What South Park tells us about ourselves

Your faithful scribe has had his hands full lately, trying to balance several projects simultaneously, including the penultimate draft of a new book, which, let's face it, is to your benefit, as well as some future projects which promise much—especially more work. Therefore, with your indulgence (in addition to avoiding a full-fledged anxiety attack) I present, for your consideration, this piece from 2017, which I think still holds up. Or maybe not, but at the very least it takes up—space, that is, which right now is just what's needed.

And now we come to the confession portion of today’s blog, wherein I tell you that I’ve never, ever, seen an episode of South Park. (Not boasting, just fact. Although I've never watched it, I'm quite familiar with it, thanks to my efforts on behalf of you, dear readers, to keep abreast of the pop culture scene.) Now, I know what you’re thinking – well, duh, all you ever watch is classic TV anyway, so what? True, South Park doesn’t exactly fit into my M.O. for TV viewing, but as this article at the AV Club reminds us, it has now been on for 20 years, and so it’s bound to fit into someone’s definition of classic. More than that, and the reason I bring it up today, is that this article asks us to take a close look at the effect South Park has had on society over its run, and how it’s shaped the way people behave. As Sean O’Neill writes, an entire generation has now grown up with South Park always there, a constant part of their lives, with the effect of “allowing a healthy, amused skepticism to ossify into cynicism and self-satisfied superiority, then into nihilism, then into blanket, misanthropic hatred.”

South Park’s influence echoes through every modern manifestation of the kind of hostile apathy—nurtured along by Xbox Live s**t-talk and comment-board flame wars and Twitter—that’s mutated in our cultural petri dish to create a rhetorical world where whoever cares, loses. Today, everyone with any kind of grievance probably just has sand in their v****a; expressing it with anything beyond a reaction GIF means you’re “whining”; cry more, your tears are delicious. We live in Generation U Mad Bro, and from its very infancy, South Park has armed it with enough prefab eye-rolling retorts (“ManBearPig!” “I’m a dolphin!” “Gay Fish!” “…’Member?”) to sneeringly shut down discussions on everything from climate change and identity politics to Kanye West and movie reboots. Why not? Everything sucks equally, anyway. Voting is just choosing between some Douche and a Turd Sandwich. Bullying is just a part of life. Suck it up and take it, until it’s your turn to do the bullying. Relax, guy.

(Sorry about the language there; I tried to edit it as much as possible. But I think it’s equally important to understand just what these cultural forces are, how they walk and talk and influence, and so I’m going to let some of this go through.)

Perhaps this will wind up as part of a chapter in my book, where we can discuss this more at length, but I don’t want to give South Park too much credit for this; we can’t really know whether it created this mindset, exploited it, or merely gave it a louder volume. Neither, however, should we dismiss it's impact as insignificant. The point here is that in comparing television of the past with that of today, one thing we have to consider is the effect the programming has on the public – not just the people who watch the programs, but those who live in the culture populated by and in large part created by those viewers. We’ve seen television pass through many stages during its existence, all the while questioning the effect it has. At various times its purpose has been to entertain, to educate, to challenge, to prevaricate, to lead.

In particular, the history of television is littered with discussions regarding its effect on children. Here, too, the hope has been to educate, but along with that – or maybe I should say in conflict with it – we’ve seen it portrayed as a mindless babysitter, a manic instigator of hyperactivity and short attention spans, an agent provocateur, a thief that robs the young of their childhood and turns them into cynical, sexualized, immature mini-adults. This is what happens when television’s purpose is to tear down.

Sometimes television mirrors the culture, sometimes it drives it. In this case, it’s not clear there’s even anyone at the wheel. Parker and Stone, the creators of South Park, may not have intended this when they started out, and indeed O’Neill suggests they may well have struggled with what their creation hath wrought. But then, we all know the composition of the road to Hell. TV  

This week in TV Guide: January 6, 1962

t's t's once again the start of a new year: 2025 if you're reading this today, 1962 if you were reading it in real time. I like to think of these TV Guide articles as cultural snapshots, giving us a look at what things were like at a given point in time, and if you want to know what was hot at the beginning of 1962, here it is: the Twist. 

The Twist is something of a scandal in the world of dance, as indicated by the headline of this unbylined article, in which Dick Clark and Chubby Checker are referred to as the "culprits" responsible for the Twist's popularity, "and, worse, they seem happy about it all." It was nearly two years ago that the dance, described as a "spine-torturing, dervishlike tribal rite," first began to appear on Clark's American Bandstand, piquing the curiosity of the host. "I'm always watching for new things," Clark explains, "and I asked [the kids] what it was. 'The Twist,' they said. So I looked it up and found Hank Ballard had a record out called 'The Twist.' " Clark decided to import it from Ballard's nightclub act, and recruited a young singer named Chubby Checker to cut a remake of it. It caught on, in Clark's words, "like blue jeans and chino pants," and soon was being danced everywhere from high schools to country clubs, even bar mitzvahs. 

And, with the help of Atlantic Records president Ahmet Ertegun, who introduced a few of his society friends to the dance, it soon spread to the adult set. Next thing anyone knew, there was a "Twist Party" at the posh Manhattan nightspot Four Seasons, and everyone from the Duke and Duchess of Bedford to Elsa Maxwell, Merle Oberon, and Greta Garbo, have been twisting away. "I could pontificate around like the brain boys who've been taking pen in hand over this thing," says Clark, "talk about inhibitions, release of cold-war tensions and all that jazz. But I think it's mostly that adults are beginning to find out how much fun the kids are having." 

Despite its looks, it's actually not a particularly difficult dance to perform, as you can see in the pictures of Chubby (like Fats Domino, "only not so fat") demonstrating the moves, "a twisting of the hips to a rock 'n' roll beat." Notwithstanding that, I'd wind up in traction if I tried to do it, but then sitting at a keyboard doesn't call for much in the way of twisting. As for where it all ends, Clark says that it actually peaked about a year ago, and now is actually staging a revival in the wake of the Bop, the Slop, the Chop, the Mashed Potatoes, and other dances that sound like it came from your local Golden Corral. The always-astute Clark, however, thinks it may have a longer lifespan than usual. "The kids discard such dance fads quickly, but I'm inclined to think the adults won't." 

