Post by Patcat on Aug 3, 2010 8:22:08 GMT -5
August 2, 2010, 9:00 pm
‘Law & Order’ Probably Doesn’t Like You
By STANLEY FISH
Stanley Fish on education, law and society.
Tags:
“Law & Order”, Television
Nothing personal. But now that Dick Wolf’s “Law & Order” has called it a day — or rather a 20-year run — it is time to notice what may be its most remarkable feature; not the brilliant formula that offers both the comfort of predictability and the promise of constant surprise (an episode almost never ends up where it seems to be going at the beginning), not the ability of the show to survive major cast changes without missing a beat, not the considerable accomplishment of making the arcane vocabulary of the law ( “fruit of the poisoned tree,” “asked and answered,” “prejudicial,” “allocute,” “goes to relevance”) as familiar to TV viewers as the jargon of sports, but the extraordinarily long list of professions, classes and category of persons it doesn’t like.
Begin with rich people. “Law & Order” hates rich people; they are arrogant, they are condescending, they consume conspicuously, and, worst of all, they believe they are above the law. In one episode, the head of a foundation is informed of a $400,000 problem. She retorts, “$400, 000 is less than I spend on sweatpants.” In another episode (“Venom”), a 64-year old woman who is bent on protecting her 27-year old husband says to one of the district attorneys: “You have no idea of what a woman in my position can do.” Actually they have a very good idea. Time and again wealthy people manipulate the system by getting well connected friends to intervene in cases or by hiring high-priced lawyers who know how to put up procedural roadblocks forever.
The heroes of the show live and work in the shadows, not the limelight.
Worse than rich people are the children of rich people. They are spoiled, cruel, believe they can get away with anything and often do. Typically these kids go to expensive private schools, which, at least in “Law & Order,” are populated by blazer-wearing snob administrators and teachers who kiss up to the even snobbier parents of over-privileged brats.
When those brats get into trouble — usually by picking on weak, vulnerable classmates or by beating up gays, homeless people or immigrants — they are treated by psychiatrists-to-the wealthy who are adept at manufacturing excuses for bad behavior and giving those excuses fancy diagnostic names. Let off the hook, these same scions of the privileged class go to college where they join fraternities and sororities and devise engines of cruelty and psychological destruction that Goebbels might admire.
You get the idea. Here are the police and the people in the justice system trying to keep the streets safe and here is a crowd of wealthy high-and-mighty types who refuse to live by the rules, think the world is theirs for the taking, and proceed to take it with the help of sycophants who do their bidding out of greed and fear.
They’re not the only ones. Doctors in the “Law & Order” world are not always rich, but they are almost always charlatans and hucksters who push addictive prescriptions, use their own semen to impregnate infertile patients, and prescribe experimental drugs without informing patients of the risks. Priests and rabbis and evangelicals are worse: they are pedophiles and hypocrites; they prey on the public, deceive their followers and practice all of the deadly sins they preach against.
Then there are the high-roller businessmen, developers, drug manufacturers, executives all of whom are busy devising schemes to cheat the government, defraud shareholders, endanger the public and betray colleagues.
What links those who inhabit these various categories is that they are not ordinary folks. “Law & Order” hates people who stand out. The real heroes of the show are those who soldier on day after day, like the detectives who display a world-weary cynicism that is perfectly understandable given the world they deal with every day. They are far from perfect — Lennie Briscoe (played by Jerry Orbach, who died in 2004) is a reformed alcoholic, failed husband and father and resident Thersites; Mike Logan (Chris Noth) is bitter, edgy, dark; Ed Green (Jesse Martin) is a compulsive gambler — but they keep on going, wresting small victories from the darkness that increases every time they try to dissipate it. They live and work in the shadows, not in the limelight.
The limelight is for actors, rock stars, athletes, artists, dancers, high-profile academics, writers, all of whom are objects of great suspicion on because the special talents they have translate often into claims of special treatment. In an episode titled “Genius,” a Norman Mailer-like writer speaks in defense of his murderous protégé: “Art gives form to life; true genius should be coddled and forgiven.” “Law & Order”— I speak of it as of it were a person; it is certainly a spirit — doesn’t want to coddle anyone and forgiveness is low on its list of preferred virtues. Genius means trouble; creativity is antithetical to boundaries; and boundaries are what the police and the prosecutors patrol.
Not that law enforcement personnel are given a free pass. Lawyers who do not work for the people, but function as hired gunslingers, are portrayed as devious and venal. F.B.I. agents are careerists who are more interested in protecting their territory than in pursuing justice. Judges take bribes, sexually harass members of their staff and use the bench as an instrument for settling personal scores or advancing political agendas.
And as for political agendas, politicians are uniformly slimy. If the investigation of a crime gets within 10 miles of a congressman’s office, you can be sure he did it. During Jack McCoy’s brief tenure as district attorney he goes head-to-head with the governor who appointed him, an Eliot Spitzer type who interferes with a case because it has produced revelations that are embarrassing to him. McCoy loses; he didn’t have a chance.
