Law and Order: special victims unit

[Einherjar86]

i thought the character's are supposed to be kinda one-dimentional

Eliot Stabler is the always-pissed-off-type character

Olivia Benson is always the ultra-sensitive-sympathizing-with-the-victim-type cop

you know the whole "good-cop-bad-cop-routine"

these 2 characters (moreso than the others) are actually supposed to look one-dementional

Their flatness contributes to their mythic conception of right and wrong, which no one can explain but is meant to carry to the audience as "common sense." Dick Wolf presents us with the heavily mythic, conceptualized caricature of the "ideal cop" or "ideal cop team." They check and balance one another, they complement each other, their sense of ethical duty cannot be soiled, etc. It's an absolutely make-believe image that, as Dak said, is State propaganda.

The problem is most people consider this representation to be the "cop norm." Sure, there are good cops out there. But (and Dak will back me up on this) the personalities presented in Law & Order are not the personalities typically attracted by the law officer position. This show is an exception to the rule, not the rule itself; but it functions ideologically by theatrically communicating a sense of right and wrong to its audience, which the audience can participate in and essentially equate with our legal apparatuses in this country.

It's a myth, just like the code of chivalry was a myth. The trope of the "good cop/bad cop" and the cop with supreme moral authority is a literary convention, nothing more. It's only redefined later (by its audience) as the cultural norm.

As a final annoying point, you can tell Wolf is antagonistic toward academics simply by the way he characterizes them as villains (not always, but usually). His disposition toward academia seems to be that they're more likely to commit crimes because their "education" causes them to see legal and moral limitations are arbitrary; which they are, but that doesn't make academics any more inclined than a police officer to murder someone. In fact, police officers are more likely to murder someone in defense of supposed arbitrary laws.

 

[Vimana]

The part that really annoys me is the shitty forensic science. I did one high school forensic science class, and even I know you don't fucking DNA test a hair to find out it's wolf and not human. You can tell by looking under a microscope that it's not a human hair.

Also, how just about every single case I've seen on it gets closed with eyewitness testimony. That doesn't happen so much anymore. Eyewitness testimony sucks. Not only is human short-term memory bad, but stuff gets lost/altered/falsified in encoding, and long-term memories change over time and false ones can actually be spontaneously created under the right conditions.

This show is an exception to the rule, not the rule itself; but it functions ideologically by theatrically communicating a sense of right and wrong to its audience, which the audience can participate in and essentially equate with our legal apparatuses in this country.

This. These cops are horrible, and the show tries to act like it's real, thus it probably creates the impression among some of its viewers that this is how cops act or should act. Of the stuff I can remember observing, they've assaulted people during interrogation, and tried to charge people with interfering with an investigation by not answering questions. Something worse, though, as I've seen in lots of episodes, is one of the high points of tension is when they don't have evidence to put a guy in prison, so they struggle to get someone to testify or to find more evidence. It's usually before they actually have forensic evidence that they'll have the goal of putting a suspect behind bars, and sometimes there's the twist ending where it's actually someone else, but still.

My least favorite verdict is one episode where a guy gets charged with first degree murder because a girl killed herself because she participated in pornography when she was legal age and signed a consent form.

 

[Satanstoenail]

Cop, Detective, and Hospital shows are all garbage. Exception for early Scrubs.

The Wire begs to differ.

 

[Dak]

Tried the Wire. I couldn't even finish one episode.

 

[Satanstoenail]

Fair enough. I'd argue that you probably didn't give it enough of a go.

 

[Dak]

Even if it weren't dry, watching a show where you see the protagonists as abject evil instead of heros would be difficult. Again, it's cop porn/ state propaganda.

I used to like War movies, now I really don't. It's merely sickening.

 

[monoxide_child]

Their flatness contributes to their mythic conception of right and wrong, which no one can explain but is meant to carry to the audience as "common sense." Dick Wolf presents us with the heavily mythic, conceptualized caricature of the "ideal cop" or "ideal cop team." They check and balance one another, they complement each other, their sense of ethical duty cannot be soiled, etc. It's an absolutely make-believe image that, as Dak said, is State propaganda.

The problem is most people consider this representation to be the "cop norm." Sure, there are good cops out there. But (and Dak will back me up on this) the personalities presented in Law & Order are not the personalities typically attracted by the law officer position. This show is an exception to the rule, not the rule itself; but it functions ideologically by theatrically communicating a sense of right and wrong to its audience, which the audience can participate in and essentially equate with our legal apparatuses in this country.

It's a myth, just like the code of chivalry was a myth. The trope of the "good cop/bad cop" and the cop with supreme moral authority is a literary convention, nothing more. It's only redefined later (by its audience) as the cultural norm.

