A Lot of Cop/Military Shows on the TV

[tom_kelly]

Am I looking into things a bit too much or, is there a big influx of shows on the TV about cops and the military? It seems as though these channels are trying to soften us, prepare us, or doctrnate us on the power of cops, and the US military. The programming on these channels, other than maybe The Animal Planet, is usually related to anything but what the channel names would have you expect. Maybe it just more violence based programming in general. I don't know.

[Scuba]

1. You are perceptive.

[Bay Boy]

13. I believe the correct word is...

...paranoid.

[tom_kelly]

17. Thanks

[FogerRox]

29. Private eye movies in the 30's, Film Noir.

[Hugabear]

2. Don't forget the prison shows

There are a lot of prison shows as well, where prisoners are basically treated as exhibits in a human zoo.

Also, Animal Planet isn't immune from passing fads either, as I've seen paranormal shows on that channel. Pretty sure they also have their own show about animal cops

[Sunlei]

5. usa has about 3% of our pop. in prison or on parol type oversight. by private for profit mostly.

Crazy numbers, more in our prison system than the entire world combined. A lot are young people, we're ruining their futures.

Whats worse to me is the prisoners look more unhealthy, mental and physical..some look very thin like there is a lack of enough food.

We create a society of very unhappy, bitter depressed humans.

[PADemD]

8. I'd like to know how those shows are funded.

Does the prison get paid by the production company for allowing the cameras inside? What about the privacy of the inmates? Are the inmates compensated for the "entertainment" they provide?

[Egalitarian Thug]

3. If the flock stops fearing the dogs it becomes impossible to herd them, let alone shear them.

They've been indoctrinating the sheeple for generations and they've learned to do it much more effectively over the last 30 - 40 years.

[RKP5637]

4. It is obedience training for where the US is headed, eventually. I'm

surprised there aren't 7x24 OWS bashing shows ... what the sheepie get if they step out of line.

[KharmaTrain]

6. Morality Plays...

Since the advent of serial dramas back in the radio days, "law and order" have always been a big theme in programs. It can easily mask a message of "good over evil" and respect of law enforcement. It's been used for that purpose...the FBI all but wrote radio and TV scripts in the 40s through the 60s (us older kids surely remember Efrem Zimblist Jr.). The military also has been glorified. My father served in WWII and I remember growing up with him watching "Combat", "Rat Patrol" and any World War II movie that came down the pike. One of the most popular TV shows of my "boomer" generation is M*A*S*H...military-oriented but with a different twist and message.

Our popular culture has always glorified the military...be it in song or literature or, now, through television and movies. You, as the viewing consumer, can take away whatever message you find either appealing or revolting. The fact you are questioning and viewing media with a critical lens shows that its a lot harder to program someone...especially when they're educated.

[Bannakaffalatta]

9. Then you will have noticed

the trend toward a reverence and sentimentality toward the military that verges on the maudlin. In a popular drama, it's all but forbidden to criticize militarism itself, or the armed forces, or their activities: at most, you're allowed to catch an individual soldier who commits a crime and bring him to military justice. (Except in Boston Legal, which i think as the successor to MASH).


And that the graphic violence escalates steadily and that overt, protracted scenes of sadism have become almost mandatory. That, i think is a self-perpetuating spiral: adrenalin-junky audience needs bigger thrills, and each intensification further desensitizes the audience.

[KharmaTrain]

14. It's A Mirror Of Our Times...

I honestly think that the older movies and TV shows are far more maudlin and glorifying of the military than what we see today. Watch a World War II era movie...not only were our military worships but other cultures were demonized in what today would be considered politically incorrect stereotypes. Those movies also were scrutinized by government censors...all for the "war effort". No one questioned. It wasn't until My Lai and Viet Nam that popular culture started to look at the violent nature of the war and military in a different light.

"Action movies" sell...they're fantasy for adrenaline junkies and not only popular in the U.S. but worldwide. I can think of movies such as "Platoon" or "Full Metal Jacket" that use a lot of violence in an effort to bring across the message of the horror of war. But I do also see your point in there being a lot of gratuitous violence in movies and TV that glorify not just the military but using violence as an end to a means. Unfortunately we live in a violent culture/society and it can't be hidden...only hope that more people will be horrified by it than are turned on. Freedom of speech and expression is a touchy thing...

Cheers...

[Bannakaffalatta]

22. I'd like to make a distinction between genres

and also between media.
Feature films specifically about war, used to have a range of attitudes, from rah-rah heroic liberators (in which the attitude to the army in consistently one of admiration - over time, the only change within this type of film is the percent of footage dedicated to blowing shit up) to ...the Oh What A Lovely War - Dr. Strangelove - Wag the Dog - progression, and that view has remained constant, as well.
Television series featuring military personnel have changed only in that one type has disappeared. No Sgt. Bilko is conceivable now, while the action/adventure figures have tried to stick a third dimension onto the cardboard hero type: some of them are (improbably) pretty and (unusually) smart girls. Plus more blowing shit up.

I was actually referring more to tv dramas about civilian subjects - crime, legal and medical shows. They tend to fawn (Thank-you-for-your-service) on military characters - which are introduced with far greater frequency than ever before. I'm not sure whether this is a reflection on the large number of service personnel and injured veterans among the real population of the US (though i doubt the tv depiction is accurate as to ethnic ratios) or a deliberate attempt to keep a military presence in the public awareness.
And, of course, the mandatory gratuitous blowing shit up.