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One of Cleveland Amorys most anticipated columns of the year was the one in which the reader had his say, praising—or, as is more often the case, excoriating—the critic's opinions throughout the past year. Although we don't have Cleve to kick around yet, we do have Gilbert Seldes, and this week he opens up the mailbag to see what you, the viewer, thought of his views. 

Most of the letters he receives begin by asking him to "shut up" and conclude with "We like the show and we don't care what you think!" These, Seldes says, are the letters he most appreciates. One of America's greatest attributes is that it's a free country, "and the editors of TV Guide have made use of their freedom to give me the freedom to say what I think." This, he acknowledges, may have been a mistake, and he's the first to admit that he's commited a mistake or two (or three) himself. But what is beyond any doubt is that he's free to make such mistakes. What is also beyond doubt is that, no matter what he says about whatever program he may be reviewing, he'll get ten letters from people who disagree with him. But when it comes to being a critic, there's one simple fact: "No matter what program you like, there are two or three times as many peole who like something else better." Furthermore, "[t]here are probably 40 million people, not professional critics, who don't particularly like the program you are crazy about." And their letters "give me exactly the same kind of pain I give the readers of this page at times." 

But before we turn this into some kind of Barneyesque "I don't like you, you don't like me" moment, Seldes gets to the point: "one of the most agreeable aspects of our freedom comes in the letters readers write to me, telling me to keep my trap shut." After all, if he's free to tell us what he thinks, it's only fair that we have the same opportunity. One of the problems we face in America these days is that we're really not free to disagree with each other anymore, because our disagreements get so disagreeable. We don't take them as an opportunity to teach each other, or to learn from each other. We view disagreement as chance to prove our superiority versus someone else's inferiority. And let's be honest: where's the fun in that? There isn't any, which is part of what makes modern culture just as disagreeable as our own disagreements. That is what Gilbert Seldes is really writing about here, from a past that was far more open to discussion than ours is. Whereas we are, today, too prone to think that opinions other than ours should be silenced, Seldes thinks just the opposite. To those who say he should keep his "trap shut," his response is a simple one: "I won't." But, he adds, "I'm glad they don't."

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And now, here's something I think we can all agree on: that Suzanne Pleshette, according to Troy Donahue, sets "bells ringing." Not only is she a dark-haired beauty of smoldering good looks, she's a very talented actress who throws herself into her work with enthusiasm, and gets nervous when she isn't working. "Luckily I've had only 10 days off since I started four years ago."

She's worked with the likes of old-time stars Victor Jory, Mary Astor, and Mildred Dunnock on anthologies such as Playhouse 90. ("I've never done a TV show I didn't like.") She's worked with Roddy McDowall, Eli Wallach and Tom Poston on Broadway. And she's now making her way into movies, having appeared in The Geisha Boy with Jerry Lewis, and Rome Adventure with Angie Dickinson and the aforementioned Troy Donahue (whom she'll marry and divorce in 1964). As if that weren't enough, she's working on writing a novel; I don't know if it was ever published, although she did write several screenplays under a pseudonym. No wonder she's considered a "non-conformist" and "secret thinker" in Hollywood.

I would have included this brief feature on her regardless, but considering what we previously noted in Gil Seldes' review, I think this quote from a 2006 interview Pleshette gave with the Television Academy is quite prescient: "We're losing manners. We're losing style. We're losing kindness. A lot of it is happening as a result of the television we're doing and the characters we're willing to play that reflect a piece of human nature. But it's done over and over because it gets laughs or because it's dramatically interesting. What's the actor's obligation to make the world a better place?" What, indeed?

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The NFL season ended last weekend, with the Green Bay Packers defeating the New York Giants on New Year's Eve, but that doesn't quite mean that we're done with football. On Saturday, we have one of the most pointless, unimportant games ever thought up by the NFL: the Play Off Bowl (1:45 p.m., CBS), pitting the second-place teams from the East and West. Granted, the purpose of the game was to raise money for the players' pension fund, so it served a charitable purpose, but what football player wants to put his health on the line in a game that was originally called the Runner-Up Bowl? At that, the game was played for ten years, from 1961 to 1970, at the Orange Bowl in Miami. Today's contestants are the Philadelphia Eagles and Detroit Lions, with the Lions winning 38-10. They hold the dubious record of having won the first three Play Off Bowls, meaning they were always a bridesmaid, never a bride. On Sunday, the AFL engages in a similarly meaningless game, the inaugural All-Star Game, live from San Diego (3:30 p.m., ABC), with the West All-Stars coming out on top of the East, 47-27.

We've also got a couple of college all-star games on-hand, games that were more important back in the days before specialized scouting and ad nauseam bowl games, because they provided an opportunity for college players to display their talents to viewers and scouts alike. On Saturday, North and South stars face-off in the Senior Bowl from Mobile, Alabama (3:00 p.m., NBC). For the players participating, it's their first "professional" game, as the winners receive $600 each, the losers $500. Of course, that isn't even meal money for these guys today, more credit to them. Sunday sees a game that even I'd never heard of, played (to the best of my knowledge) only once: the U.S. Bowl (2:00 p.m., NBC), with the players drafted by East Division NFL teams playing against those drafted by West Division NFL teams. Yes, back then the draft was held right at the end of the season, rather than being held over until April the way it is today. 

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There's a strong whiff of nostalgia in this week's issue, and not just because we're looking back at it from the perspective of 63 years. On Sunday night, the DuPont Show of the Month presents "Hollywood—My Home Town" (10:00 p.m., NBC), a one-hour documentary based on the famous 16mm home movie collection taken by vaudeville comedian Ken Murray, who in 1927 began documenting his Hollywood experiences, and I don't think it's an exaggeration to say that virtually everyone who was anyone showed up in Murray's movies, often in candid moments, including W.C. Fields, Will Rogers, Leslie Howard, Carole Lombard, Jack Lemmon, Douglas Fairbanks Sr., Mary Pickford, Errol Flynn, Gary Cooper, Bing Crosby, Elizabeth Taylor, Bob Hope, Glenn Ford, and others. If Hollywood had a scrapbook, this would be it.

