This archive report was first published on 11 June 2020.
TV's portrayal of law enforcement has been a staple of American entertainment for decades. However, the recent wave of protests across the country has sparked a long-overdue conversation about the impact of these shows on our collective psyche.
As Aaron Rahsaan Thomas, an executive producer of the reboot of “S.W.A.T.”, recently wrote, there is a need to address the image of the hero cop. This is a crucial step towards creating more nuanced and thoughtful crime dramas.
Shows like “Brooklyn Nine-Nine” have taken a bold approach by explicitly addressing racism within the police force and the vulnerability of even black police officers to racial profiling. However, despite these efforts, the gestalt remains: cops, cops, cops.
As Kathryn VanArendonk wrote in Vulture, TV's default is to make police the main characters, and that is a message in itself. A TV series is a ride-along, placing you in the perspective of the protagonist, whether that protagonist is valorized or not.
We have spent innumerably more hours looking through the windshield from the perspective of the police than of the policed. This has created a cultural wiring that is difficult to overcome, especially when it comes to the easy, perpetual engine of conflict that crime stories provide.
However, the changes coming from the wave of protests across America may be deep and have lasting effects. They may even mean a generational change in attitudes among the people participating, or those listening to them.
But that will run up against generations of narratives in the minds of Americans who have unwound in front of the TV for decades. No one, after all, forced those broadcast audiences to sit down for those still relatively popular nightly hours of crime.
