I'm so glad I was completely consumed with interest in computers and programming all throughout the 90s. I almost never watched television, and after watching this, I'm glad I didn't.
It never fails to amaze me that people are stupid enough to believe a fictional program they watch, which even has disclaimers at the end of each program telling you its fictional. I'm sure someone with rush to the defense of these idiots and claim they're just "gullible" but I'm not sure that's better.
Someone coined the phrase "copaganda" for this kind of thing. I wouldn't be surprised if the Dirty Harry genre themes of police struggling bravely against those who would hold them accountable has contributed to the unusually high number of deaths caused by US police, and thus the riots of last year.
> I wouldn't be surprised if the Dirty Harry genre themes of police struggling bravely against those who would hold them accountable
That is not the theme of Dirty Harry.
Callahan is fighting against a city overrun with crime, struggling against an inept, and in the other films in the series, corrupt, bureaucracy and police force. People forget that major American cities weren't the crime-free near-utopias they are now, or at least, were before COVID-19 hit. New York City was widely regarded as a bit of a shithole back then and in the early 80s.
The viewer is meant - and many did - to sympathize with Callahan as bends, and outright breaks, the rules in the pursuit of justice in a world where it all too often escapes the victims.
24 is way up there at the top, and The Shield, as brilliant as it is, pretty much has you rooting for the corrupt cops the entire time. Beyond that, every other police procedural that pits accountability as the enemy. Everyone else is the bad guy, they deserve whatever they get.
The Wire, graciously excluded as it takes a nuanced perspective.
The truly bizarre aspect of so many of these is that the story tends to pit the main characters against 'the man', or 'the system'. But for any normal person, they are 'the man'.
It goes farther than that. Every cop show has themes like this.
For example, in The Rookie, the titular character gets shot at at an alarming frequency per episode. If cops had to endure so many shootouts, a) their life expectancy on the job would be in the order of a few months at most, and b) militarization and shoot-first-and-ask-questions-never would be understandable (not defensible, but understandable). Seriously, front line soldiers in war zones do not see as much action as rookie cops in LA presumably do, if the show is taken as realistic.
Or almost in any cop show, only guilty people ask for lawyers. And if the lawyers get someone out of jail, it is depicted as an injustice and a technicality.
The list goes on and on. Police procedural, both comedy and drama, suffer from a serious lack of verisimilitude.
I really love 24. I just wish shows do not go darker over time. I mean, why should Bauer suffer more as time goes by. This belief that every serious hero must suffer some kind of greek tragedy just puzzles me to no end. What’s wrong with us simply enjoying Bauer defeating powerful villains?
Bauer and his team were bigger war criminals than the people they tortured and persecuted.
I was going to say that this was created in the wake of 9/11 and, for the US, it was a sort of catharsis. But the US hasn't existed without an enemy, it appears to proactively create them.
The X-Files is one of the few series I know to directly call that out, because that's been US modus operandi ever since the Brits and the Confederates stopped being an enemy. An entire episode is literally "what do we do? we have no enemies." But of course, the show continues with the invention of a new threat.
Hmm cute but I think off the mark. Batman's niche above the cops in the dark knight trilogy seems to be hand to hand combat, cleverness, stealth, and mobility. He doesn't really identify as a detective in those films at all. I don't think anyone would believe that the a legally unrestrained gordon could have defeated any of the trilogy's antagonists.
Superheroes acting above the law is a fairly generic problem outside of that
To go nerdily pseudoquantative I would expect roughly a exposure * quality * originality impact. If something introduces a new trope or context and it is widely watched it ends up echoing itself with imitators and callbacks unless discredited. If it is novel but is niche or panned it will introduce the idea to a few and may rarely get snuck in as an obscure reference or inspiration. (See the B-movie influences on major film-makers.) One random example for theory crafting is how Avatar has become infamous for how forgettable a movie it is from lack of originality and poor plot. Forgetability aside, if a myth or concept is already widely believed or known there isn't as much change it can introduce and worse, it risks becoming seen as boring.
