Today, another episode from the Revisionist History Live universe. It's an old fashioned lecture, recorded at the New Orleans Book Festival at Tulane University. Malcolm talks about a totally real thing he made up—a taxonomy of the modern mystery story—with a focus on murder mysteries and police procedurals. From Dragnet, to John Grisham, to Sherlock Holmes, it's all in there...and all connected to how we view real policing.
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
This is an unofficial transcript meant for reference. Accuracy is not guaranteed.
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Hello, hello, everyone, Malcolm global; here we are continuing our build up to the main event this season of revisions, history, which is a mini series on guns, six parts, beginning august thirty first, which is some of my family work. We ve ever done vicious history.
So please put that on your account and if you want to binge, listen to it early without any ads, go to pushkin, dot, F and slash, plus and sign up for a pushkin subscription anyway, to get you in the mood for that series, which I will say right now goes in some very strange directions. I thought I'd give you. This is a speech I gave at the new Orleans book festival at tulane university. I asked the organizers if I could do an old fashioned lecture on murder, mysteries police procedurals, which I had been obsessed with ever since my dad read Sherlock Holmes short stories to me and my brothers, when we were kids, they said sure- and I said- oh, my god so picture a packed auditorium. Everyone has
bags and whether waiting the reading books did not an offence
catching up on your produced. This is a talk.
to a room full of serious readers, which is to say
other people, poor more interested in being delighted than they are being persuaded. My kind aren't
Here it is
thanked. Her neurons book festival for life,
may this time today I am
I wanted to start by apologising,
for the title alone. If you saw the title, india and programme
eastern western northern southern- and
we're theorized and potentially absurd taxonomy of the modern mystery story. First
a simple warning that type
is dead serious. I am this whole
so. It is going to get a little absurd
dover, theorized, so don't
at the end and say mr global, I found your present
an absurd and over theorized.
I already warned you I have to
those that risk at the outset
I have chosen to speak about crime novels.
Because and mysteries, because I'm addicted to them. I
I read in order spy novels thrillers of various kinds
novels involving events, the potentially threaten the safety of the entire planet and the the
category that concerns us today, police
the signals and crimes
and their television and film
You know when you go into the
it's a news in airport knows that whole wall of paper bags,
I have read every one of those paperbacks, except for the ones with the word girl in the title.
My my daughter, who is eighteen months old.
spends a lot of time in a very large plate, then in the papers,
immediately. Abuts, the bookcase.
Where I keep all of my thrillers and a couple days ago, she reached up.
and grabbed Daniel silva's to kill artist and started to turn the page is now the killers
Is the first instalment in Daniel servers
The books on the legendary israeli assassin Gabriel allow
an involving in this case his pursuit of the
astutely palestinian terrorist tariq. I'm it's one of my favorite books ever ends.
I mean I dont, think any father ever has been more proud
of his daughter
Then I was at that moment
but, as I said it stories about the police that concern us today, because I I
stories about the police have not,
given nearly the kind of close cultural scheme
They deserve
which makes no sense, because the ad
to the people of culture towards.
police is really really weird. So there are two million truck drivers in the united states,
how many tv books and movies and novels are there about truck drivers right once in a blue.
There are three million nurses in the united states
How many movies are there about
is there a genre of fiction devoted to nurses know there is not.
There are four million teachers in the united states.
Teachers are everywhere. There must be a ton of teachers in this room right now
how many teachers do you know? Personally, I am sure all of us. The list is this long
but has any sixteen year old ever ass his girlfriend to come?
with him to see the new teacher movie at the multiplex now
the creative rob was taught by teachers nurtured by teachers. Incur.
By teachers- but they don't want to tell us stories about teachers.
They want to tell us stories about cops
There are only seventy thousand police officers in this.
but they are met
simply over represented in the culture mike,
Is that all
everyone in this room. Candy
way more fictional.
officers
They can name real police officers
Have you ever heard? A real police officer refer to a purpose.