That's followed on Friday by "The Good Years" (8:30 p.m., CBS), a 90-minute Westinghouse Presents variety special based on the very good book by historian Walter Lord, author of the definitive Titanic book A Night to Remember. Covering the years 1900-1914, the show, produced by Leland Hayward and directed by Franklin Schaffner, features Henry Fonda, Lucille Ball, and Mort Sahl using skits, songs, recreations, photograps, and cartoons to review the major events of the day. And there were plenty of significant events over those 14 years, from the Wright Brothers at Kitty Hawk to Teddy Roosevelt becoming president, with figures such as Einstein, Freud, and Lenin thrown in. (As you can see, one of the events that occurred was the adoption of the income tax, which just proves that the word "Good" can be relative.) As remarkable as these two programs are, what might be even more remarkable is that both of them still exist, and can be viewed at those YouTube links. Interesting that while the shows presented a nostalgic look-back in 1962, they themselves are nostalgia for us today.

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Contrasting articles on two of television's stars, Vincent Edwards and Michael Landon. At age 25, Landon, according to our unbylined profile, has what one producer called "the most highly intuitive set of natural acting responses I've seen in a young actor." He's seen laughing and joking on the Bonanza set, seemingly unconcerned about an upcoming, highly-charged death scene, only to transform himself as the camera rolls, becoming so involved in the scene that genuine tears roll down his cheeks, and leaving his co-stars too shaken to speak. After a moment to regain his composure, he's off again, with a reference to the deceased character's love life that was "so irreverent, so hilarious (and so unprintable) that they are still talking about it around Paramount studios."

On the other hand we have Vince Edwards, star of ABC's first-year medical series Ben Casey, described by Bobby Darin as "a combination of Charlton Heston and Burt Lancaster." He's a man who, in Robert de Roos's cover story, is absolutely "dedicated" to his work. "I couldn't have stuck to it for 12 years unless I had the same sort of fanaticism Ben Casey has for medicine." Unlike Landon, who seems to be able to turn it on whenever required, Edwards often mirrors the intense, almost surly demeanor of his character. Says co-star Nick Dennis of the similarities between actor and role, "They're both educated peasants, Casey and Vince Edwards. That's the most dangerous kind."

Away from work, Landon raises tropical fish, loves DIY projects, and adores his family. "Acting?" he says. "Sure. I can still get hold of those emotions when I need 'em. But I also like the financial security. Just say I have the family I always loved and wanted." Edwards is a "nut" about many things, from flying ("I used to fly my own plane" but gave it up because of his responsibilities on the show) to sports, working out, and "any kind of excitement," but rarely has time due to the intense filming schedule of Casey; unlike Landon, who is just one member of an ensemble cast, Edwrds is in every scene, every day. "It's a grind, but I've waited for it and I like it." 

It's so interesting looking at the two men in retrospect. There were other things that Edwards was a "nut" about, including his addiction to gambling, which caused him to gain a reputation as "one of the most difficult stars now working on television." leading co-star Sam Jaffe to leave the series, fed up with Edwards' distractions. He makes another attempt at series television after Casey ends, but Matt Lincoln fails to make it past its first season.

And Landon, the dedicated family man, will divorce his wife Dodie later in 1962, and marries twice more before his death in 1991. He, too, gains a reputation for being strong-willed, both on- and off-set. However, unlike Edwards, Landon's television career seems to go from one hit to another: Bonanza to Little House on the Prairie to Highway to Heaven.

All of this is in the future, however. For now, Vincent Edwards and Michael Landon remain two young stars of tremendous talent, with varying reputations that somewhat belie their real lives. But after all, Hollywood is a place of dreams, where reality often takes a back seat. And as someone once said, if sin showed on a man's face, there would be no mirrors. TV  

The rural purge and its aftermath

My latest appearance on the Dan Schneider Video Interview is a discussion of the infamous "Rural Purge" of the early 1970s, a purge that saw several series (particularly on CBS), including The Beverly Hillbillies, Green Acres, Petticoat Junction, The Lawrence Welk Show, and Hee Haw bite the dust despite the fact that they continued to draw high ratings. 

But the rural purge was about more than just getting rid of "hayseed" comedies skewing to older audiences; by programming shows that prioritized attracting viewers from specific demographics rather than those with broad, widespread appeal, the rural purge signaled a difference in how networks and advertisers viewed urban viewers (and content that appealed to them), versus those shows that reflected values and themes popular in middle America. It introduced the beginnings of a parallel distribution system that allowed shows like Lawrence Welk and Hee Haw to bypass the networks and reach their audiences via first-run syndication. It confirmed and exacerbated a divide that already existed between urban and rural America, one steeped in stereotypes, suspicion, mistrust, and condescension. And it was a major step in codifying that division through such terms as "red" and "blue" America, with television programs geared to support that confirmation bias. The end result: a television Balkanization of viewers that has become prevalent in virtually every aspect of American culture, politics, and entertainment.

At least that's my assertion in this episode; watch our discussion and draw your own conclusions. As always, your thoughts here and elsewhere are welcome! TV  

Around the dial

Frank Gabrielson's second and final Alfred Hitchcock Presents script is Jack's subject at bare-bones e-zine. The 1958 episode "The Foghorn" is a superior adaptation of a powerful short story, and as always Jack gives us a good look at the process of adaptation.

 Continuing his consideration of The X-Files and the American Dream, John's latest at Cult TV Blog looks at the show's third season; in particular, I'm interested in the show's link to Operation Paperclip, the real-life operation of U.S. intelligence to integrate Nazi scientists into the American space program. No easy answers here.

I remember the Saturday morning kids' show Land of the Lost; it's from the World's Worst Town era, so if I was watching TV at all, that's what would have been on. I don't want to talk about it much more, because I'm afraid the theme song will start running through my head, but it's the topic of discussion at The View from the Junkyard.

At A Shroud of Thoughts, Terence has a few suggestions for streaming services. Streamers are struggling lately; we've cancelled most of our services over the last year, leaving only the F1 channel and the Criterion Channel (we get a lot of use out of them). Perhaps more people would stick with them if they took Terence's advice. And stopped raising their prices.

Babyboomers.com has an interesting but fairly superficial article on how classic TV influenced modern college culture. I think it could do with a lot more in-depth consideration (this could have been an AI-authored article), but I think it's spot-on in the discussion "Classic Television as an Educational Tool." I've been advocating this for years.