It is no surprise that the series ended a couple of years after Jack McCoy (Sam Waterston) was promoted. As an assistant district attorney he is the show’s (flawed) moral center, in part because while he is in a position of authority, he is not too high. He is in the middle, positioned so that he can interact with the nitty-gritty details of the criminal justice system and safeguard its integrity in the face of assaults on it from other precincts, including quite often the precincts occupied by his superiors who as political appointees cannot always be trusted. As district attorney, McCoy seems always to be wishing he were still in his former job, a job to which he was completely and unambiguously dedicated. (He was constantly turning down lucrative offers to go into private practice).
That dedication often leads him to perform acts that are morally questionable. He pressures innocent people so that he can get to others; he hides and distorts evidence; he intentionally misleads both his courtroom opponents and his own staff; he has affairs with his assistants; he is insufferably self-righteous; and he is never seen out of the office without a drink in his hand.
It might appear, then, that “Law & Order” doesn’t even like its own main character, but the show is not “The Sopranos” or “Mad Men” or “Damages.” It is quite clear that in his own mind McCoy’s bending of the rules is forced on him by the ever rising tide of corruption and influence; the legal system is always in danger of being overwhelmed; and in order to save it, he reasons, one must violate its principles of fairness, impartiality, and transparency. Often in office exchanges someone — at times McCoy — will say in response to a suggested strategy, “but that will make us no different from them.”
In fact they are in the end no different from them except in a determination to play their roles in a government of laws, not of men. Men (and women) however are always trying to capture the government’s procedures and bend them to their will. That is the bottom line message of the series: the liberal state is committed to a regime of justice that is not a respecter of persons, but persons — especially persons who have managed to distinguish themselves in some way — are forever working to undermine it. From episode to episode “Law & Order” is engaged in a staying action against the forces that threaten its ideals, forces that live and have their being in the walks of life that afford the time and the resources to pursue nefarious, self-serving, agendas. The only way to be O.K. in Dick Wolf’s world is to have a job that is steady but doesn’t pay very much, to drive a five year old car you’re still paying off, to live in a small house with a large mortgage, to have an education that helps you get by but doesn’t give you any fancy ideas, to attend a house of worship that is the center of your social life, and to have almost no leisure time. Unless you fit that profile, “Law & Order” probably doesn’t like you.
Copyright 2010 The New York Times Company Privacy Policy NYTimes.com 620 Eighth Avenue New York, NY 10018
Patcat
‘Law & Order’ Probably Doesn’t Like You
By STANLEY FISH
Stanley Fish on education, law and society.
Tags:
“Law & Order”, Television
Nothing personal. But now that Dick Wolf’s “Law & Order” has called it a day — or rather a 20-year run — it is time to notice what may be its most remarkable feature; not the brilliant formula that offers both the comfort of predictability and the promise of constant surprise (an episode almost never ends up where it seems to be going at the beginning), not the ability of the show to survive major cast changes without missing a beat, not the considerable accomplishment of making the arcane vocabulary of the law ( “fruit of the poisoned tree,” “asked and answered,” “prejudicial,” “allocute,” “goes to relevance”) as familiar to TV viewers as the jargon of sports, but the extraordinarily long list of professions, classes and category of persons it doesn’t like.
Begin with rich people. “Law & Order” hates rich people; they are arrogant, they are condescending, they consume conspicuously, and, worst of all, they believe they are above the law. In one episode, the head of a foundation is informed of a $400,000 problem. She retorts, “$400, 000 is less than I spend on sweatpants.” In another episode (“Venom”), a 64-year old woman who is bent on protecting her 27-year old husband says to one of the district attorneys: “You have no idea of what a woman in my position can do.” Actually they have a very good idea. Time and again wealthy people manipulate the system by getting well connected friends to intervene in cases or by hiring high-priced lawyers who know how to put up procedural roadblocks forever.
The heroes of the show live and work in the shadows, not the limelight.
Worse than rich people are the children of rich people. They are spoiled, cruel, believe they can get away with anything and often do. Typically these kids go to expensive private schools, which, at least in “Law & Order,” are populated by blazer-wearing snob administrators and teachers who kiss up to the even snobbier parents of over-privileged brats.
When those brats get into trouble — usually by picking on weak, vulnerable classmates or by beating up gays, homeless people or immigrants — they are treated by psychiatrists-to-the wealthy who are adept at manufacturing excuses for bad behavior and giving those excuses fancy diagnostic names. Let off the hook, these same scions of the privileged class go to college where they join fraternities and sororities and devise engines of cruelty and psychological destruction that Goebbels might admire.
You get the idea. Here are the police and the people in the justice system trying to keep the streets safe and here is a crowd of wealthy high-and-mighty types who refuse to live by the rules, think the world is theirs for the taking, and proceed to take it with the help of sycophants who do their bidding out of greed and fear.
