Our televisions are riddled with cop and medical shows: CSI, NCIS, East West, Law and Order (SVU, Criminal Minds), Cold Case, Medium, House, Grey's Anatomy, All Saints, ER, and yet, they’re damn near completely absent from our cinemas. In the 1930’s cops were all over the silver screen, now they’re stuck almost exclusively on the tube; and as for doctors - I’ve never even heard of a medical movie. So the question I ask is this: why do we let cops and medicos into our living rooms, but keep them out of our cinemas? Are pigs and quacks bad company for a night out, or do we just not trust them in the dark?
In a flight of patriotic good-will, I initially assumed the latter: that we, as a nation of swaggering, charmingly vulgar convicts, could not cope with the prospect of a 20 foot tall cop charging at us in a darkened theatre. I hypothesised that if we engaged with the fuzz at all, they were to be studied under a microscope – trapped on a small screen in a well-lit room where they could be swiftly dispatched with a remote control should they disturb our larrikin peace. Sadly, the thought that Australians might approach cop shows as the study of an enemy was not a fantasy I could entertain for long. Surely if we responded to pig soaps in such a way, our local police dramas (Blue Heelers, Water Rats or ABC's new appropriation of the hackneyed, 'black cop/white cop' formula, East West) would be populated by characters that reflect our Ned Kellyesque sentiments. But where in our cop dramas is our enchanting, incorrigible Kelly; TdAeluding the grasp of the authorities only to exact revenge on them for offending his unrelenting thirst for liberty? The only rebels with which we can realistically engage in these shows are cops themselves, forsaking their careers and our civil liberties in order to apprehend the 'perp'. We like to think of ourselves as a nation of recalcitrants and underdog backers, but our viewing habits speak otherwise - positioning us right in the palm of the establishment strong-arm. There must be something other than a proud criminal's fascination with the white n' blue Other that drives our fascination with pistols and scalpels.
So to what aspect of our cultural psyche does this daily cycle of swine soaps and scrub series appeal? The answer may lie between-the-scenes, which (conveniently for us screen critics) are populated by advertising breaks. Aside from offering us fat-busting ringtones and 7 easy steps to pole dance our way to dignity, advertising breaks provide us with an exact measure of who is supposed to be watching any particular program. The only reason television programs even exist is to allow those tooth-capped endorsements to slide over our retinas with Teflon ease. In the economically rationalised world of commercial television, a TV show is useless unless it can attract a marketable demographic whose viewing time can be sold to advertising companies. ?
Ideally, we’re all the target demographic of the cop and med shows, but the advertising seems to place a particular focus upon parents. Take an average Law and Order: SVU 'rape of the week' episode. Right after Ice-T expresses his horror at the rape and dismemberment of a young girl, you're likely to see a baby's bottom lovingly kissed before being strapped into the 'world's most absorbent' nappy. From this outrageously tasteful flow of program and advertising, we can discern that the show is either pitched at parents or pedophiles. Since pedophiles aren't exactly a 'marketable' demographic, we can safely assume that this program is directed at parents. If you can bear taking your finger off the mute button during advertising breaks, you'll VEfind that those convenient dinner solutions for belabored mothers, pseudo-healthy lunchbox ideas and happily four-wheel-driving families make a disproportionately more frequent appearance than they might do in other dramas. But why would parents like sitting themselves in front of a drama centering on the grisly murder of or multiple organ failure of a child?
The only answer I've been able to conjure that isn't entirely perverse, is that parents, as the demographic in our society with the most to worry about, have more of an impetus to keep tabs on the criminal/biological underworld. Through these badge-flashing, stethoscope-toting dramas, parents can gain some semblance of an insight into the contextual conditions of a kidnapping or the symptoms of lupus, and enjoy learning how these criminal/biological nasties can be subdued. Of course, the appeal of these dramas extends far beyond the ranks of the parental; all of us (except for a pathologically mellow minority) worry about being attacked or becoming grievously ill. The mechanics of these murderous people and diseases are naturally fascinating to us, as are the methods, and the people, who disarm them.