Speaking of which, one of the nice things about retirement is the ability to travel without regard to time off from work, etc.,  so we're driving out to the Mid-Atlantic Nostalgia Convention this year! It's the first time we've gone in a few years, and we could use some fun. I'm not making a presentation this time, we're just spectators. Are any of you planning to attend? If so, let me know and we'll plan to meet up! TV  

Revisiting the police procedural

Someone once asked me how it was that I was able to think up topics to write about every week. This was back in the early days of the blog, when I was, I felt, much younger than I am today. At any rate, my reply was that I didn’t think about it too much—it just seemed as if something always came up at the right time: something I saw or read or thought about, something that provided a spark that, a few hundred or thousand words later, wound up on the website you’re reading at this moment. 

That’s still the way it is today, although I have to work a little harder to come up with the ideas, and the words don’t flow perhaps quite as easily or as quickly as they used to. But when it happens, it can be a delight, because I don’t have to email people or watch videos or look things up to get my thoughts down. I just have to type. And that brings us to today.

Actually, I did have to do a little reading on this one, because it has to do with an essay in The Georgia Review called "Policing the Procedural (on Law & Order: Special Victims Unit)", by Sarah Rebecca Kessler. As you might guess, it’s all about the police procedural on television, in particular SVU, and because it’s written within the mythology of George Floyd and discrimination and attacks on minorities and the abolition of prisons and the idea that there’s no such thing as a good cop, it’s full of the kind of liberal claptrap you’d expect. (Sorry if that offends you, but it’s true.) Notwithstanding all that, though, Kessler make some excellent points on SVU in particular, and the procedural genre in general, and that's what I want to concentrate at today.

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There are those who will say that this kind of discussion is incidental to television, that the connection is too tenuous. I disagree. I give television more credit than that for the influence it has over viewers; how many people “swear” that something is true, that it actually happened, when in fact it turns out to have been something they saw on a fictional television show.* Therefore, it’s not at all implausible that people would take as fact something they’d seen on a procedural, and that it could influence law enforcement policy.

*Case in point: Sarah Palin never said she could see Russia from her house; it was Tina Fey.

We see them routinely treat suspects with contempt, use surveillance techniques with little regard for civil liberties, and regard the public in general as an inconvenience at best, a constant threat at worst. Not just to the lives*, but to an existential existence, a series of restraints increasingly handed down by a ruling elite dedicated to limiting free expression as much as possible. We’ve seen how the modern police force has evolved into a paramilitary unit, wearing black body armor, enforcing laws that, more and more, come to resemble an ideological tract rather than anything necessary for civil order. They even view video footage taken by eyewitness as somehow a threat to them doing their jobs. They are, of course, “just following orders,” a defense that didn’t work all that well at Nuremberg. 

*Kessler describes SVU’s Olivia Benson as “a cop who, as cops do, often uses the phrase ‘good shooting’ to describe the killing of a civilian for the alleged crime of making a cop feel scared.”

Kessler is a fan of SVU (a paradox she freely admits), which gives her a certain credibility when it comes to critiquing the show and what it stands for. I, on the other hand, pretty much hate the program, and I’ve been a harsh critic of it in previous posts here. And, as I mentioned at the outset, Kessler and I come to the discussion from opposite poles: she from the left, me from the right. Still, there are areas where our interests overlap, and we share some of the same concerns about the way in which the police deal with the public and the way they see their jobs. 

Kessler wonders, rhetorically, “what it is that makes the cop show, and SVU in particular, so resistant to reproach and immune to reform,” and supplies a ready answer: cop shows tell the story from the cop’s point of view. The Wizard of ID once said that the real Golden Rule was, “whoever has the gold, rules,” and the same goes for the television series: notwithstanding a series featuring antiheroes, for the most part the stars of your show are going to be the good guys, everyone else is the bad guys, and the stories are going to be told from the hero’s vantage point. 

Indeed, one of the sure ways to tell whether or not a cop faces a harsh disciplinary action for stepping over the line is whether or not that cop is a regular. Unless the star is involved in some kind of contract dispute with the show, you’re never going to see their character face a lengthy suspension, or even jail time, In fact, featuring the bad cops as guest stars simply serves to reinforce the essential goodness of the system. (Imagine Mariska Hargitay missing for half the season.) Regarding the trial of Derek Chauvin, the officer most publicly held responsible for the death of George Floyd, Kessler asserts that, "It was as if the proceedings had realized SVU’s central fantasy that 'a few bad apples' does not a broken system make." 

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In the wake of the Floyd death and Chauvin trial, writes Kessler, what was at issue "was not only the usual positive media coverage of the police, the 'thanks to our brave men in blue' that reliably precedes the names of the victims of a wholly preventable tragedy, but the scores of other televisual fare from reality formats like Cops to scripted dramas like Chicago P.D. that serve as pro–law enforcement propaganda." This is exactly what I've been saying for years, in the form of the argument that these shows wind up desensitizing the viewer to the real threat of authoritarianism, not just from law enforcement in general, but from the government in particular. Or, as Kessler suggests, maybe it's not "desensitizing"—perhaps what it really means is our contentment with the methodology. 

How many times have we heard some variant of the line that an innocent person has nothing to fear from the police, that only the guilty insist on their rights, that the most advanced surveillance techniques will only be used against the guilty? This completely overlooks the fact that, 1) it's not the job of the police to determine guilt or innocence, and 2) even if it were, the term "guilt" is likely to be applied retroactively to the suspect at the conclusion of the investigation, given that such techniques were necessary to make such a judgment in the first place.

The police procedural, says Kessler, "normalizes the cop-as-protagonist and the criminal as bit player. There one episode and gone the next, the perpetrator vanishes into incarceration while the victim, the witness, the wrongly accused, the journalist covering the case, and everyone else simply vanishes, leaving the show’s lead cop/s alone to ponder the right, wrong, or, most likely, ambiguity of what has occurred." It's always easy when the perp is painted with a broad brush, practically twirling a Snidley Whiplash handlebar mustache, and it reinforces the viewer's sense that they "had it coming." But if you're looking for a genre to broach the question of actual, real, reform, forget about it: "the police procedural structurally forecloses the question, much less the very real possibility, of abolition, since at the end of the day, the cops cannot be called upon to abolish themselves."

For years I posited the idea that shows like SVU and Chicago P.D. should, as a semi-regular, feature a defense attorney who was tough, competent, and honest—in other words, someone in the mold of Perry Mason or Clinton Judd. (George Grizzard filled the role for awhile, but it was never made a part of the series as it could have been.) There would be no suggestion that the attorney was trying to get his client off on a technicality, or through some other legal subterfuge, only a dedication to the idea that everyone is entitled to a fair trial, and a determination to see to it that justice would be done. In order to maintain the dramatic tension necessary for a television series, the defense attorney would have to lose some of the time, but then there would be times when he won, and then the question would be open and available for everyone to see: What went wrong? Why did we arrest the wrong person?