Have you ever heard a real police officer talk about a cold case?
Have you ever heard a real police officer? Say you had the right?
remained silent.
Have you ever a real police officer, say of his partner?
if you're going in there.
I'm going in there with you too, or
Hold on Jimmy just hold on
remember when we were rookies together jimmy no. No, no.
Virtually everything we know about the police
comes from the movies and television and novels right. Martians
currently circle in the united states in a hot air. Balloon is absurd. If
of those martians currently circulating
it. States in a hunter balloon ever gets a netflix.
Subscription, they will say my god. We appear to have stumbled on a country
people running around in tight blue uniforms and wearing
theatre classes?
So today I want to ask the question what
have we learnt
from our immersion in all these police, procedural and crime novel.
And what are the social consequences of that learning, which is
but in question, because I think all of those crime, books and movies have really really screwed us up,
Ok, let's begin with ed mcbay now
those of you who may not be familiar with that methane. He was in the
postwar years, one of america's most popular mystery writers
He wrote police procedural about a fictional eighty, seven precinct and the
pursues in his precinct we're all
young men. They were all had very pretty wives.
they were all happily married.
They all got long wonderfully
look together. Well, and I wonder we too, from one of the
novels and serious called the killers wedge. It's about
The officers in the eighty seven precinct, cotton hawes.
Whose just been transferred in from another precinct and the
Seventh is in a bad part of town and the initially as all kinds of doubts about what it would mean to work of poor part of town. So this,
is Ed mcbain talking about how cotton,
as is making sense of his experience? He had learned.
The people of the slums were only people then,
by the same pleasures he did and they suffer
a great many misfortunes he would never have to suffer.
They wanted love and they wanted respect and the world
Of a tenement did not necessarily become the
image of an animal he had learned.
This from the men are the squad. He had seen each and every one of them inaction. Then it goes
but he was surprised to learn that the men of the eighty seventh clung to another concept which in no way limited the effectiveness of their law enforcement. That concept was fairness
within this concept they knew
get tough and went to understand. They did not automatic
equate some dwellers with criminals. A thief was a thief, but a person was a person now since
remarkably idealized view of law enforcement right I mean
Maybe another example from the same europe. Nineteen fifties which
course to television. Show dragnet created by jack was at its height dragnet
is an astonishingly popular television show one point:
the twenty seven million american homes with televisions,
Sixty million will be tune,
Two dragnet on thursday nights when it ran, which is a number that has never been approximated, syn,
it's insane number and dragnet is a show about the lapd.
it's a story of a group of dispassionate, unbelievably professional, highly competent police officers. One of my favorite drag.
At episodes involve Joe Friday, who is the hero of dragnet,
arresting a woman for a crime and at the end,
the episode, the woman. He arrests thanks him for arresting her, which
When has this ever
happened in real life. Ever
It happened in dragnet and you don't you
you could make a list of the people is a separate fund exercise of the top the most
the five most influential television shows about time right. Sixty minutes,
probably the real world, which kind of invents reality tv.
Really put the cosby show and there for its influence on race relations in, but it.
Absolutely is the case. The dragnet is one of the five most influential and important television shows of all time
belongs in that list, because what it does is. It represents a first time on television
at the same idea that Edmund Bain has is put forth
and which is this notion that the police are good at what they do
here from a time magazine, article on dragnet frisk became ahead.
Flood of dragnet fan
suggested the. U s completely forgets that it is a nation of incipient
cop haters, when it's
glued on web, show that it
gained a new appreciation of the
they paid long suffering, ordinary policemen and
any cases, its first rudimentary understanding of real life law enforcement. So this is
time magazine in the nineteen fifty sweden, when it was
embodiment of middle america-
striving the united states as a nation of incipient cop haters, you're too
when we think of cop haters. We think of you know
progressives radical
its activists, civil rights, zealots. You know that
time magazine is saying America middle america? Were the carpenters until
people like admit bain and dried, came along
convinced
arrogance that their presence
Sure of bond poyser was wrong.
