Horizon

I wonder if the author has ever met someone who learned all this from Cops. Or maybe this is a hypothetical viewer, like the "ideal reader" that New Critics and Reader-Response types used to talk about, except redefined as dull-witted and...Republican.

I think that a lot of the pleasure of Cops comes from watching everything being put right again, everything ordered and chaos banished. Anyone who really wants to understand what effect (if any) a TV show has on its audience needs to start with asking what makes people like it, not what it's possible to claim that some hypothetical idiot might learn from it.

Understanding cultural artifice (I would normally just say art but don't want to offend anyone since the topic is reality TV) is important business and should be taken more seriously than this.

That's a good, and far from straightforward question: why do people like Cops? The obvious answer - the crash-bang-bang testosterone appeal - doesn't really apply, because most of the arrest stories that the show follows are not particularly dramatic or even, in themselves, interesting; it's mostly just minor drug arrests, domestic violence disputes and drunken Saturday-night melees. Let me be honest: I'm sure the there-but-for-the-grace-of-God factor plays a big part in audience interest, as well as the unedifying temptation to peer at the animals from behind the safety of the zoo cage. But I'm not sure that Cops really does show things being put right again. There's a real pathos to the stories, because it's obvious that many of those apprehended are going to immediately reconvict as soon as they're let loose again - and often for reasons out of their immediate control, through desperation, addiction, etc. Which is why the Cops come across as thoroughly cynical and world-weary but at the same time oddly sympathetic towards the plight of some of their customers, especially the most obviously downtrodden. They have no hesitation in doing their job, but at the same time they exude no real optimism that the law will prevent these problems from recurring.

That's a good point, but on the other hand you can't put things right if nothing's going wrong. It's not the idea that everything will finally be fixed, but the process of the fixing that I believe many people find compelling or comforting. Yes, ultimately the cops are at best treading water, and certainly many of the petty criminals are pitiable, but watching drunk drivers and crack heads sitting in the back of police cruisers makes people feel good nonetheless. I think that's a big part of the appeal.

First I'll admit I'm not a "Cops" viewer. I probably should be for sociological reasons, but my idea of leisure involves *not* thinking about the U.S. criminal justice system.

So I'm only going on you guys's (your-all?) description, but from here it does sound like the show reinforces a background assumption that the place where crime happens is in an American underclass whose differentness is taken for granted, among unattractive poor people whose language and appearance mark them as outside middle-class society. If so, doesn't it have the function of making middle-class viewers feel safer by assuring them that crime is always committed by strangers & that their own middle-class neighbors and family members are therefore *not* going to hurt them? I mean, I don't watch the show, but how often do crimes like fraternity rape or middle-class domestic violence or the Scott Peterson murder make it onto the screen? Doesn't the criminal tend to be some poor scraggly fellow with missing teeth? And if so, isn't that unfair?

Watch the show, at least once.

why?

At the risk of stating what I thought was the bleeding obvious: if we're going to talk about something, be it a book, a play, a TV show, or whatever, isn't it more helpful if everybody has read or seen it?

But would I enjoy it?

I've no idea. Do you only ever do things you enjoy? Either way, 30 minutes of your life hardly seems like a gruelling commitment.

Don't worry, Martha, I'll talk to you.

To answer your question, I think you could make an argument to that effect, i.e., Cops gives middle class viewers the impression that only scruffy poor people commit crimes. Likewise a show that concentrates on things like the Scott Peterson case (and there are a lot of those nowadays too), could equally be argued on the same assumptions to give viewers the impression that only middle class people commit crime. It's a tempting idea for some reason, like the idea that videogames make teens violent, but in my opinion complete bunk.