It would be a breathtaking moment, as far as series television goes, because it would force those characters we've come to know and love to confront the fact that they'd made a mistake, that they'd arrested and tried the wrong person. Since we can't depend on the police to investigate themselves, the defense attorney becomes the medium through which this can be examined. In the serialized environment which television has become, it can’t help but give a series texture when its stars evolve through the course of the series—even grow. Where did we screw up?

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There was a series, once, that tried to bridge the gap, as you probably know. The 1963-64 ABC series Arrest and Trial starred Ben Gazzara as the lead detective, John Larch as the deputy D.A., and Chuck Connors as the defense attorney. It was a unique format, a 90-minute drama divided into two parts: the investigation, resulting in the arrest, and the trial. The crime and the punishment. Said Gazzara of his role, "I'm supposed to be a thinking man's cop. I'm a serious student of human behavior, more concerned with what creates the criminal than how to punish him. In other words, I'm not the kind of cop who asks, 'Where were you the night of April 13th?' It's my job to show that there is room for passion and intellectualism and personal display even within a policeman."

And that's good as far as it goes. Gazzara does, at times, come across as a bleeding heart. But, in my limited viewing of the series, it seems as if the writers try too hard to make sure that both he and Connors are right, that while the defendant might be guilty, there are also extenuating circumstances that mitigate his responsibility for the crime. While [creator] Herb Meadow had suggested that Arrest and Trial would be the 'first series where both protagonists will not always be right each week,' it was a promise that was easier said than done. As Stephen Bowie writes, "The corner into which the writers inevitably found themselves painted was the schism between the motives of the two leads. Arrest and Trial put Anderson [Gazzara] and Egan [Connors] on opposite sides of the judicial process: Anderson’s job was to catch the criminals and Egan’s was to turn them loose. Allowing the principals to be wrong 'occasionally' might have seemed like a good idea on paper, but it meant that every week one of them would have to make a fool of himself — either Anderson arrests the correct perpetrator and Egan loses his case, or Egan sets his client free by proving that Anderson busted the wrong guy." If the show wasn't ready to tackle the Big Questions, nor to give us heroes with feet of clay, then such a format could never work. Law & Order succeeded where Arrest and Trial failed, because they chose to put the emphasis on the “law and order” side of the equation.

A digression, perhaps, but this is, after all, a website dealing with TV history. 

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Understand that I don’t intend this as a broadside against all members of the police. Unlike Kessler, I do believe that there are “good cops”; officers and detectives with a desire to protect the public, and dedicated to an even-handed search for truth and justice. (There are also officers, including some of whome I personally know, who are little more than fascist thugs, with an unforgiving view of anyone who opposes him as “the enemy.”) 

The indictment I have here is a collective one, of “the police” rather than the policeman, the paramilitary unit instead of the guardians sworn to protect and to serve. Kate Andrews, writing in Britain's The Spectator, describes the result: "We see America’s police officers treat low-level offenders and even innocent citizens with the same force and aggression you would expect to see used against the most violent criminals." Whereas Americans were once governed by consent, Andrews writes, today "America is policed by force." Police procedurals, in the way they dramatize the stories, justify these actions. In a previous essay I wrote on this subject, I quoted at length Gregg Easterbrook, writing about the series Chicago P.D. in a 2014 article at ESPN.com:  

But what's disturbing about Chicago P.D. is audiences are manipulated to think torture is a regrettable necessity for protecting the public. Three times in the first season, the antihero tortures suspects—a severe beating and threats to cut off an ear and shove a hand down a running garbage disposal. Each time, torture immediately results in information that saves innocent lives. Each time, viewers know, from prior scenes, the antihero caught the right man. That manipulates the viewer into thinking, "He deserves whatever he gets."

In the real world, law enforcement officers rarely are sure whether they caught the right person or what a prisoner might know. Some ethicists say there could be a ticking-bomb exception—if the prisoner could reveal where a ticking bomb is, then torture becomes permissible. But how could a law enforcement officer be sure what a captive knows? And if by this logic torture is permissible, wouldn't that justify torture by, say, the Taliban if they captured a U.S. airman who could know the location of a planned drone strike?

NBC executives don't want to live in a country where police have the green light to torture suspects. So why do they extol on primetime the notion that torture by the police saves lives? Don't say to make the show realistic. Nothing about Chicago P.D. is realistic—except the scenery.

Elsewhere in that essay, I added that, with regard to SVU, “viewers are witnesses to an amazing contempt that authority holds for citizens, which extends to every kind of bullying they can think of, including statements that I'd read as being clearly unconstitutional. (My favorite is when they tell a suspect that if they don't talk now, any chance of a deal is gone. Try telling that to some overworked assistant DA who'll cut any kind of a deal to decrease his workload.) These people aren't interested in justice—they just want to win.*” And this doesn’t even begin to touch on the typical trope that an innocent person doesn’t need a lawyer, and that the defendant who wins acquittal does so because of his lawyer’s slick tricks.

*Even in a series like Perry Mason, Mason often argues that once the police find their suspect, they stop searching for the truth.

The point: the justice system, riddled with corruption and ideological agendas from the Department of Justice on down, is its own worst enemy in the best of times; the last thing they need is to have a television show exaggerate the problem.

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“I don’t believe most or any SVU fans, liberal or otherwise, genuinely want the series to “do better”—whatever that even means,” Kessler writes. “As a fan myself, it behooves me to be honest about this fact. I would rather the show (literally) be canceled than ameliorated into something less fun to watch.” Conceding that this might be seen as a “crass” position, she explains, “if the show was just sincerity with no sensationalism, why would I want to watch it? Better a cop show whose absurdity is akin to self-parody than a cop show that’s trying not to be the cop show it most certainly is.”