Who shows represent a massive near
innovation, they introduce
america's to an idea that had never occurred to them before, and that is the idea of the excellent police officer more on the tax on any of the modern mystery story. In a moment, the single hardest person to buy a gift.
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also available, wherever you get your podcasts now back to my speech on the taxonomy of police storytelling,
now. This is, of course not the only way that the popular
sure represents law enforcement before
They came along the dominant.
narrative mode was the western and what is the western?
it's a parable about the consequences of the absence of institutional authority,
What do you do in your little town on the plains when there
No police department.
well ordinary citizens possessed of no more than their own courage and a six shooter
have to restore order on their own.
Now, alongside that, you had the rise in fiction of the private detective hooker poor
oh Sherlock holmes, philip Marlowe, Angela lansbury in murder. She wrote
and what is the prevailing view of life,
spent in the world of the private detective. It is that the police are present, but their incompetent
They can only catch bad guys with the help of talented outsiders right of amateurs, if you
you're Sherlock holmes. You know all about Sherlock Holmes is long relationship with, with inspector illustrate of scotland yard
lest rate, is honest. He's dogged he's hard working
but he lacks imagination and he can't solve a crime to save his life
and there's a moment in the adventure in the event of the six napoleon's in nineteen hundred. When we have this passage less trade,
is addressing homes after homes has just done one of his spectacular feats of deduction and figured out who the real criminals.
industrial, says
we are not jealous of you at scotland yard, no, sir. We are very proud of you,
if you come down tomorrow, does not a man from the oldest inspector to the youngest constable, who wouldn't
glad to shake you by the hand so
scotland yard they are under.
Absolutely, no illusion about their own ability right.
They know homes is better than they are they now
oh, that their useless at this task of crime, solving the guy with the pipe and the crazy
four baker street is the only way they going to keep the criminals of london under control.
Same thing and Agatha Christy's, her corporeal novels right,
your poorer, with solving crime after crime. To the extent.
The police ever show up right
when they show up, they have no idea what's going on and he
them are little belgian with the moustaches look
the police, with absolute contempt, because he's the only one who can ever finger the bad guy right
we have stories about highly competent cops,
for the sake of argument, let's call those eastern's.
We have stories about absent cops?
It's called those western smack. They are called questions
and we have stories about in
competent, cops and lets.
Let's call those northerners
Only leaves the southern, so what's the sudden
well, the southern is the narrative of the police and authority as malignant think about
great Brian de palma movie the untouchables with
and cost her playing the role of elliot
that's right, the incorruptible chicago district attorney elliot ness, who-
on his crusade against the mob during a herd of prohibition
reason it matters. That ness is incorruptible.
All around him. The police of chicago are corruptible right there, not absent they're, not incompetent, do not deaf
professional know they had been seduced by the criminality that is supposed to contain. They are
indistinguishable from the bad guys. That's what southerners-
but these are the facts:
or kinds of
police stories, excellence, absence, incompetents, corruption,.
And this is a first here's, the first of my claims. I think that every
single example
they crime, novel or police procedural.
falls into one of these four categories without exception surpluses,
for this I seem some of you have read
lee child jack richer series, and if you haven't, you need to start like right after this,
talk is over. I once did a back of the envelope calculation based on the
large sample of jack mature novels that I've read
Does it follows we
sure kills, on average, twelve
bad guys per book. There are twenty six.
reach a books, meaning that he is murdered. Two hundred and eighty four people over there
save his life. He is the man
prolific serial killer in american fiction and yet
six years after jack reach. Her first appeared in the killing floor. He remains at large.
This is pretty good evidence that the police are absent.
In the reach, a series,
reach or novels westerns,
only the western. Can you get away with killing turn any for people and remain a large right
for the northern for incompetent police.