There are all sorts of messy cross-correlative details too like big budget works taking fewer risks and being less original owing to the stakes.
I dunno... I think this is just innate. And to be clear: I say this as an inveterate woke hippy and someone deeply distrustful of american police culture.
People want heroes. Heroes need bad guys. People thus want bad guys and will celebrate the groups that oppose them as heroes. In the US we had heroes fighting japs and nazis, then commies (notably no one ever fought the confederates in pop culture...).
But come the age of globalization in the 80's and especially after the collapse of the USSR, we just ran out of bad guys.
So we made some up out of the junkies on the street. I mean, certainly there was crime in that world. And at the top it was organized. And there was real violence between cartels and dealers. Those were bad guys! Go get 'em, heroes!
TV didn't do that. We did it to ourselves. TV just reflected what we all agreed on.
> notably no one ever fought the confederates in pop culture...
That could be worth unpacking, that one. The confederacy get remarkably good treatment by comparison. I think there's maybe a couple of Westerns on the subject? By comparison there's a lot of films depicting them as misunderstood honorable victims of circumstances.
Having watched a lot of bad 80s films in lockdown, it's remarkable how many post-apocalyptic settings look like New York if it was never cleaned up. The peak of course is Escape from new York
Well, if you don't have good guys and bad guys, then the government doesn't have the guise of your protection to justify its having and using monopoly of force.
Also, I don't think _we_ need them, but narratives that justify the above do.
Friends and Seinfeld didn't have heroes and bad guys.
> In the US we had heroes fighting japs and nazis, then commies (notably no one ever fought the confederates in pop culture...).
Worth noting that a lot of those you just mentioned either had direct government funding, or received government assistance, because of who they depicted as the bad guys.
It wasn't just human nature to paint them as the bad guys, it was part of a propaganda machine (overtly at first during WWII), and continues to this day. If you want to depict the US military in Hollywood, they will help you to do so, with certain rules about what you do or don't depict.
Until recently, TV networks received similar funding if they kept a anti-drug thematic in their works. (Though receiving networks of said funding said they didn't rewrite anything to fit those messages).
> TV didn't do that. We did it to ourselves. TV just reflected what we all agreed on.
I'm afraid I don't think that is clear. TV was actively influenced. What we watch was influenced. To what degree did that influence extend into the social conscience? That's a bit beyond me.
> In the US we had heroes fighting japs and nazis, then commies (notably no one ever fought the confederates in pop culture...).
In modern mass media I can't contradict that, but Stephen Crane's book The Red Badge of Courage was very well received. I believe it is often ranked among the best American novels.
I always have mixed feelings on if art influences society ... or it is just a representation of it.
Particularly when it comes to getting eyeballs on TV, or a movie. People making that content are thinking about what people will want to watch.
Does someone "glorified 'The Thin Blue Line'" (just picking a random bit from this article) because they saw it on TV... or is TV responding to what that person already thinks / wants to watch?
It's super easy to think about other people who we don't share the same views with as: "Oh those people are just misinformed because X influence." But I'm not sure that's always the case.
> I always have mixed feelings on if art influences society ... or it is just a representation of it.
It's a little bit of both. There is a model of society called the "base and superstructure" [0]. The base comprises of the means of production as well as everyone's relationship to the means of production. Superstructures, like art and culture, are built on top of the base and are both shaped by the base as well as re-enforce the base.
Doesn't the historic sucess of political propaganda, and the marketing successes of companies like Coca-Cola, illustrate the power of art to influence society, to some extent?
And it doesn't have to be an either or. They can both mutually shape each other.
Andy Warhol and a million graphic designers might disagree :)
I maintain that art affects society. Scorsese makes Taxi Driver, some crazy guy watches it, decides to shoot Ronald Reagan to impress Jody Foster. Would crazy guy have done the same thing regardless of the movie? Maybe. Would he have done it on the same day, at the same time, in the exact same way? Probably not.