Well, that depends. It may be true that in the realm of the procedural, Kessler is right when she says that ‘cop shows will always be cop shows,’ whether or not they remain hardline or feebly gesture toward reform.” But are all cop shows procedurals? Again, it depends. Naked City, to my mind one of the finest TV dramas ever, used the framework of the police drama to tell stories of life in the gritty city, often relegating the precinct detectives to the background as the guest stars took center stage. Sometimes an episode would use the flimsiest of pretexts, the slimmest of connections to police work, to tell a story that just as easily could have been told on Route 66. And I cite that story deliberately, as both Naked City and Route 66 were the products of Sterling Silliphant, a writer who could hardly be considered a right-wing law-and-order extremist. Under Silliphant’s guidance, Naked City wasn’t really a police drama; it was a drama about people, some of whom just happened to be policemen.*

*And not just that: I’ll always remember a Naked City episode in which Detective Lieutenant Mike Parker tells an aggrieved New Yorker that, as a citizen, he has every right to bring his problem to the police and expect some kind of resolution. What Parker realized, and today's cops don't, is that the police are the servants of the public, not the other way around.

Kessler doesn’t have any good ideas to offer here, concluding that “instead of disingenuously demanding that SVU and its ilk ‘do better,’ instead of policing the procedural into some illusion of justice, how about demanding an end to policing and to prisons?” This is, of course, a cop-out—no pun intended—because it relinquishes the moral high ground she sought to attain in linking the content of procedurals to the effect they have on their audience. If we’re that concerned about it, then we can’t just shrug and say that, well, that’s television for you, and entertainment is always going to win out over serious content. If you believe that, then why are we even having this discussion?

Perhaps I can speak more freely because I’m not a fan of SVU, Kessler makes a compelling case in linking the content of procedurals, the idea that these shows “desensitize” the viewer to the abuses committed by police. It’s a damning accusation, because it makes us all complicit in the affair, all sharing in the responsibility. To paraphrase Benjamin Franklin, those who would give up their liberty in return for a little temporary entertainment deserve neither. If the analogy of frog and the boiling water holds 

Why, then, does she give up so easily? “What might television be in the absence of the promise of punishment on which so many of its genres, programs, and episodes hinge?” Kessler asks. “Can you dream up a cop show without cops?” The answer to that is yes—if you view them not as cops, but as men and women. 

Procedurals deserve the criticism they’ve received here, because they reflect a particular philosophy that strikes a sympathetic cord with viewer sentiment. (In other words, they manipulate you.) Kessler and I may not share much when it comes to ideology, but in this limited case we can see eye-to-eye, will say that even if it’s through sidelong glances. The harsh truth, and conservatives are coming to recognize this even as liberals have, is this: When your police force becomes politicized, when it functions not as a law enforcement agency but as an enforcement arm of the ruling class, then the police are not your friends. The sooner you ignore what you see on the tube and believe what you can see with your own eyes, the better for America, and her people. All of them. TV  

This week in TV Guide: May 21, 1954

It's been said, by no less an authority than me, that a wedding is the last refuge of television shows. It can be used to boost ratings, to inject new life into an aging storyline, to spin-off a character into a new series, or some combination of all three. Invariably, however, such nuptial events prove to be ratings blockbusters, and one of television's first such "events" is the wedding of Robinson Peepers and Nancy Remington on Sunday night's episode of the long-running sitcom Mister Peepers. (6:30 p.m. CT, NBC)

To many, the wedding, "after two years of timorous all-but-kissless romance," comes as something of a surprise. Wally Cox himself, who plays "TV's bucolic boy scout" and is, himself, a bachelor, expresses a mild surprise at this turn of events. "Peepers never struck me as having the nerve to marry," Cox says. "He's not only out of step with the world; I think he's a pretty ineffectual male. Pat [Benoit, who plays Nancy] and I used to speculate on what Peepers really does think—or do. I kind of look at him in wonder, don't you?" Benoit herself noted that "Wally always told people Robinson would never marry."

The producers, however, think differently. "Nothing could be more fitting for a family show. Marriage would open up new story lines. It is definitely popular with women. It sets an example for America's youth. And Nancy's luck might encourage all impatient, single girls." Acknowledges Cox, "Nancy might also look foolish dating a man for two years without getting anywhere. My writers would be the ones who know." 

Those writers have grand ideas; says Jim Fritzell, "Lots of story sequences and all the time people growing." Cox wants guarantees, though; when director Hal Keith promises him that "This will positively not degenerate into a family situation comedy—the idiot husband sort," Cox replies, "If it did, they'd have to get a new actor."

The Peepers wedding becomes one of the biggest TV events of the year, as such things will. However, the show only runs one more season after the "Wedding of the Year." This is also a common occurrence; sometimes the tension that's held the series together disappears (Moonlighting, although there was no marriage); sometimes the writers find out that those extra storylines didn't work after all (Rhoda); sometimes, the show's ratings just take a fall (The Farmer's Daughter). That doesn't stop shows from taking the plunge, though, and they aren't all disasters; My Three Sons ran for two more seasons after Steve Douglas remarried, and The Danny Thomas Show, which wisely had the wedding occur off-screen (during the summer break), ran for seven successful seasons.

I'm certainly pro-marriage, but I'm most certainly not a romantic, so I can't say that I approve of this disturbing trend. Were it not for the fact that Mister Peepers is a genuinely funny show, it would have a lot to answer for.

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"The public is becoming surfeited with outlandish crime," according to Martin Manulis, and we're not talking about Congress on television. No, Manulis is referring to Suspense, the long-running show of which he's now producer. It's not that rough stuff is altogether gone, but Manulis promises it will be tasteful violence. "There'll be no more hoods or professional gangsters," he promises. "In many cases we've found ourselves doing documentaries, rather than criminal suspense stories." 

So far, so good; ratings are up, as are fan letters, and Suspense has broadened its subject matter far beyond "routine crime stuff." Stories from Dickens, Zola and Balzac have found their way to the tube—just as crime comes in many forms, suspense can be psychological as well as physical,— and Manulis even toys with the idea of bring a straight drama to the show. He knows if the ratings don't bear out the change in the long run, it'll be back to the old formula, but he's betting that they will.

It does seem, as I've mentioned before, that violence on television has been an issue ever since shortly after television was a thing, and Herman Lowe's article on the state of the industry acknowledges that "[i]t affects almost everything it touches, and the length of its reach never ceases to amaze. We all know those stories about how movie theaters suffered on the nights when Milton Berle was on. A national organization of restaurants complains that people are eating at home instead of going out, so they won't miss the quiz and variety shows. In Little Rock, the transit system proposed a rate boost because of a fall in revenue—too many people staying home watching TV.