Given that watching pigs and quacks at work can (potentially) appeal to anyone with a survival instinct, it is easy to see how cop and med shows have risen to dominate the small screen. But for some reason, in spite of their vast attraction, police and doctors are all but absent from the cinema. There must be something about television in particular that makes us want to see some kid's face get stitched up, or some pedo get ruined by the homeboys of justice.
The answer again, lies in programming flow. Every night, we snuggle down in our cozy living rooms to a gauntlet of murders, bombings, bludgeoning, gang fights, pedo-scares and celebrity diseases (AIDS/SARS/ebola/bird flu etc). This pandemonium of pre-primetime death calls itself ‘the news’. After having been thrown headfirst into the horrors of our world, there’s nothing nicer than to sit down and watch a series of shows that meets the criminal and biological demons of ‘the news’ head on, and destroys ‘em. When we go to the cinema, we’re out on the town, having fun, and not necessarily worried about the perils of modern society. Prime time, however, engages us when these perils are in the forefront of our minds. Crime and Med shows serve as the perfect foil to the paranoia induced by the news. Law and Order even claims to pluck its stories ‘straight from the headlines’ - unlike those headline stories though, the crimes are conveniently solved over the course of an hour. What a relief.
Perhaps rightly, cop shows (and to a lesser degree med shows) have received critical flack for painting such a utopian picture of law enforcement. If we were to take these cop shows as gospel, we would end up believing that most of ‘the force’ is populated by battle hardened (but secretly empathetic), ferociously hard working paladins of justice, who operate according to an incorruptible inner moral compass. We might feel inclined to surrender to them more power, especially since, night after night, these shows remind us that there is an unending tide of incurable psychopaths out there. The shows should rightly be critiqued for their tendency to promote repressive state apparatus, but I wouldn’t necessarily chalk them up as a conscious propaganda campaign. These cop and med shows are just giving us what we want. And frankly, it’s nice to see legions of our bogeymen smote by these gritty and realistic characters; it salves our worries (particularly parents, the worriers par excellance). VE
There is, however, a nefarious aspect to crime and med shows - and that is their constant attacks on civil liberties. These are nearly always shown as obstructing the true course of justice and medicine. According to Dr Gregory House, (and more recently, Grey’s Anatomy) You, the patient ‘ALWAYS LIE’. You’re always obstructing the proper course of medicine, refusing surgery with your flawed beliefs and silly motives. It’d be for the best if the doctors didn’t have to listen to you at all (as House doesn’t), and could just break into your home to discover the truth, then strap you down and give you what’s good for you. Similarly, the world would be a much better place if the cops could just force you to talk before your lawyer arrived and confused everything. Justice would move so much faster if the police could use the evidence they risked their careers to steal, or if they could just follow their hunch and not have to wait for a warrant. The producers are probably just trying to heighten narrative tension, but it’s almost impossible not to break out in a rash of illuminati conspiracies while watching these things. After all, the tendency of cop and med shows to disregard the rights of the individual in the name of ‘justice’ or ‘medicine’ has coincided with the incredible loss of human rights caused by the ‘war on terror’.
Hard though it is not to bust out the tin foil hats, it is quite possible to rationalise the overwhelming presence of TV cop and med shows as something other than a calculated attempt to ideologically entrench the authority of police and doctors. Prime time always follows news time, so it’s only natural for prime time shows to address the anxieties and issues raised by the nightly news. If cinematic screenings were preceded by reports on the latest pox or mutant sex murder, we’d probably see a much stronger presence of white coats and blue caps on the big screen. However, just because Television shows are responding to a cultural ‘need’ in the wake of news programming, does not excuse them from critique. The anxieties these cop and med shows address (crime, terror, disease, and pedophilia) are exactly those which inform the manner in which we vote and conduct ourselves in civil society. So although they mightn’t be an appendage of some brainwashing conspiracy, they are undoubtedly contributing factors to our societies’ authoritarian response to the heightened climate of global fear.
Published in Voiceworks # 72
www.expressmedia.org.au/voiceworks.php
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