You have more examples, then we can count, but the one that,
I remember from my childhood and many of you are old enough:
This is well, is, is hawkins here
the legendary nineteen seventies sitcom
for those of you who are too young
remember: huggins heroes
It was a hugely successful tv show set,
in a german prisoner of war camp during the second world war, in which the
I make fools of the capture german soldiers were nazi prison guards.
Don't even try pitching that show today by the workers,
and why do we laugh at the nazis
serves colonel cling
and sergeant Schultz right, not because there
malicious or vicious not
because they are ineffective or indifferent? No, we laugh
them, because their inapt, because clinkers
self important fool because
schulz is a clown. Who says, I know nothing. I see nothing right,
the literary conceit of
opens heroes. Is it is it? The nazis were the three stages, which is another cuts
it is right, then, those the southern,
authority as malignant and corrupt who,
Is the king of the southern? Well, I think it's obvious. If you think about it, it's strong gresham,
The plot of every john gresham novel ever- and I say this as someone who love
John Gresham, like a brother, is about the
subversion of institutional authority. How does
pelican brief and the
this man and the country is under indictment as our his closest aids and all of his lawyers. The chief of staff to the president of the united states has resigned and the press
Himself, has wisely decided not to seek a second term in the firm
here are played in the movie version by tom cruise discovers that
biggest client of his law. Firm is a mafia crime. Family. The fbi gets involved.
think the movies is end with the fbi. Helping tom cruise resolve the matter, but
What is our hero? Do he ends up making a deal with them
fear, crime, family and turning his back on the f b. I why? Because the f b, I double crosses, and, of course they do,
right distinguish of novel right. The law,
What is less trustworthy denham?
a few crime family.
if I'm argued long hard over the years to very deaf ears,
question is the most important literary figure of our generation, and I'm I'm not joking, I mean
How? Why did so? Many americans think the twenty twenty two election was stolen, that truckloads of prolonged
ballots were ferried around philadelphian back of pickup truck.
voting machines, magically preferred democrats to republicans.
Because these are the kinds of things that happen all the time and john gresham novels right angle,
The John Christian has sold three hundred million books and his head
gay consecutive number, one million tonnes per sellers. It is ace
Artistical certainty that a good
you're the people wearing mega hats and stormy. The captain,
on january, six red aggression book every night before tat time, after of course, being inoculated, with their daily toes.
I took a curse. The still more difficult example
Some of you may have seen the new apple tv series slow horses
based on the mick Herron spy novels,
the show is about
Intelligence officer played by Gary Oldham, who has been exiled to a decrepit
How building called slow house and
along with all the other misfits all the other rejects screw.
weirdos, who can no longer make it within? Am I five headquarters? So? What's that? Will that that sense, like no northern?
it's a authorities incompetent, but we have a group of scrubbs but then,
the slaughterhouse crew go on to solve some of the most pressing national security crises? That today,
which makes it sound like an easter like dragnet at a thing like goober competent authority, so it doesn't
fit right does not invalidate my theory. No! No! No!
slow horses just is just a hybrid right. It's
it's been around forever fewer?
how many people read scarlet pimpernel novels growing up what
It's the scarlet pimpernel he
The nobleman, who everyone thinks is stupid, but his son,
ten years waiting all of the evil, french right or think about colombo right, the magnificent,
nineteen seventies television detective series Abou, where peter fault,
pretends to be a duck: bumbling full, but always
gets the bad guy in the end, these
at masquerading as northerners their northeastern there? There are no researchers
right. What does have its say two horatio there
more things in Heaven and earth and jumped up in your philosophy that does not apply to my taxonomy
Why am I going on not about the four categories, because I think they're deeply problematic and I think they
distort our understanding of what policing is
and here I'm gonna, get go on it.
digression and simultaneously get a little bit serious.
Father of modern policing was a man named sir Robert peel, and he found them
japan and police force in london in eighteen, twenty nine, which is the first great urban police department and peace.