But things aren't all negative. Some within the trade refer to television as "The Monster," meaning that it doesn't know its own strength. For example, how much of the economic boom is television responsible for? "In a handful of postwar years, it has proved itself one of the most persuasive merchandisers of goods and ideas in history." There's a whole new line of furniture: television chairs, television tables, television lamps. American manufacturers "are turning out more sets annually than the rest of the world combined."  

That means, according to Paul A. Walker, former chairman of the FCC, that "within two years after a station goes on the air, the great majority of families in that community buy TV sets ranging in price from $200 to $400." This means not only business for the retailer, but for the repairman and the local utility. And we can't forget that the station pays out between $200,000 and $1,000,000 annually in salaries, plus taxes to local, state, and Federal governments. And sponsors pay $8 million to $10 million annually to have sporting events televised.

So television seems to be the golden goose, doesn't it? But there's one thing television has done for which it can't be forgiven. "TV brought millions of Americans directly into the convention hall to watch the Republicans and Democrats choose their Presidential nominees." Indeed, it will make it easier for politicians to communicate with more people at one time than they ever thought possible. Almost enough to make you get rid of your TV, isn't it?

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Well, that was fun, wasn't it? And now for some more fun.

On Friday night at 10:00 p.m., Chicago columnist and television host Irv Kupcinet hosts the fifth annual Cerebral Palsy Telethon (ABC), a 28-hour, star-studded extravaganza with Sarah Vaughan, Don McNeill, Fran Allison and Burr Tillstrom, Johnny Desmond, Walter Slezak, Melvyn Douglas, Ray Walson, Bill Hayes, and many more. The goal is $600,000; not quite sure how much they made, but if you're interested, here's a clip (one of two on YouTube) from that 1954 telethon:

On Sunday, Meet the Press (5:00 p.m., NBC) hosts an unusual show, one we wouldn't see nowadays: a debate between William White, President of the New York Central Railroad, and Robert Young, former President of the Chesapeake & Ohio Railroad. The two are battling for control of the NYC; Young is leading what turns out to be a successful proxy fight to oust management of the debt-ridden railroad. According to the always-reliable Wikipedia, Young found the New York Central in worse shape than he'd imagined, and after suspending dividend payments, he committed suicide in January 1958.

Ed Sullivan's rival in these years is the Colgate Comedy Hour, and I'll present their lineups to you without judgment: 

Sullivan (7:00 p.m., CBS): Ed introduces a film segment from Gone With the Wind, featuring Clark Gable, Vivian Leigh, and Leslie Howard. Guests include comedy team Betty and Jane Kean; singer Mindy Carson; "Mr. Pastry" Richard Hearne; dancers Page & Bray; and English singing star Dickie Valentine. Film producer David O. Selznick appears to discuss the story behind the reissue of Gone With the Wind.

Comedy Hour (7:00 p.m., NBC): Tonight's stars are Bud Abbott & Lou Costello. The Sauter-Finnegan Orchestra, Hoagy Carmichael, and the little singing comedian, Ricky Vera, are guests. Unlike Sullivan, skits make up most of the Abbott& Costello shows.

On Wednesday, Kraft Television Theatre (8:00 p.m., NBC) presents an adaptation of "The Scarlet Letter," Nathaniel Hawthorne's famous morality play, starring Kim Stanley as Hester Prynne and Leslie Nielsen as the Rev. Arthur Dimmesdale. Then, on Thursday, Anthony Ross stars as the title character "Dodsworth," Sinclair Lewis's grim story, on Kraft Television Theatre (8:00 p.m., ABC).

Wait a minute, you say, what's this? Two shows with the same name? So which is it: Kraft Television Theatre Wednesday night on NBC, or Thursday night on ABC? The answer is, both. The shows are produced by the J. Walter Thompson advertising agency, which represents Kraft; the cheese company sponsors both hours, which adds up to 104 hours of live programming per season. The two shows function as one; Kraft employs six full-time producer-directors, each responsible for one hour every third week. Each episode employs 16 to 18 actors per episode, and with four shows in production at any one time, that means an average of 60 to 70 actors per week. 

The complex setup works like clockwork, as it would have to in order to make everything happen. And the results? The NBC version is number one among hour-long dramas, with the ABC edition gaining each week. Of course, companies and their sponsors don't have control over the schedule the way they once did, but still—can you imagine anything like it?

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Some news from the New York Teletype: Dragnet has bumped I Love Lucy from the #1 position in the ratings, according to the latest American Research Bureau report. It's News to Me, the panel quiz show hosted by John Daly, will be back on CBS this summer, replacing You Are There. That will make two shows that Daly is hosting on the Tiffany Network, while he's head of the news division at ABC. 

In Hollywood, an addendum on Dragnet: a character in a recent episode called a movie "a lousy show," which resulted in a stink coming from some movie exhibitors (remember how touchy they are when it comes to television), with the result that Jack Webb apologized for "bad and thoughtless editing on my part." Du Mont, which makes television sets in addition to broadcasting the shows that appear on them, is predicting a 21-inch color set in the next two to three years, running about $500. And Walt Disney will be originating his ABC show from a new, $9,000,000 amusement park he's building—Disneyland.

In local news, WGN premiered the new film series Life With Elizabeth last Sunday, starring "America's new sweetheart, Betty White." Local sports shows covering the Chicago Cubs are miffed that the Cubbies are charging $100 for guest appearances by their players on TV sports shows, up from $50. It's the same amount they charge for other personal appearances (aside from charity events); the sportscasters say they'll continue their $50 policy whether the Cubs are along for the ride or not.

And finally, "The average family now watches TV a total of five hours, 46 minutes each day," according to Nielsen. By contrast, in 2010, the peak of television viewing, the average family watched 8 hours and 55 minutes per day. Which just goes to show that there's always room for improvement. TV  

Stranger in a strange land

This is a piece I first wrote about five years ago, and I think it's as relevant today as it was back then—maybe even more so, I don't know. It captures a certain feeling, a mood that's symbolic of this age we've entered. Not the Twilight Zone, but another kind of twilight—the twilight of an era, maybe the twilight of everything. Again, I don't know. Even with the respite we've gotten after moving out of Minnesota, I still can't shake the feeling that life today is like being surrounded by the enemy. 

