 Hey everybody, I really wish I had something more fun to talk about, but the world continues to be insane. All over the country people are protesting unjust police conduct in response to what has been universally condemned as an egregious example of police brutality, the killing of George Floyd. A lot of the protests have turned into violent riots and looting. The property damage and human costs have been extensive. Many people have been injured, some seriously. Others have died. The footage is shocking. I've already talked about the importance of rejecting violence in our V for Vendetta episode, and I'm probably going to talk more about that in a future video. So we're not going to deal with that here. Instead, I want to talk about the perceptions people have of law enforcement and how the most popular genre in television shapes the way we think about criminal justice. Strap in and join me for a ride along on this short edition of Out of Fram. Full disclosure, with a few exceptions, I hate police procedural dramas. The stories are usually formulaic, poorly written, and unoriginal. But they're easy to write and cheap to shoot, so studios roll out the green light. The genre is everywhere, on every broadcast network and even most cable and premium channels. Law and Order SVU is the longest running primetime scripted TV show ever. This incredible popularity can be traced back to Dragnet in the 1950s. The procedural has shaped the perspective the general public holds of the police for generations, and probably not for the betterment of society. I get the appeal of these kinds of shows. As a narrative framework, this stuff works because cops are modern day knights and gunslingers. They're archetypal insta-heroes who face off against bad guys, slay dragons, and protect the rest of us on the other side of the thin blue line. But we've gone from police characters actually acting in heroic ways, like Mayberry's Andy Griffith and Dragnet's Joe Friday, to shows that make it seem like the badge itself is what makes the character a hero, not their actions. More importantly, police are unsurprisingly almost exclusively the main characters of these types of shows. Even when they're badly behaved anti-heroes like in NYPD Blue, Bosch, Justified, which I actually do love, and The Shield, the criminal of the weak format the procedurals fall into makes it so that the police characters are really the only ones who remain constant, and who we truly get to know and connect with. Plus, all of these stories are told entirely from their point of view. But, as TV and movie fans should know, point of view can play tricks on the truth. We have almost 70 years of cultural conditioning on television where the police, not the everyday people they interact with, are the ones whose personalities, lives, and values we're supposed to care about. Whether it's Sergeant Joe Friday giving an inspiring mawog about what it means to be a cop? Two Raylan Givens simply threatening to shoot someone in an incredibly cool way. Viewers are trained to believe that no matter the situation, no matter the action or its outcome, the police are always in the right. Morally questionable actions only seem wrong to supporting characters because they don't know, like we in the audience do, that despite any roughness or sharp edges, the cops are the good guys. And if their actions appear out of line to some, well, the bad guys aren't exactly playing by the rules either, are they? Sometimes the cops on these shows are emotionally conflicted about what they've done. Sometimes they're not. But the necessity of their abuses of power aren't generally questioned in any robust way. And when they are, we're most often led to conclude that they did the right thing. After all, law and order must be upheld. How many times have you heard something like this justification in a movie or TV show? I'm betting it's a lot. Cops in these stories routinely violate standards of evidence and due process and we all just give them a pass. Kids grow up and want to be cops because of these shows, thinking that a badge gives them license to do whatever they want. On the other hand, some kids grow up watching these shows and understandably think that maybe every single cop is corrupt and become mistrustful. Both of these extremes are unfair and inaccurate. And the people teaching these lessons, writing the stories we're bringing into our homes week after week, bear some measure of responsibility for how we feel about law enforcement. Even though renowned creator Dick Wolf just publicly fired one of his writers for inflammatory social media posts about looters and curfews, it doesn't change the fact that Wolf spent 30 years creating and writing for incredibly popular shows like All of the Law and Order franchises, Miami Vice, Hill Street Blues, New York Undercover, Chicago PD, Chicago Justice, FBI, and FBI Most Wanted. His work is at least somewhat to blame for the way we all think about the police today. Here in the U.S., we like to claim that we're all equal before the law, but recent events have reminded us once again that some are more equal than others. Every day, we're all subject to the capricious enforcement of an ever-expanding network of laws that criminalize an increasingly wide range of victimless behavior. Civilians are expected to submit to the most heavy-handed police action with perfect calm and meek politeness. Any deviation from complete and servile compliance is used as evidence that mistreatment at the hands of law enforcement was justified. Meanwhile, our police officers are held to a different standard. Prosecutors have historically been hesitant to bring charges against police officers when they hurt or kill people they shouldn't have. Public sector unions are very good at protecting the jobs of the bad apples. And the legal doctrine of qualified immunity shields individual cops from civil liability even when they blatantly violate people's constitutional rights. But that reality is almost never displayed in the stories that we tell each other about the police. At least not on primetime TV. I'm not here to tell you what shows you should watch. Like what you like. But be mindful of what exactly the content you're consuming is telling you. Think critically about it and ask yourself how it's shaped your worldview. Then compare that worldview to reality. If the difference surprises you, consider changing the channel. Hey everybody, thanks for watching this episode of Out of Frame. For all our patrons who participated in choosing the topic for this week, I know you asked for something else and I promise we'll get to it next episode. But given the state of current events, this just felt more appropriate. I hope that's okay. And if you're interested in supporting Out of Frame, please follow the link in the description to our Patreon page. Don't forget to like this video and subscribe to the channel. Hit that bell icon so you get notifications when we put up new episodes. And as always, be sure to check out all our social media on YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. Thanks for watching.