There is an ongoing discussion recently about the place in the world of the police, and while the film section of a website is probably not the best place to hash out ideological beliefs — though we stand firmly in the “police shouldn’t suffocate people to death” camp — what has arisen is a discussion about how much culpability the media, specifically film and tv, have in the role of mythologising the police, especially in the United States.
This is a valid concern: police procedurals are as old as the hills, look at the most popular or longest-running tv series in the US and UK and they remain police procedurals. These shows often take on a form known as ‘copaganda’: a term for media that glorifies police work or the work of enforcing laws. It doesn’t have to be positive either, so long as the heroes are shown in positive lights even when being corrupt. Examples of blatant copaganda almost always include Law & Order, which shows the hard-working police doing what they can to bring justice, and sometimes bending the rules to “do the right thing”.
Dick Wolf made his career copaganda. He’s the creative force behind the Law & Order franchise under which several spin-offs have been made – Criminal Intent, Special Victims Unit, Trial by Jury, LA, True Crime as well as two forthcoming series Organised Crime and Hate Crimes. Wolf also helped create the Chicago franchise, one of the cornerstones of which is the ever-popular Chicago PD.
The question remains: is there a place in the world for police procedurals or any form of copaganda? One easy answer would be no, that the idea of showing cops in a purely good light gives the beat cops out there on the streets the belief that they can act like the ultra-dramatic versions on screens – no doubt many people join the police as an indirect result of the media’s fascination with the job. It’s been said that work on the next series of cop-comedy Brooklyn Nine-Nine has been scrapped and rethought in the wake of such questions about police not following correct regulations.
But, of course, it’s also true that some of the best works of fiction are detective stories, police stories and crime stories. After all, The French Connection is a landmark film and arguably a piece of copaganda that won Best Picture, Heat is considered one of the great works of cinema, as is Se7en, but none of them show police following due process. Al Pacino said he played Lt Vincent Hanna as off his face on cocaine in Heat, and neither Morgan Freeman’s Somerset nor Brad Pitt’s Mills follow due process to catch killer John Doe.
Cancelling a show likes Cops, in which we take pleasure in watching police use force on people, is a good move. It helps create a distinction. There is a difference, after all, between a fictional piece of media and bodycam footage. We are currently re-evaluating how the media portrays the actions of law enforcement, and people have expressed concern that works like those in the Marvel Cinematic Universe continue to propagate such an issue. And yet, cancelling it all isn’t the answer either.
This situation, of cops in the real world being lead to believe they can act like they’re in Miami Vice or NYPD Blue and the resulting fallout, is very similar to another cultural introspection that occurred some twenty years back. In the wake of the Columbine High School Massacre, there was a desire to look for someone or something to blame. Those who saw the incendiary Bowling for Columbine will know that the finger of blame got firmly pointed at media: violent video games, the music of Marilyn Manson, South Park and even The Matrix were said to have influenced the two young killers.
Even more recently there has been a desire from conservatives in both the UK and the US to ban pornography for its depictions of violence towards women and men, its perpetuation of rough sex, thin lines of consent, and so on.
But, as we all know, movies, music, tv, video games and porn are so mass-consumed globally that a blanket ban can’t be the answer. After all, how many people bought and played Grand Theft Auto V, one of the highest-selling videogames in history, and proceeded to commit the kind of violent crimes portrayed in the game? Of those who consume internet porn, how many are now violent rapists, or abuse men and women for sexual pleasure? Yes, there are those that do. And yes, there are those out there with a badge and a gun and think that acting like Crocket or Tubbs is okay because the law is absolute, but not all.
Moreover, copaganda is so mass consumed in all its forms that it would be impossible to ban outright, and to change it would just be strange. Just like video games, just like angry music by shouty people, and just like porn.
For a brief diversion: if it’s okay for Michael Gove to like porn tweets by Ava Koxxx, and if it’s okay for the President of the United States to have unprotected sex with a porn performer while his pregnant wife is elsewhere — then why is it not okay for us?
There is so introspection needed. It’s clear that the mythologising of police is a problem. After all, how many times do we see stories of hero cops who — let’s face it — did the job for which they are paid, over stories of average joe public doing good deeds? Is the solution banning CSI or stopping the next cop game from coming out? Well, frankly, no. It makes no sense; blaming film and TV for violent and dangerous police is as stupid as blaming it for a school shooting or a rape.
Are they influences? Yes, absolutely, we are constantly influenced by the media, and always have been. To say otherwise would be to ignore that most laws come from The Bible, the original piece of media to be consumed (and any other religious book for that matter).