Famous. He sets out nine principles. Tat he thinks ought to govern modern police forces and they are, as
couple, if not more applicable today than they were in eighteen. Twenty
They are the ten
mammoths of policing there, what every police officer is taught on the first day of their time at police academy,
and to give you a favor, I want to read a couple of pills, principles.
the ability of the police to perform their duties is depend
upon public approval of police.
existence, actions, behaviour
the ability of the police to sit.
you're and maintain public respect his another one.
The police must secure the willing cooperation of the public
Involuntary observance of the law to be able
to maintain and secure public respect is another the degree of cooperation of the public that can be secured
diminishes proportionately to the necessity for the use of physical force and compulsion in achieving police objectives, and here is a crucial one.
The police, at all times, should maintain
in our relationship with the public that gives reality,
to the historic tradition that the police?
for the public and the public are the police right
What is the word that appears in all of those principles as often as police, its public public public public, the police are the public and the public
but the police. I would submit to you that that those two-
sentences are one of the most beautiful and essential lines that
ever been written about the modern, democratic experiment now
Where are we today with respect peel's principles in america?
are we a society that believes that the people are,
Police and the police are the people.
I'm not so sure of that
What are the ways, for example, that we'd measure that health and effectiveness of a police force is clearance rates? Close rate is
the percentage of crimes that are solved by the police,
and most important of those, obviously is the homicide. Demonstrate
and over the last thirty years, the homicide,
clarence rate in this country has been falling.
by a small amount by large amount.
Two years ago, it was roughly seventy percent its now. Fifty percent
so half of all murders committed in the united states.
Oh unsolved by the police and what we do
an average there
many many places with occurrence red is much lower than that. The clearance rating
michigan, is seventeen percent for homicide
honolulu, its eighteen percent. It all
there by neighbourhood. If somebody was murdered outside of this auditorium hearing to land,
Parents rate would probably be ninety percent, but in the seventh ward- it's probably I don't know ten fifteen percent. That is a very, very big problem for modern society. In the classic population of deterrent,
Deterrence is a function of this
certainty, swiftness and severity of punishment and of those three things
the first is the most important right
turns is really a function of the likelihood of being caught, and if we
in a situation where the clearance
it's in many high crime, neighborhoods is less than twenty percent than that.
description, but failed state. We live in.
society now where there are many neighbourhood
where murderers, merger with impunity.
Now, why are clearance rates followed
It makes no sense that pleased today are better funded tibet, a train than ever before. They have more
access to technology? Those cameras everywhere, plus motor
it's a fallen dramatically in the last thirty years. They have less to do
watch, your site on tell it
gin or law and order you would think clearance rates would be a hundred percent, but they're not their low, and there are dropping
One reason for that is obvious, and that's that
of gun, violence, guns,
used to be a small parcel.
And you have homicides there now and overwhelming percentages of Hamas
and a gun crime is a lot harder to solve. Then a knife, crime, less physical evidence.
Till it can be further away.
but that's not the real reason
The real reason is that
most important.
Actor in solving a homicide is the cooperation of the public you find out who pulled the church.
because three people come to you and said I was there, I saw billy pull the trigger right. But if those three people dont come forward,
if they don't trust the police anymore. If they think of that,
these as an occupying force, then you have a problem. Remember remember that those principles from peel
the ability of the police to perform their duties is dependent upon public approval,
police existence, actions, behaviour
the ability of the police to secure and maintain public respect. My that is what we don't have right now
the most recent gallup poll only
Ninety percent of black adults said they were confident they had any confidence or trust in the
please the numbers for what
americans are a little bit higher, but they are also at historic lows: right
How do you solve a homicide in the community were eight out of ten people? Don't trust you? What rob
people said two hundred years ago is absolutely correct. The
police cannot do their job without the support of the public? Now you might say well this collapse and trust
perfect sense. Think about the last ten years we had ferguson. We had
floyd. We just had a tired,
goes on and on and write all of these stories of kinds of things that would now
surely undermine our faith in law enforcement.
