I’d guess I’d better explain my relationship with the Law & Order
shows. I am not one of those who believes that media violence
leads to more real violence. However, I have real concern about
the effect that media violence has on people’s comfort in this
world. During years when the general level of violence in America has
been decreasing, polls have regularly shown that people feel the
level of violence is increasing. Why? Well, I can’t help but suspect
that TV news is a key culprit. As the level of violence has
decreased, news stories have increased. Now, when an armed robber
shoots a convenience store clerk in Australia, we’ll see the
security camera footage on the loval news. Coverage of violence
lacks context, leaving us feeling as if we are in a violent
society, leading to a life of fear (and leading to some awful
legal policy situations, as the laws address the perceived
situations rather than the real one.)
Law & Order plays into this. The show has the feel of realism.
It is frequently (although not always) underplayed, generally
well-acted, and all in all makes its content seem quite real.
And yet, they present a rather large rate of murder among the
general non-drug-dealing, non-gang-member populace. And the
realistic feel often covers up dubious emotional reality, or
finds some unlikely scapegoat for crime (and yes, they’ve
tarred comics that way.) The feel of the shows make them
convincing, and the message they send encourages fear and
scapegoating.
L&O:CI is more of the same, only moreso. It’s villain-centric.
The lead male cop has such a keen grasp of human nature that
he seems to be ready to predict everything because his views
of humankind are absolute. The first episode pushed my unhappy
buttons on a couple key fronts: in one scene, the cop uses
mislogic about the spread of AIDS to mislead someone, and I’m
concerned he may have mislead some members of the audience,
in a way that misemphasizes the effect of bisexuality. And yes,
there was bisexuality among the baddies here… which I wouldn’t
mind so much if I could point to some positive bi depictions
on series TV. Great strides have been made in depiction of
homosexuality, but those whose loves are not so limited still
get the short end of the stick. I’ve got too many friends in
that category not to notice. (And before anyone tries to point
to Willow on Buffy — Willow has not failed to take sides, she
has merely switched them. There was a chance last year to
establish her a bi, but they went the other way.)
So I don’t foresee watching this series. It joins the other
L&O series on my “no thank you” list. Were it more realistic,
or less realistic-seeming, then I’d be more comfortable with
it. (But those of you who like L&O, do not dispair; it’s
available almost 24 hours a day it seems, if you have cable,
and at the current rate we will see a network primetime
lineup of nothing but L&O within our lifetime!)
Seeming realistic is not a problem that faces UC: UNDERCOVER
(one of the many titles that has driven my wife to point out
that all the good titles must have been long since taken.)
The key badguys are a batch of super-bank robbers who
have been hitting about a bank a week for three years. Yeah, right… the
modern bank robber is the most notoriously *stupid* type
of criminal. And the job of capturing these robbers have
fallen to a special undercover unit of bad-asses and problem
children of various sorts, who for some unknown reason have
been given a large degree of autonomy. It’s not quite clear
why they need folks to go undercover with this group of
robbers, as they clearly frequently know where these folks
are and how to contact them.
So the main guy they’re putting on the inside is being
given the description of his cover. “Your father was a
sperm donor,” he is told, “and your mother gave you up
for adoption.” My wife and I just looked at each other.
Yeah, sure, many women who go to the trouble of buying
donor sperm end up giving up their kids for adoption,
rrrrrriggght. (By a day later, I realized that the writers
probably meant “sperm donor” sarcastically for a man who
just wasn’t around…but that’s sure not how the line was
read!)
Big guns, and Melodrama Maximized Every Single Moment!
And hey, it’s written by the guy who wrote Armageddon,
so it must be good, right? I won’t be back for more of
this one…. and frankly, I doubt there’ll be much more
of it to come back to.
ALIAS launched in an interesting manner. The first episode
was more than an hour long, and ran without commercial
interruption. (It’ll probably rerun on the network as an
hour and a half. Don’t know how they’ll handle it if this
series ever reaches syndication.) This show isn’t realistic
either; it does, however, fit into the genre of ornate
covert action tales, with supersecret organizations,
double agents, and supertoys. This is stylish (if not
totally original in its style; there were scenes with
a bottle-red-haired lead actress running to a certain
musical background that evoked Run, Lola, Run rather
strongly.) Smoothly done, but without the over-the-top
thrills of a James Bond picture or the emotional involvement
of a good spy novel. It’s not a bad thing to watch, but
it didn’t leave me caring what happened next. I wouldn’t
be that suprised to see this series do well, but I don’t
think I’ll be along or the ride.