I expect that - shooting flame, flying car components, collapsing buildings. Ever more sophisticated makeup effects to show damaged body parts are merely distasteful.
Three protracted torture scenes (at least one of them sexual) in an average evening's entertainment.... that's alarming. So is the generally accepted notion of prisons being run by the most ruthless inmates rather than legally constituted authority, and the tacit, unchallenged assumption that any young drug-mule or joy-rider will be thrown to that alpha felon to be brutally raped. That tells us something about the nation's value system.
"more people will be horrified by it than are turned on
Nobody is horrifies anymore; nobody objects or demands a change. The objectors have been nullified. That's the point of desensitization: to make these practices, like enhanced interrogation and cruel punishment not unusual but commonplace.
Not a hard-on, not a shudder, but a shrug or snicker. That's alarming.

[mucifer]

12. I was gonna post that, too. I listen to a lot of old time radio.

There seems to be 3 categories: comedy, soap operas and murder mysteries. Lots and lots of murder mysteries. BTW I have never heard any negative plot points in these shows on the military. Yes, OTR is not as gory as tv today and many of the mystery shows have cutesy detectives bumbling around and solving cases.

But, ultimately, in the entertainment business, since Shakespeare and probably before that, death and violence sells.

[Bannakaffalatta]

7. Yes, especially "security" forces, mass murder and terrorism

In other words, they're teaching you about a world that's so dangerous, you need to
1. be afraid, all the time
2. fund and defer to heavily armed uniformed troops in the cities
3. trade your legal rights for a promise of safety
and 4. buy a gun, or many guns. Big ones, with large-capacity magazines. Just in case you happen to be at a football game when a time-bomb goes off.
5. Be prepared to have your car pulled over for no reason and get dragged out, thrown face-down on the pavement, tazered and cuffed, or your door kicked in at 3 am and your house trashed.

Two things i notice about these shows: They recycle the same story lines endlessly, with very little variation. and There is a lot of useful instruction in them for aspiring terrorists and serial killers - after all, in this economy, you can't expect every evil genius to be clever.

[brooklynite]

10. ...becuse a show like HAWAII FIVE O would NEVER have made it on TV 50 years ago.....

[hfojvt]

23. How much though

is New Five-Oh like Old Five-Oh. I cannot remember the old one. I am guessing that the new one involves more violence, more cruelty, more death, more chases/explosions and more torture.

But those are just guesses.

[cherokeeprogressive]

25. Or The Streets of San Francisco, or The F.B.I. or Adam-12 or...

Oh hell. They've been softening preparing us AND the UK for the coming police state, and they've been doing it forever. Just go here:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_police_television_dramas

[randome]

11. Step away. Before it's too late.

[hr]
[font color="blue"][center]Stop looking for heroes. BE one.[/center][/font]
[hr]

[Orrex]

15. There are a lot of medical shows on TV, too

Perhaps they're preparing us to be invaded by nurses and doctors.

[NoPasaran]

18. Goodness only knows what all the Kardashian shows are softening us up for

[Orrex]

19. The horror! The horror!

[Bannakaffalatta]

24. strange medicine....

where crazed gunmen run amok in the hospital hallways, the chief of orthopedics has her own sadistic stalker, every protagonist's child is kidnapped, half the cases are GSW or explosive trauma... and for sure, there will be hostages held in an OR and somebody's going to be raped, tortured, or both at least once each semi-season.

[pinboy3niner]

16. Dude...

[baldguy]

20. I'm thinking #4

http://www.democraticunderground.com/1002792903

[Dawson Leery]

21. Fear sells.

It also allows undue respect to a group of people who do not deserve it.

[Locrian]

26. What Makes Mainstream Media Mainstream - Noam Chomsky

http://www.chomsky.info/articles/199710--.htm

The real mass media are basically trying to divert people. Let them do something else, but don’t bother us (us being the people who run the show). Let them get interested in professional sports, for example. Let everybody be crazed about professional sports or sex scandals or the personalities and their problems or something like that. Anything, as long as it isn’t serious. Of course, the serious stuff is for the big guys. "We" take care of that.

What are the elite media, the agenda-setting ones? The New York Times and CBS, for example. Well, first of all, they are major, very profitable, corporations. Furthermore, most of them are either linked to, or outright owned by, much bigger corporations, like General Electric, Westinghouse, and so on. They are way up at the top of the power structure of the private economy which is a very tyrannical structure. Corporations are basically tyrannies, hierarchic, controled from above. If you don’t like what they are doing you get out. The major media are just part of that system.

[freshwest]

27. +1

[FogerRox]

28. Mchales Navy, Hogans Heroes, Combat, Dragnet, SWAT, Police Woman

Starsky & Hutch, Rookies, Kojack, Police Academy, Chips. Baa Baa Black Sheep, The Rat Patrol, Baretta,
Colombo, Mannix, Dragnet, Car 54, Where Are You?, Adam 12, Magnum PI
The Rockford Files
Simon and Simon
Mike Hammer

Those are just the ones I remember, heres some I had to look for.


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jericho_%281966_TV_series%29
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Convoy_%28TV_series%29
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Behind_Closed_Doors_%281958_TV_series%29

A bunch more here
http://cvillememories.com/networks_27.html

Not saying youre totally wrong, but this goes back to the invention of talking movies.