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Stranger in a Strange Land? Or is it The Man Who Fell to Earth? Either science fiction analogy is OK, I guess, because the world we live in today is more like science fiction than anything else. The question is what people from the ‘50s and ‘60s would think of television today, if they hadn’t been exposed to the cultural evolution that some of us have gone through. You find this in reverse many times when trying to explain the appeal of classic television to those who are either too young to remember it, or too lacking in an appreciation of history to care about it. I’ve been told of many young people (and some not so young) who won’t even consider watching a black-and-white TV show or movie, which I think is ridiculous since all you’re really doing is arbitrarily depriving yourself of something you might otherwise enjoy based solely on your lack of imagination in being unable to appreciate anything that doesn’t spell it out for you right there.*

*On the other hand, I saw an article today that says today's kids, weaned on Netflix and the like, don't know what commercials are. On balance, that's probably a good thing, although try explaining those DVD sets of classic commercials to them.

I was prompted to this thought by reading a discussion at Home Theater Forum, one that unfortunately got a bit testy toward the end, as such discussions tend to do. The topic had morphed into comparing classic television with current television, whether or not wholesomeness was an adequate substitute for gritty realism, how one defined “realism,” what the purpose of television was in the first place, and other existential questions. Experience has taught me not to get in the middle of these kinds of discussions – well, that, and the fact that I’ve got my own blog where I get to control the conversation myself.

Anyway, people who have no particular appreciation of cultural history often find it impossible to understand what things were like in the ‘50s and ‘60s (or even the ‘70s and ‘80s, if we’re being honest), prompting them to declare anything from that time period “unrealistic” because it doesn’t match up to their contemporary expectations. (People like me who express pleasure in classic television are often accused of "living in the past," or "denying progress.") Given a nuclear family, children who aren’t juvenile delinquents, couples who don’t sleep together prior to marriage, women who don’t work outside the house, and any number of by-products of another era (comments that appear to be sexist, racist, or otherwise offensive), and for these people it simply doesn’t compute; hence, it has to be something totally idealized, which is another way of dismissing “things that never were the way they’ve been portrayed.”

This is a subtle point, which is why it’s not a good idea to dismiss it with such a simplified, off-hand solution. It is true that most portrayals of a given period in time are, to some extent, idealized. Even documentarians do this in order to substantiate a narrative they’re trying to present. We shouldn’t expect total realism from anything; even a photograph or a home movie can’t capture everything that went into creating a particular moment. Given that total realism is, therefore, impossible, the best you can do is present something that is recognizable to viewers – or maybe I should say plausible. It’s true that series like Leave it to Beaver probably fell on the “idealized” side of the line, but not to the extent that the people who watched it couldn’t understand what it represented.

The complaint many people have about contemporary television is that, as one HTF commentor put it, "the characters [on classic TV shows] seem to be relatable human beings. I stopped watching present-day 'entertainment' years ago, but when I see segments of it I feel as if I must live in a different Universe." The stranger in a strange land, indeed.  Flip to any given series, and you'll find a world in which your next door neighbor might be a meth dealer, the couple down the street might be a threesome, or undercover Communist agents (or both), everyone’s a quirkbot and every single life seems to have been ripped from the pages of a soap opera script, religion is barely mentioned (and when it is, it's usually disparaged) and the default setting is not good humor and hopefulness, but cynicism and world-weariness. It's as if, when we decided to get rid of Frank Capra and his "Capra-corn," we replaced him with Albert Camus. There’s a certain sort of realism here as well, in that these things do happen, but I’m willing to bet that if you dropped most people into the middle of a neighborhood like this, they wouldn’t recognize it.

Contrast that with the average viewer's reaction to a series from the classic era. Whether or not your family was like the Cleavers, for example, they weren’t far off from what how many families lived. Their values were similar, their families seemed a lot like the ones you knew in the neighborhood. Except, maybe, for the couple who lived down the block, the one where he’s always getting drunk and shouting about something, and she goes running from the house, crying, only to come back in a day or two. They didn’t show people like them, at least not on sitcoms, but then that was the point, wasn’t it? They weren’t funny, and they weren’t entertaining, and that wasn’t what Leave it to Beaver was all about. My point is that nobody living in the same time period as the Cleavers would have looked at them as if they were out of place, people from another neighborhood, anything like that. They were like you and me, if perhaps a little more perfect than we were. And, lest you forget what you were watching, the commercials would remind you that this was a television show you were watching, not real life.

Back then, married couples on television didn't even sleep in the same bed together. Now, you've got plenty of couples knoodling between the sheets - and not all of them are married, nor are all of them even members of the opposite sex. The cops aren't always the good guys, and many cable series (cable? What's that?) center around something called an "anti-hero." And try explaining to someone who watched I Led Three Lives and The FBI how you could create a series around a couple of Soviet spies, let alone calling that series The Americans. If many of those earlier shows were like a steady diet of sugary cereal, today's series often require a prescription for Prozac.

In a way this is so similar to how the elitists of Establishment America have, for so long, misunderstood the rest of the country, its values and its way of life. As the last presidential election demonstrated, there’s a wide gap out there between the world of the elitists and the world of everyone else, and considering how most people in the entertainment industry come from that world of elitists, I don’t suppose we should be surprised. After all, everyone writes about what they know about.

This segues us, ever so gently, into the eternal question of television’s version of the chicken and the egg. Does television determine cultural mores, or does it simply reflect them? My own opinion, for what it’s worth, has always been that television is a follower, not a leader – BUT it’s also a persuader, a facilitator, an enabler, a whisperer. Immerse yourself in the world of television, and then try to resist the temptations that these shows offer, the way they gradually – over a period of months or years – lure you into their way of thinking. Many people advocate a withdrawal from popular and social media - including television and movies - in order to recapture and reinvest in their faith. Others insist that Christians must engage with popular media and the arts if they hope to change the culture. I don't know who's right; either way, it speaks to the power of television to shape minds and attitudes.

I could go on, and someday will, because I'm as guilty of simplification as anyone. The point, however, remains the same. While there are some outstanding programs on television today, many of them relate to a recognizable world, one not so different from our own. There is something fundamentally different about classic television, about how it develops organically from the culture which it reflects. That's something I can't say about most of today's programs. They present a world that, for the most part, is far different from the one which I inhabit - darker, cruder, rougher, more nihilistic. It's not the world I want to live in. To paraphrase Dominick Dunne's wonderful book about the O.J. Simpson trial, it's another country, not my own. Perhaps that's the best analogy of them all. TV