On Mon, 25 Aug 1997, Louis N Proyect wrote:
> I was wrong about the usual villain being a minority member on "Law and
> Order" but I'll stick with everything else I said about the show. There
> is nothing liberal about it. To use the word liberal to describe it would
> strip the word of all meaning.
Louis: We just use terms somewhat differently. As a child of the 60s the
term "liberal" has almost no positive connotations for me whatsoever.
"Liberals" gave us Vietnam, the Green Berets and the murder of Che abroad,
and Southeast Asian heroin in American cities, massive military reprisal
against central city uprisings, and so on. BTW the American use of the
term "liberal" is peculiar anyway, traditionally it was associated with
very conservative politics --as in contemporary neo-liberalism.
> The biggest problem with "Law and Order" is that poverty as a causal
> explanation of crime is simply absent from the show. All of the gangsters,
> drug dealers and other predators who appear in the plot are simply bad
> guys that the cops and DA's office have to protect the citizenry from. The
> show presents the victim's point of view, who are inevitably white and
> middle class. There are "white collar" criminals on the show, but the big
> nightmare in NYC is not some executive who decides to poison a corporate
> rival (which never really happens in real-life) but the black or Puerto
> Rican hoodlums that Giuliani is trying to crack down on.
Louis: Like I said, I haven't watched it much so I can't judge the
accuracy of your generalizations.
<snip>>
>
> The other thing to keep in mind about "Law and Order" is the way that the
> occasional prostitute is depicted. Pay close attention, Harry; they are
> seen as part of the general anti-social fabric that makes NYC unpalatable,
> along with squeegee guys, crack dealers and boom-box carrying teenagers.
> The push to rid Times Square of the "sex industries" is fully in line with
> the social message of the Giuliani campaign and "Law and Order".
Louis: the only episode that I've seen that dealt with prostitutes fit the
Craven worst-case scenario: a young girl corrupted, used, and abused by a
pimp who was already pimping her mother (if I remember right). In that
case the girl was treated very favorably as having been brought up in
difficult circumstances and deluded by Mass Media into thinking that if
she could become a model/cover-girl her life would be perfect. As I
remember, although she killed the pimp, after hearing her story, the DA's
office basically dropped all charges, just getting her into some psych
program. That one episode didn't fit your description.
<snip>
> American society is in a fairly deep crisis and the police are
> functioning more and more like occupation troops in communities where
> injustice cuts deepest. Police brutality simply does not exist on NYPD,
> Homicide, or Law and Order, etc. When Jerry Orbach grabs a guy by the
> collar and tells him, "You better tell me what I'm looking for or
> else....", this is about as far as the show will ever go. But this will not
> disturb the liberal yuppie enjoying his or her TV show. What will disturb
> them is the sight of two cops holding a black man down while a third
> sticks a toilet plunger up his ass. This is real life and will not appear
> on "Law and Order".
>
> Louis Proyect
>
Louis: Generally, I agree with you about how cops are functioning and who
suffers the consequences and the likelihood of an ACCURATE depiction on
TV.
Harry
............................................................................
Harry Cleaver
Department of Economics
University of Texas at Austin
Austin, Texas 78712-1173 USA
Phone Numbers: (hm) (512) 478-8427
(off) (512) 475-8535 Fax:(512) 471-3510
E-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Cleaver homepage:
http://www.eco.utexas.edu/faculty/Cleaver/index.html
Chiapas95 homepage:
http://www.eco.utexas.edu/faculty/Cleaver/chiapas95.html
Accion Zapatista homepage:
http://www.utexas.edu/students/nave/
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