They’re not the only ones. Doctors in the “Law & Order” world are not always rich, but they are almost always charlatans and hucksters who push addictive prescriptions, use their own semen to impregnate infertile patients, and prescribe experimental drugs without informing patients of the risks. Priests and rabbis and evangelicals are worse: they are pedophiles and hypocrites; they prey on the public, deceive their followers and practice all of the deadly sins they preach against.
Then there are the high-roller businessmen, developers, drug manufacturers, executives all of whom are busy devising schemes to cheat the government, defraud shareholders, endanger the public and betray colleagues.
What links those who inhabit these various categories is that they are not ordinary folks. “Law & Order” hates people who stand out. The real heroes of the show are those who soldier on day after day, like the detectives who display a world-weary cynicism that is perfectly understandable given the world they deal with every day. They are far from perfect — Lennie Briscoe (played by Jerry Orbach, who died in 2004) is a reformed alcoholic, failed husband and father and resident Thersites; Mike Logan (Chris Noth) is bitter, edgy, dark; Ed Green (Jesse Martin) is a compulsive gambler — but they keep on going, wresting small victories from the darkness that increases every time they try to dissipate it. They live and work in the shadows, not in the limelight.
The limelight is for actors, rock stars, athletes, artists, dancers, high-profile academics, writers, all of whom are objects of great suspicion on because the special talents they have translate often into claims of special treatment. In an episode titled “Genius,” a Norman Mailer-like writer speaks in defense of his murderous protégé: “Art gives form to life; true genius should be coddled and forgiven.” “Law & Order”— I speak of it as of it were a person; it is certainly a spirit — doesn’t want to coddle anyone and forgiveness is low on its list of preferred virtues. Genius means trouble; creativity is antithetical to boundaries; and boundaries are what the police and the prosecutors patrol.
Not that law enforcement personnel are given a free pass. Lawyers who do not work for the people, but function as hired gunslingers, are portrayed as devious and venal. F.B.I. agents are careerists who are more interested in protecting their territory than in pursuing justice. Judges take bribes, sexually harass members of their staff and use the bench as an instrument for settling personal scores or advancing political agendas.
And as for political agendas, politicians are uniformly slimy. If the investigation of a crime gets within 10 miles of a congressman’s office, you can be sure he did it. During Jack McCoy’s brief tenure as district attorney he goes head-to-head with the governor who appointed him, an Eliot Spitzer type who interferes with a case because it has produced revelations that are embarrassing to him. McCoy loses; he didn’t have a chance.
It is no surprise that the series ended a couple of years after Jack McCoy (Sam Waterston) was promoted. As an assistant district attorney he is the show’s (flawed) moral center, in part because while he is in a position of authority, he is not too high. He is in the middle, positioned so that he can interact with the nitty-gritty details of the criminal justice system and safeguard its integrity in the face of assaults on it from other precincts, including quite often the precincts occupied by his superiors who as political appointees cannot always be trusted. As district attorney, McCoy seems always to be wishing he were still in his former job, a job to which he was completely and unambiguously dedicated. (He was constantly turning down lucrative offers to go into private practice).
That dedication often leads him to perform acts that are morally questionable. He pressures innocent people so that he can get to others; he hides and distorts evidence; he intentionally misleads both his courtroom opponents and his own staff; he has affairs with his assistants; he is insufferably self-righteous; and he is never seen out of the office without a drink in his hand.
It might appear, then, that “Law & Order” doesn’t even like its own main character, but the show is not “The Sopranos” or “Mad Men” or “Damages.” It is quite clear that in his own mind McCoy’s bending of the rules is forced on him by the ever rising tide of corruption and influence; the legal system is always in danger of being overwhelmed; and in order to save it, he reasons, one must violate its principles of fairness, impartiality, and transparency. Often in office exchanges someone — at times McCoy — will say in response to a suggested strategy, “but that will make us no different from them.”
In fact they are in the end no different from them except in a determination to play their roles in a government of laws, not of men. Men (and women) however are always trying to capture the government’s procedures and bend them to their will. That is the bottom line message of the series: the liberal state is committed to a regime of justice that is not a respecter of persons, but persons — especially persons who have managed to distinguish themselves in some way — are forever working to undermine it. From episode to episode “Law & Order” is engaged in a staying action against the forces that threaten its ideals, forces that live and have their being in the walks of life that afford the time and the resources to pursue nefarious, self-serving, agendas. The only way to be O.K. in Dick Wolf’s world is to have a job that is steady but doesn’t pay very much, to drive a five year old car you’re still paying off, to live in a small house with a large mortgage, to have an education that helps you get by but doesn’t give you any fancy ideas, to attend a house of worship that is the center of your social life, and to have almost no leisure time. Unless you fit that profile, “Law & Order” probably doesn’t like you.
Copyright 2010 The New York Times Company Privacy Policy NYTimes.com 620 Eighth Avenue New York, NY 10018
Patcat