genquerdeer:

erikkillmongerdontpullout:

vague-humanoid:

sevenmoths:

full offense but the increase in cop shows in recent years being concurrent with the more widespread condemnation of the police is not a fucking coincidence

‘Dragnet’ was straight up LAPD propaganda, on national TV for years

Police Dramas on Television – Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Criminology

Some history, cop shows exist to make the public like cops.

Remember when I said this and people where mad because I would kiss the ground B99 walked on?

• Original detective stories of Sherlock Holmes: depict police as stiff and lacking imagination
• Later developments from early 20th century (Agatha Christie and such): similarly, police is stupid and easily tricked by criminals, and smart amateurs have to save the day
• around 1930s ‘hardboiled’ and noir fiction: police are every bit and corrupt and detestable as criminals, and sometimes ARE the gangsters. These are almost entirely realistic, as they’re often written from actual experiences of real private detectives
• 1940s, vigilante detective fiction like Batman and the Shadow: where as always, police is portrayed as at worst corrupt and at best useless, and it’s up to brilliant people in masks to solve crimes
• 1950s: SUDDENLY with Dragnet, police are all brilliant crimefighter heroes who solve all the crimes, and are Always Lawful Good, and criminals are Always Chaotic Evil
• onwards: 80-90% of detective fiction is about cops, and usually follows the Dragnet formula (e.g. stuff like CSI)

Thesis: police procedural is a predatory creation that has co-opted the notoriously anti-cop genre of detective fiction, whose primary starting idea was that cops were little more than thugish brutes, unsuited to subtle scientific art of solving crimes, and turned it into shallow propaganda.

Thesis point 2: Scooby Doo are the only unproblematic modern detective stories.