Ultimately, when a young person enters a school with a knife, or a gun, or a weapon and harms other, it’s not the fault of David Fincher for making Zodiac or Se7en, it’s not the fault of Stephen King for writing about teenage anger in his novella Rage (now out of print by King’s own choice), no, it’s because society has allowed this person or persons to have access to weapons over access to help. Did Joker spur people into violent frenzies of incel madness? No. Did it cause a minor twitter conversation about it’s merit as a work of fiction vs a derivative of both comic books and Scorsese movies – yes. Are there idiots out there with Joker avatars threatening to rape and kill women of colour because Marvel dared cast them? Well, yes, yes there is, but there are also people who have a Joker avatar because they liked the movie and want to show it on a public platform – there’s no accounting for taste, clearly.
What the school massacres and the police brutality issues both show isn’t that media is evil and should be super heavily censored (only how it’s made should have regulation, not the work itself), but that there isn’t enough stopping the actions. Moreover, there isn’t an easy solution, defunding the police is a route to take, putting money into mental health support, and community opportunities is the solution – abolishing the police is not the answer, to say it is is also foolish.
The solution is regulation, more training needs to go in for police services, not allowing just anyone to become a police officer, names of officers clearly labelled, body cams as regulation to be reviewed on every stop and search, every arrest made, by an independent body. It becomes when something so alarming happens a case of wanting to ban things. Ban cop shows! Ban protests! Ban people! No. There’s a middle ground, as annoying as it is for both sides, there’s a middle ground. Less money into the police, more money into communities for a start, more accountability for those in charge, more independent, non-organisational watch bodies to look into matters.
Moreover, there shouldn’t be a ban on cop shows, actually most are perfectly fine, they’re like soap operas for people who want to see a few baddies roughed up by Christopher Meloni or whichever Baldwin brother is cheap enough. With all things, if you’re getting your moral compass or belief system solely from a TV show or a movie, you’re in trouble.
Hill Street Blues is no more responsible for the death of George Floyd than Catcher in the Rye is for the death of John Lennon. Easy access to weapons, zero accountability, and easy scapegoats caused both. You shouldn’t feel bad for enjoying a police drama, it’s fiction, it’s not real. But maybe the lines between reality and fiction need to be made more clear, the desire for shows like Police Interceptors or Cops need to be stopped, but fiction? Fiction is art, and art shouldn’t be policed for what it could do to people. Once again, like with school massacres, like with any awful shocking event, we need to stop looking to blame easy targets and maybe look at ourselves, and our culpability.
Think for a moment: how many people looked for a reason to negate Floyd’s killing? How many comments parroted the phrase “he was no angel”, as if that justified his death? No one should be put to death for anything, that’s not how civilised society works, no matter the crime. That belief fuels this violence just as much as media.
Think of the outrage that sparks from a case of child molestation and how many people would happily murder the criminal; that enthusiasm lingers, and trickles down until one police officer sees a man who has previous for threatening a pregnant woman and thinks – “one less criminal”, and then that person – who served his time, who at that moment was not committing a crime, endures their final moments with another man’s knee on their throat.
Blame TV and Film all you want. The guilty are us, who designate those who deserve to die and those who don’t. Who look to excuse police by digging into a person’s history with “he was no angel” or “he did porn” or “they were suspicious”, us who get outraged not at the unlawful murder of a man but at the protests it sparks.
Look at the continual undermining of the murder of a woman like Breonna Taylor, killed in her bed because… her boyfriend might have been in a gang, maybe? As if every single one of us has never affiliated ourselves with someone who has done something wrong. Us who change the news over when they talk of an innocent teen harassed by the police or worse, shot by them, as “probably having drugs” when at any moment a loved one is carrying marijuana or something worse but we ignore it because they are different.
Ultimately, the media isn’t anything more than lights on a screen, people pretending to shoot other people, and if that is the cause of all the bad police officers in the world, then why aren’t we all concerned? Because, ultimately, both sides know the truth. “Copaganda” is a diversion from the real issue: Brooklyn Nine-Nine is no more a documentary on policing than Hostel is a travel show.
Society may not have crushed George Floyd’s windpipe, but society stood back and filmed it while it happened. Our collective inaction killed him, and killed Breonna Taylor; our not demanding more of people until the bodies are cold are the reason these things happen, not film, not TV, not games.
Our desire to turn deaths into TikTok challenges and memes to be shared killed them, because we reduced a human being’s life to nothing more than a viral hit before we move onto the next thing. Our inaction is responsible, our apathy, and our desire to ignore a problem killed them.
But maybe we’re not ready for that level of introspection yet.