a citizen solve the puzzle right because
in every way this
the problem was worse fifty years ago than it is today
Would you rather have the police department of Birmingham alabama
nineteen sixty three or the police.
farmers, Birmingham alabama today. Would you
I have the depletes positive list.
and in nineteen sixty three when they wouldn't even that black officers right in the same squad, cars as white officers then
lapd of today, know me I could go on. I mean
atlanta, in nineteen, forty
they hire their first black police officers. Group of eight
and they call the. Why m c a why? Because they won't let them into the
precincts. They make them work out of the basement.
of the colored, why I'm seeing downtown and they
They get so much abuse that half of them quit within the first year abuse from their fellow white police officers.
allowed to drive squad cars
to arrest white people. Do not
to patrol white neighborhoods? Why not
Since we came up against them and faulty report them for drinking on the job, why
It try to run down a couple of them industry, one,
an officer to put a bounty on the head of the black.
So. I say he would give tuna dollars to anyone who killed. One of those officers now
those are good reasons not to trust the police department right,
really good reasons not today
not today, when the atlanta police department is worlds better and different from that, you would have thought there was a crisis in clearance rates back then not now we'll be right back. This episode, revisionist histories brought to you by t mobile for business. Now is the time for five g business. These days we have robots, adieu, brain surgery. You can ask an air. I chat, bought to write your term paper, but yesterday, as I was driving fruitlessly around the parking lot of my local supermarket, all I could think was: why can someone come up with a gizmo? The just directs me to the nearest available parking spot. Well, it turns out
that's just the kind of solution. The t mobile for business can come up with from smarter cities to safer industrial workplaces. Five g can enable a better more connected world and t mobile for business. Has a network built for the way business and tech converged today right now, work forces are more widely distributed than ever. Industries are ripe for disruption and tec is advancing at a rate of requires vast and secure connectivity offering the nations largest five g network. T mobile is the best network partner to take your business to the next level. Now is the time to business bravely and start building a future today go to t mobile dot com. Slash now to learn more should
you borrowed to invest is at the right time to by real estate. How much insurance do you need? Can you afford to help out your addle children? Financially? Is a home renault worth it? Will you over time and ears, really be golden?
no matter what stage you out in life, if you have questions about your personal finances,
and how to make the most of your wealth both today and in the future, tune into elman financial engines everyday wealth. It's a pike asked
to help. You make smarter, more informed decisions about money issues hosted by financial journalists and best
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that in every way we would be better off today than we were fifty years ago. So, what's to blame for this right, this is one of them,
Profound problems facing our society, I think that there are
many important issues, but the one I
let's talk about it,
the influence of these four narratives,
This problem with the narratives, I think, is obvious, and that is that.
It is a dangerous thing
two over narrative eyes, a group of people,
the obvious analogy is the way to popular.
Culture treated african americans in
Movies in the first half of the twentieth century, there were,
three categories of black people.
in the movies. In that period, there was the man
remember gone with the wind. The rule
if I hadn't mcdaniel, and that is
a big, warm sassy, surrogate mother who puts her
mistress his children. I had
even of her own children
and who keeps her mistress in line. You know with her straight talk like that.
Sir number one sex
Sarah type was the sambo? What is the sample? The
Damn is the child
like passive, deeply loyal man servant right. The uncle tom.
And if you were a black actor actress in hollywood in the first
Forty years of the twentieth century,
Those are the two roles that were available to you and the third group
The shift less d
is untrustworthy, lazy, subversive right that
screenwriters and the novelist of America put all black people into one of those three categories for a hundred years. Why
they couldn't be bothered to explore the idea that there is
much variety and beauty and complexity and black people as they were in white people. A narrative.