As a final annoying point, you can tell Wolf is antagonistic toward academics simply by the way he characterizes them as villains (not always, but usually). His disposition toward academia seems to be that they're more likely to commit crimes because their "education" causes them to see legal and moral limitations are arbitrary; which they are, but that doesn't make academics any more inclined than a police officer to murder someone. In fact, police officers are more likely to murder someone in defense of supposed arbitrary laws.

this is as stupid as the people that bitch that the CSI shows are not accurate

L&O is NOT INTENDED TO BE AN ACURATE PORTRAYAL OF LAW ENFORCEMENT

at the end of the day, to try to do a show that's an acurate portrayal of law enforcement would result in the veiwer hating the police

what dick wolf tried to do (and did successfully IMO) is make characters that the viewing audience can sympathize with and then take those specific characters and make them cops

when Eliot Stabler "almost kills somebody" we, the audience, can understand and sympathize with his rage

when Olivia Benson goes into a monologue, we, the audience, can understand and sympathize with her veiwpoints

when Olivia has a date we feel happy, when Stabler's wife left him, we felt sad, that's what the show is, the fact that Elliot and Olivia are cops is totally secondary, and the fact that it's not an accurate portrayal of real-world police officers is not merely ignorable, for most people it's this specific difference from reality that makes the show watchable, anyone who thinks L&O is an accurate portrayal of law enforcement is an idiot, most of the hardcore fans of the show know that real cops don't look anything like the ones that they see on tv, they just don't fucking care

another point
when measuring the "average" IQ of people, catogorized by job title, police officers are actually dumber than any other job title, with "people who survive by making money illegally" being among the smartest people, just behind Lawyers, med doctors, and psych doctors

cops in real life are a hell of a lot dumber than the cops that we see on police procedurals
real-world cops look more like Barney Fife and the cop on Southpark

 

[monoxide_child]

The part that really annoys me is the shitty forensic science. I did one high school forensic science class, and even I know you don't fucking DNA test a hair to find out it's wolf and not human. You can tell by looking under a microscope that it's not a human hair.

Also, how just about every single case I've seen on it gets closed with eyewitness testimony. That doesn't happen so much anymore. Eyewitness testimony sucks. Not only is human short-term memory bad, but stuff gets lost/altered/falsified in encoding, and long-term memories change over time and false ones can actually be spontaneously created under the right conditions.



This. These cops are horrible, and the show tries to act like it's real, thus it probably creates the impression among some of its viewers that this is how cops act or should act. Of the stuff I can remember observing, they've assaulted people during interrogation, and tried to charge people with interfering with an investigation by not answering questions. Something worse, though, as I've seen in lots of episodes, is one of the high points of tension is when they don't have evidence to put a guy in prison, so they struggle to get someone to testify or to find more evidence. It's usually before they actually have forensic evidence that they'll have the goal of putting a suspect behind bars, and sometimes there's the twist ending where it's actually someone else, but still.

My least favorite verdict is one episode where a guy gets charged with first degree murder because a girl killed herself because she participated in pornography when she was legal age and signed a consent form.

the CSI shows are not intended to be accurate either
they are supposed to be entertaining, the CSI shows are supposed to be "more entertaining than reality"
if you want to watch a CSI type show that's "accurate" just watch the forensics shows that actually document real-life cases on A&E

 

[Einherjar86]

this is as stupid as the people that bitch that the CSI shows are not accurate

L&O is NOT INTENDED TO BE AN ACURATE PORTRAYAL OF LAW ENFORCEMENT

It doesn't matter what it's intended as; but personally, I think you're terribly wrong.

Even if Wolf doesn't intend his characters as actual police officers, they still set the ideological precedent. They become the representation of "what cops are/should be." When people see corrupt cops in Werner Herzog films, or Scorsese movies, most of them think: "These are exceptions to the rule." But this isn't the case; law enforcement attracts personalities that don't even remotely resemble those in the Law & Order series.

 

[monoxide_child]

It doesn't matter what it's intended as; but personally, I think you're terribly wrong.

Even if Wolf doesn't intend his characters as actual police officers, they still set the ideological precedent. They become the representation of "what cops are/should be." When people see corrupt cops in Werner Herzog films, or Scorsese movies, most of them think: "These are exceptions to the rule." But this isn't the case; law enforcement attracts personalities that don't even remotely resemble those in the Law & Order series.

i get the whole rule/exception to the rule thing you're trying to say, real cops in the real world look like the "evil cop" in the movie "training day" i get it, and at the end of the day, i think anyone who has interacted with jack-ass cops gets it too, the majority of cops are jack-asses, it has to do with "power corrupting, and absolute power corrupting absolutely" and cops being jack-asses is the first fucking thing anyone learns in a psychology class

but
this thread started off about the show L&O SVU
and for the hard-core-fans of the show, they just don't give a rat's ass
i think the hard-core fans of L&O SVU are maybe a little smarter than the TV addicts that watch nothing but comedies
i think the hard-core fans understand that Stabler and Benson are psychologically different than real cops out in the real world, they just don't care

and if someone in america is really stupid enough to believe that the show is acurately portraying law enforcement personality types, then that person being an idiot can't really be dick wolf's fault, can it??

 

[monoxide_child]

i thought the character's are supposed to be kinda one-dimentional

Eliot Stabler is the always-pissed-off-type character

Olivia Benson is always the ultra-sensitive-sympathizing-with-the-victim-type cop

you know the whole "good-cop-bad-cop-routine"

these 2 characters (moreso than the others) are actually supposed to look one-dementional

this is how one-dimentional the elliot Stabler character is, he's just a "bad-ass" and not really intended to be really anything more than that

http://www.badassoftheweek.com/stabler.html

 

[CF87]

Reno 911 was funni-er than Scrubs

It's a good thing Reno 911 is off air. As far as I know. It was really not funny or good. Anyways, I've always wanted to put it in Sarah Chalke's Butt. I'd use my tongue on her Butthole.