lie. Nowhere in his world are labs falsifying evidence, lazy attorneys, or overcrowded judicial systems. Missing are gray lines and unknowable actions that separate and blur the ethics involved. So when some fiction character emotes, "gosh darn it, I'm going to the do the right thing and damn the consequences", remember that you are watching idealized fiction and it is not comparable to the grayness of real world issues.

While Perry Mason was an entertaining show, it did not reflect the reality of the time. Evil was winning in the 50s and 60s too.

[angstlessk]

10. You are so deep that when you die they'll have to dig down 12'

It's entertainment, that means suspension of belief for the time being, THEN get back to the big bad world!

[FSogol]

11. That's fine but when someone says, why isn't Obama like Barlett or why was the cop on Perry Mason so

incorruptible, you are applying fiction to real world situations. There are plenty of example of this on DU.

PS. I'll donate my body to science and save everyone some digging.

[angstlessk]

12. On that point I will have to agree..some people suspend belief

then forget they suspended it!

I like the science thing...me I want to be cremated in a cardboard box!...except the energy it will take to get me to the ash stage.

[FSogol]

14. They have human composting in Scandinavia now. Check out

"Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers" by Mary Roach.

She covers all the ways you can donate yourself. (The most desperate for cadavers are demolition researchers. People donate for medical training, but get squeamish when someone wants to explode corpses to improve explosive protection gear. That's how I'll go...with a bang.

[angstlessk]

15. I always did want to be a teacher..after death ain't so bad!

I'm about to imbibe myself

[GreatCaesarsGhost]

6. Perry Mason is a good history of the period.

Follow the cars they used. I think they started out with Chrysler then Ford and Lincolns. Paul Drake went from TBirds to a Corvette at the end. And Della's clothing styles.

They also had a female and black judge. Several episodes had Asian characters and a few were centered on the Iron Curtain. Plus folk singers and jazz musicians were characters.

IIRC the last episode was a murder in a studio and they used the show's crew as characters and they got a chance to explain their jobs.

It's on ME tv twice a day.

[Samantha]

8. I loved the clothes the women in the show wore

and the hairstyles!

Sam

[csziggy]

18. One of my favorite episodes has one of my favorite actors, George Takei

"The Case of the Blushing Pearls" with a very young Takei.

[Mosby]

13. my dad turned me on to rumpole of the bailey

I turned him on to Soap, one of the best sitcoms of all time. Imo.

Never really was that into perry mason, little to formulaic for me.

[teamster633]

16. I used to love Rumpole.

Haven't seen it since the mid-eighties. "She who must be obeyed..."

[LiberalElite]

19. We watched Perry Mason every Saturday night -

and every Saturday night around 8:20 p.m. he would regale Della and Paul with how he knew the bad guy had done it all along.