A stereotype, it's a kind.
shorthand used by writers and
these stereotypes, art, harmless,
there's a famous studied. The nineteen thirties are that the ec stereotypes were agreed,
its psychologists asked thousands of americans to describe what they felt like people were, like
the three most popular adjectives used by. Why
people to describe black people were superstitious. Happy go
lucky and lazy, and they
It was a most of the white people. They talk too. For that survey
didn't know any black people.
They get those ideas, they got them from the movies right, so the stereotypes that are put forth in popular culture me
They are the raw material that people used to form their attitudes and perspectives about the rest of the world.
And I really worry that police narratives are doing the same thing they are due.
being an injustice to our understanding of the police,
Derek chauvelin murders, George floyd and thousands of people
take to the streets and say that's defined the police right. The George floyd case activated, the southern narrative,
law enforcement as impossibly corrupt and malicious, are only choices to shut it down,
but there are seven hundred thousand police officers in this country. How do you
possibly label the entire group based on the behaviour of a small number you, after that,
ready king beating thirty years ago that
the los angeles rights, the
sensuous big department was thrown into chaos and,
they were accused of racial, biased and sensitivity and turning a blind eye to misconduct, and they had one
of course, been the embodiment of the eastern
Dragnet was a celebration of the perfection and profession
because of the lapd, and now they were the sudden they work
it corrupt and
vicious, and there was a massive investigation that was launched and what the investigation found was. That of the
Eighty, five hundred police officers in the lapd
ridden. Eighty three had been the subject.
Of four or more excessive force complaints over in the
between nineteen, eighty, six and ninety ninety right so
a hundred and eighty three out of eighty five hundred
forty four of those. A hundred and eighty three had six or more complaints and
sixteen had eight or more complaints
The investigation found that the lapd, in other words, had a very small
core of really bad apples and did a really bad.
job identifying of bad apples and getting rid of them. That is not an eastern where everyone is
There was one officer who had more than I,
stay in excessive force, complaints in the previous for years and still
had his job right. That's not dragnet! That's something very different! That's problem, but this
in time that is not the description of a southern
description of an entire department that
is malicious and and malignant right. You cannot call a department of eighty five hundred people corrupt,
malignant, because it has forty four really bad apples so
police narratives have made a sloppy. Diminute really
art for us to understand the nature of the.
we're facing
They blew over the subtleties, you know you have
one side, saying it's all rotten
other watching dragnet and reading at MC bain,
saying these are noble, courageous men doing impossible job against overwhelming odds they does
our unqualified support. Right,
Neither of those narrows are true. How can the people be the police and the police beat up
But when the people don't understand who the police are problem number one.
we'll make this mistake with teachers we'll make it with truck drivers we'll make with nurses.
When we hear the teachers are bad teacher who students don't learn anything we
don't say, oh man, teaching is broken, let's defined teaching right. That's a
we just say that's a bad teacher who should be replaced,
let's do a better job of training and selected the next time
and the reason we are free to do. That is it.
one has come along and constructed:
people teacher genre
that allows us to assign every teacher to one of four reductive narrative categories. Second and a moron
My point is that I think we need to consider what these directives do
to those within the profession, because how
The police think of themselves is also shaped by these theories.
can be said that the godfather sri for this, the godfather, started out being about the mob before long the mob was about being like the godfather,
right. They all started pretending they were violent, brando or cultural natives about groups. Don't just reflect those groups, they also start to do.
find those groups, so the police also watchmen order right. They also read crime novels
and what do they learn from them? They learned
law enforcement is about them.
Story of their own ideas.
The and skill. Are they any good? Are they honest? Are they
as dogged in skilled in fundamental and in it as the police about the danes. Eighty seven precinct or
hapless as colonel lincoln sergeant shorts. The great
crime novelist Joseph Wamba, who was a lapd officer for many years,
once said that the modern police novel was now
about the man working the case, but the key
working the man.
That the innovation of police fiction in the modern era was to turn the spotlight on what the
job of maintaining law and order did too
psychology and peace of mind and character of the man tasked with maintaining law and order,
and I think that's exactly what the four narratives are doing there
simply giving different answers to the question of who the
this officer is in the western. Its
the ordinary man must summon his own curse to step into the breach in the northern
officer is not up to the task in southern the officers.