The world where Scorsese chose to make Taxi Driver is different than the one where the movie never existed; maybe the difference is trivial, but -some- effect is there. The remaining question is the extent of that effect.
The fact that when I imagine a cop, I imagine "Bad Boys" and "Law and Order", even when I haven't watched these shows for over a decade, is a testament to art's effects. Maybe this image was born out of the crime waves of the 70s-80s, but the image persists, affecting how people feel on topics of policing.
The motivations may be different, but how they convey their message is very similar. Advertisements, documentaries, and even propaganda, manipulate our emotions and subconscious thoughts using the exact same techniques as film and television. All of these can be used to subtly influence public perception and opinions.
I think the motivation influences what you do. TV show, I want to show people what they're going to watch. Showing them some congestive dissonance generally won't work.
If I want to sell someone a burger I already made what they want "the burger" presumably to what they want to eat. Now I want them to know about it.
It's been said that more people get their understanding of the bible from Milton's Paradise Lost (directly or indirectly) than from the Bible. If you look at both, many elements we're familiar with are from Milton (IIRC, and it's been a long time, the apple in the Garden of Eden is an example).
> Particularly when it comes to getting eyeballs on TV, or a movie. People making that content are thinking about what people will want to watch.
But what they will want to watch isn't what they already know, it's what they are comfortable with. There is new information, the problem is new info that challenges the viewer too much. The better artists walk that line better: they find ways to present challenging information that will go down easily.
Note that the article quotes the Lear Center's research; it's named after and founded by Norman Lear, who made (among many other shows) All in the Family, which covered political issues, including race, and without pulling (many) punches, in 1971 and was an enormous hit. I highly recommend watching the first season - great on many levels. And it will press your buttons, even today.
"If you want to tell people the truth, make them laugh or they will kill you." (Attributed to many people, from Oscar Wilde to George Bernard Shaw to Richard Pryor)
>It's been said that more people get their understanding of the bible from Milton's Paradise Lost (directly or indirectly) than from the Bible. If you look at both, many elements we're familiar with are from Milton (IIRC, and it's been a long time, the apple in the Garden of Eden is an example).
I doubt that more people have read Paradise Lost than have read the Bible
I don't think these are contradictory. More people have read the Bible, but many of the details they know about the story are from paradise lost, not the bible.
The apple thing apparently predates Paradise Lost. It may have come from a Latin/Greek pun, or was possibly lifted from Greek mythology. And apparently neck lumps being called "Adam's apples" predates Paradise Lost by at least a few years.
It's bi directional. Art is both a reflection of society and the shaper of it. Specifically easily accessible media.
If it's too outlandish it doesn't resonate with people, so it's bound by the outer limits of what society accepts. However that outer limit has a lot of play room and let's you shift the overton window in terms of influencing society.
It's a feedback loop.
At best it can help shape society to be better. Introduce and normalize ideas like interracial romance (Star trek) or expand people's minds (e.g the Tulsa riots in Watchmen were the first that many had heard of it)
At worst, it's propaganda, cementing us in our beliefs. Like the example of drugs used in the original post, but worse, normalizing authoritarianism.
I love cops, they're so funny and silly and always do the right™ thing.
I literally will disgrace the national flag with my own version of it, and you know what? I'll even throw a punisher logo with a thin blue line, because you know, the punisher loved cops as much as I did.
This whole damn nation was founded on respecting the authority and licking boots.
I was recruited as a junior executive into a large media corp earlier in my career, and I will never forget my manager's closing "sales pitch" at a bar in midtown Manhattan: "Join us and become part of the group that shapes global culture. Where else are you going to go where you can have this kind of impact on society?"
It's an open question whether art influences society or vice versa, but I can tell you from firsthand experience that executives in show business have no doubt it's the former, and they revel in that power. It wasn't for me, I quit after a year.
