The world is seemingly experiencing a moment of upheaval right now. Sparked by the horrific death of George Floyd at the hands of four cops, the Black Live Matter movement has risen up and countless demonstrations have been held around the globe in protest of police brutality and racism.
This has been long overdue, yet it’s only taken until now for the illusion to shatter because we’ve all been consciously and subconsciously been brought up to think that cops are good thanks to a never-ending stream of police movies and TV shows, all of which has contributed to the normalisation of institutionalised racism, abuse of power, and brutality.
The GOAT team talk about the George Floyd protests, Black Lives Matters and how you can help on ‘It’s Been A Big Day For…’ below:
TV shows and movies come and go, but the one constant that’s been present is police-related content. Specifically, police-related TV shows and movies in the last few decades in which cops are the main protagonists and are almost always portrayed as paragons of virtue who happen to also be intelligent and/or great-looking.
Not only is there an over-abundance of police-related content at any one given time – hell, Dick Wolf single-handedly created essentially every big-name cop TV show in the last two decades – being constantly exposed to these sorts of unrealistic portrayals of cops has desensitised us all to what really happens in real life.
Many of us don’t know any better and we take things we see on TV at face value. We’ve been brought up believing that cops are good, charming, and intelligent while criminals are bad and/or dumb (and mostly Black) thanks to a never-ending diet of inaccurate TV shows and movies. It’s become worryingly easy to disregard how problematic it is and the negative consequences that come with it.
As the actual police became more involved with Hollywood productions, the line between reality and fiction became incredibly blurry, to the point where it’s difficult to separate the two and why people still blindly trust the police. That’s where we find ourselves now.
Like how reality TV shows are normalising domestic abuse, the distorted view of police in fiction has resulted in the normalisation of problems like institutionalised racism, police brutality and corruption, and it clouds the public’s view of what criminal justice actually is.
It’s why so many people didn’t bat an eyelid at police misconduct until now when it’s all been unfolding so horrifically before our very eyes in real time.
Not every TV show or movie about the police paints them in a positive light and some specifically highlight issues like racism and brutality. Shows and movies like The Shield, The Wire, Fargo, and Training Day certainly don’t portray them in a very positive way at all.
But the problem is despite those aforementioned TV shows and movies depicting the police in a negative light, the characters are portrayed in such a multi-dimensional way that people can’t but empathise with them. It’s like how people still rooted for Walter White in Breaking Bad despite being an utterly despicable human being.
This is why some people can inexplicably defend clear-cut instances of police brutality we’ve been witnessing at the George Floyd protests. It’s how the “they just had a bad day” excuse came into existence; people try and justify their bad behaviour because, well, it’s what they saw on TV and no one can really be that awful, right? Police normalisation is a powerful thing.
That’s not to say that “all cops are bad” per se or all hope is lost for a justice system that isn’t built upon institutionalised racism, but that’s not that far from the truth. When the institution itself is so flawed and broken, it’s impossible to place any trust in the system, regardless of whether you know for certain that a number of cops are genuinely good.
So the question now is where do we go from here in terms of depicting the police in fiction? With the cancellation of the long-running TV show Cops, the current formula of portraying cops on TV and movies no longer fits the present-day paradigm.
Let’s use Brooklyn Nine-Nine as an example. Sure the show is goofy, unrealistic and has tackled touchy subjects like #MeToo with care, but in portraying its cops as likable idiots, viewers are led to falsely believe “oh, all cops must be fun and cool like that.” Despite all its good intentions, Brooklyn Nine-Nine still plays into the normalisation of police as paragons of integrity when the reality is far from it.
Writers and creators will have to be exceptionally careful going forwards with police-related projects in terms of properly depicting the system and all the diverse voices that are part of it. There’s a greater element of responsibility on their shoulders in order to ensure that we don’t fall back into old habits. But how this will come to fruition remains to be seen.
Decades have been spent glamourising the police on TV shows and movies. It’s just that it’s almost always been a lie and reality has finally shattered the illusion for us all.
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