I have speculated in the past that television crime drama, in addition to public schools, are indoctrinating Americans to believe certain things. I don’t think it is intentional but it definitely is the result of something cultural. Regardless, in December 2002, I wrote using the example of CSI Miami:

It’s no wonder that the citizens of our country aren’t more upset by violations of our civil rights since the masses are shown these violations in our popular television programs. What’s actually worse is that these shows actually make these violations seem OK. I mean, who wants to see a child murderer go free? The cops did the right thing here. They caught the bad guy (actually, in the show the guy arrested didn’t turn out to be the perpetrator). Who cares if they threw civil liberties to the wind! They got their man! And this is perfectly acceptable.

I think the real kicker is that they could have had these scenes with no mention of ‘rights.’ Random Guy#2 could have asked ‘so, we’re free to go?’ and the cop could have just said ‘no.’ But the show actually brought it to our attention that the perps had rights and that the cops violated them. Quite curious if you ask me.

I also noted that kid’s aren’t being taught their rights at school. And H&HH wrote about Judging Amy abhorring freedom a while back.

It continues. The Mrs. had TiVoed an episode of Third Watch (a program she loves but I don’t particularly like). One of the issues in the show was that Male Police Officer was off duty and was robbed at gunpoint. Male Police Officer apparently drew his weapon and robbed his robber. Cool, I think, until Male Police Officer has his confessional with Female Police Officer. He tells her about it and she tells him that it’s wrong for him to do that. It is wrong for him to rob the robber. Fair enough. But then he says (and I am paraphrasing):

I’m not gonna take that like some regular citizen!

What? Regular citizens should just take it? And you’re OK with that? We’re different? I’m not sure what city Third Watch takes place in, but it’s probably New York (since roughly 90% of all TV shows happen there. Knoxville is probably not an exciting place to base a sitcom on – there are other cities in this nation, you know). And in New York, only the cops, criminals, and rich people carry guns (DeNiro’s got a permit, ya know). TV is (though not intentionally) telling us that if you’re robbed, you’re powerless. Is it possibly subliminally telling citizens to arm themselves? No. Just that you’re powerless and you’re different from police. You can’t defend yourself but a policeman can.

Posted in uncategorized on May 3rd, 2004 by SayUncle | RSS 2.0 |