I felt something in media much darker than the stereotypical SV kumbaya-change-the-world thing. It was about loving that you have the power to influence how and what ordinary people thought about. Keep in mind this was before social media. Maybe this is how Facebook algorithm developers nowadays also think.
Art is one of many tools of social construction. Memes, for example, are just viral artwork. Plays are used to construct popular narratives and tell stories, which shapes how we see the world. Pictures are worth a thousand words. Society is both creator of, and by, art.
It is certainly a complex issue. Look at 24 series. Groundbreaking in its own way and its impact on cultural mores cannot be denied ( normalization of torture and so on ). If I wanted to simplify my answer, I would say it goes both ways.
Years ago, a friend and I started a street paper in our city. A lot of our vendors had really serious addictions. The perception you would get about homeless/near homeless addicts from copaganda and the truth is remarkably far apart.
My biggest take from a lot of those interactions was how much they're like tech founders. I swear that if one particular vendor had discovered a IIc instead of LSD in the mid-80s, every one of us on this site would know his name.
Experiences like that really chip away at the "Thin Blue Line" narrative where these flawed people are our last line of defense against the degeneracy of drugs.
> I swear that if one particular vendor had discovered a IIc instead of LSD in the mid-80s, every one of us on this site would know his name.
I don't know if I'm missing the point here, but if this is true, then wouldn't it follow that drugs are something that society should be fighting against?
That’s actually pretty close to the point, just warped slightly. What if we stopped fighting because part of fighting a war on drugs means turning some pretty cool people into enemies?
Assuming IIc is an Apple reference, I'm pretty sure Steve Jobs asked people if they did LSD during the interview and didn't hire them if they were squares.
That’s pretty close to what I was getting at. Without violating too much confidence, the guy I’m talking about had a bit of a breakdown in the mid-80s, around when the IIc was released. With just a couple of small changes, I can’t even guess what he could accomplish.
Unfortunately, we fight a war on drugs and make people like that into enemies. I don’t think fighting is the solution and if it is, I’m still waiting for results.
I can’t even watch tv. The law and order, ncis, swat, seal, whatever - it’s just completely pervasive in society now. Even the BBC productions that used to be thinking and clever Inspectors now always have some gun battle.
yeah but they're the supervillian/shadow conspiracy kind of bent cops where almost all the cops who do bad things are good people who get manipulated into doing bad by criminal masterminds. and the "good" cops commit abuses just as bad as the "bad" cops
The final episode of S7 had so many references to real UK police corruption it was practically a speech to camera. You could tell it hit home by the number of complaints about it on Twitter.
The rationales for the war on drugs are now acceptable to question. It is worth remembering that questioning these rationales was considered heretical not long ago.
When I've asked others about their views on debunked popular delusions, they often reply, "I always knew [insert premise] wasn't true".
If as many people disbelieved these premises as self-report post-debunking, the premise would have never been popular. Media outlets would have never sold the rationale. The important feature of propaganda, is that you are not aware that it is propaganda.
Therefore, it is worth looking at current promotions and examining currently held beliefs.
Even if we arrive at the eventuality of a full end to the drug war, if all non-violent offenders are released - We still can't give those people their lives back. A self-righteous retrospective won't put the pieces back together.
What are the current mythologies the presses are selling and how do they impact civil liberties?
I think the American press is implicated in widespread delusions about dispersed patterns of settlement and car mobility. Many newspaper and TV networks are funded significantly by car makers and real estate agents, so they have a self-interest in not examining whether it's nonsense to build and move around the way we do. I think in the near future it will be obvious, at least to younger people, that everyone having a little detached house and two cars is pure nonsense. I imagine the birth year gradient of this perception will be similarly steep to the one seen for views of homosexuality and recreational marijuana.
A single person can operate in most suburban areas with only a bicycle. I'm not convinced the objections I've heard can be related to media consumption.
As a single man, I would personally be miserable if I lived in the suburbs without a car. Maybe we have very different ideas of what suburban means, but I have a few questions:
How are they meeting new people? I've never seen a suburb with a nightlife or quality restaurants.
How are they dating? Do they invite people over on the first date?
Where are they buying their groceries?
I understand the desire to have space if you're raising a family, but I can't understand why a single person would willingly live in the suburbs and choose not to own a car.
I live in a suburb with restaurants, several bars, and three grocery stores all within about three miles, with the closest things being about a mile away, because I live in the center of the neighborhood. Easily doable on a bicycle. Tons of good restaurants, too, both local and chain, and a great diversity of cuisine from around the world. Oh and I live in Texas. How's that for stereotypes?
When I was dating (I'm married now) I lived in the city center in an apartment, but it didn't matter because I met my wife online anyway.
We met up in public for the first time at a bar about a mile from my apartment. This would have been the same experience had I already lived in the suburbs, except being 23 at the time, she might've thought I was lame.
And I'll tell ya, I didn't meet new people living downtown anyway. I met new people through work. Who is going to bars or restaurants to meet new people? Nobody I know
That sounds fantastic. I think we have very different ideas of what suburban means, though. In that suburban neighborhood, where do people work? Is everyone remote, except for the service workers at the restaurants, bars, grocery stores, etc? Or do most people commute to a nearby city? Don't you need a car for that?
Cheaper than living in the city center. Suburban towns, bedroom communities usually have bars. Being fit generally helps with dating. Maybe not the best look if you're trying to project the image of a "responsible bread winner". However there's nothing irresponsible about the saved money.
Grocery stores are abundant. Is the idea of bicycling with groceries impossible, because of media portrayals? I don't see that.
Cars are a hassle and expense. Insurance, repairs, fuel and tickets. The opportunity to be pulled over and searched after an alleged traffic infraction. If you want to leave the country and your rental lease it is another item to store.
Don't forget parking! I don't own a car and I agree 100%. I live in a city, though, so it's pretty easy for me to get groceries, go out, stay fit, etc. I guess my experience of suburbia is the sprawl associated with florida, southern california, etc where there are these giant housing communities without a grocery store, gym, or bar for miles. And the ones that are nearby tend to be in chains in strip malls with very little character or personality. Think applebees and planet fitness type places.
The war media constantly tells us how dangerous the brown people are and how we should keep preemptively bombing them. Obviously that whole narrative is insane and the only reason we're still fighting in Afghanistan (and we ever started fighting in dozens of other nations) is in order to spend more money on armaments. None of it has a thing to do with security; all of these stupid wars have made us less secure. You'll never hear that on any of the cable news channels, though.
Predictions of the War on Terror security state being turned inward have all come to pass. Domestic terrorists are now presented as the biggest security threat.
Expect a similar outcome for the new biosecurity state.
Of course, these views are near heretical. Just like questions about the drug war decades ago. Then there are the horrors of a climate apocalypse which we must not question.
NPR can give themselves a pat on the back while promoting all of the above, without acknowledging their participation in the War on Drugs. It is all a bit rich, beyond hypocritical. Observe that most of the topics above are flame war material here at HN, well...
It really ought to be more humbling than it is, just how much popular and progressive moral authority was lined up behind temperance and Prohibition the first time. I understand now we have the narrative that the war on drugs was an explicit ploy of oppression but I have to believe that it was at least helped along by the same feature of our psyches that gave us the 1920s.
Is it going to take 20-30 more years for the same kind of articles to be made on the war on terror and our portrayal of 9/11 and everything surrounding it, until we finally wake up and realize it was a story sold to us?
Rather than (or in addition to) having typical casual forum discussions about yet another example of <x>, I think it would be a useful exercise for humanity to start a crowd sourced initiative to start assembling a singular, comprehensive, authoritative (as an eventual goal) list of things that humanity does at scale that contribute to the complex chain of (largely unknown/unrealized) causality that produces sub-optimal outcomes in shared physical reality.
Doing this perfectly would not be easy, but I suspect perfection is not an absolute requirement.