By his responsibilities and in the eastern,
Hero rises magnificently to the challenge
police fiction in all,
Those forms is an exercise in narcissism,
These are not novels and shows about solving crimes. Their shows about
I'm solvers and where
is the publican that their where it round
peel we're alive today, he would look around him and he would say we have
Then police officers a picture of their profession that lee
out the most important element in their success. The people whose respect and support make police work possible amber that peel print.
The ability of the police to perform their duties is dependent on public approval of police existence.
defy you defined anywhere in the world of crime fiction
a representation of that idea. It doesn't exist,
That's not the reason people write fiction, please fiction,
It's not the reason why we just like me, love, please fiction.
So what is the solution? Well, it breaks my heart to say this.
It is time for us to turn our backs on a spinal right. No more enough.
spin, a hundred years or more, and it has left us worse off than we see
I am sure all of you are have been watching the governor florida on his current.
Your cleansing campaign
All I have to say is:
where is wrong to santas when we need him.
He so busy banning jody become novels,
miss the real culprit, which is the child john direction at mcbay.
And arthur Conan Doyle.
let us go to the hudson news at the jacksonville airport
All of those paperbacks off the wall, put them in a big pile in further state house statehouse in tallahassee and light a match
Take time her a few questions,
wants to come forward.
I just wanted to ask if, in this
the conclusion that it's time to move past
the mystery novel, the spy novel. Do you think it there's a room for something more nuanced, one that has
of maybe with our understanding and our ability to capture information. You know, certainly when these
the general was born. We did not have cell phones, we didn't have social media. We certainly didn't
of instant news, and these have all drastically change the culture around policing in at least in the? U s
think there's a way for the the genre to move on and be more incorporated of
these elements in more reflective of the way policing actually is. I do think that I mean.
basically what what what has happened, I think is that we have exhausted the possibilities of the form and
it's time for reinvention and I
I think as well. The people who write
Kind of fiction need to understand what they're. So
The obligations are that the
This happened, I think, is it there's a generation because his more true in hollywood than it is in the world a fiction
People have really dodge the question.
What the impact of their writing is.
you make a movie. You make a really bad cop movie.
And you just shrugging, say it's entertainment and you
get that actually know what you are providing is the culture
raw material for the way we may,
sense of the world.
You just mail it in and just stick to some formula that is no longer relevant to the world. We live in your doing so,
And a disservice, so
yes, I do think it is possible to reinvent it, but I think it's going to require a change of
art among the within the creative community. Thank you.
Ok, so high minded first of all, thank you so much for talking. I wanted to ask a little bit about kind of going along that same crime, show narrative about
how much police officers are really able to do and how that kind of changes. Our public view in our public narrative.
I'm a huge range of brooklyn. I nine knives out all that stuff and we see.
this officers in detectives going in asking questions breaking into things
without warrants and every night that do think that changes the way we view police officers and how incompetent we may see them to be so,
It's really interesting point
The unreality of a lot of police fiction does
it contributes to our disillusionment, because we
This impression, from the way that police work is right.
presented in fiction that the police officer
as an awful lot more agency than here. She actually does in real life right. There are
for good reason, significant constraints on what they are able to do and costs,
they make for a good story, so well,
Because of this whole line of psychology on
got the csi effect in juries
the jury's are now more likely to acquit defendants because,
the level of evidence presented in the trial does not match
with a level of evidence there used to seeing in criminal
I also see a sigh
That's a good example of how like that's.
There's no sure path to distrust and disillusionment. If the standard of police
he's described over here in fiction and in real life, it's over here.
So I think it is that is
a very accurate observation. Thank you. I think I
another time. So thank you very much
This episode of revisions, history, whispered,
Spiky our power with vended f, have free, jig smith.
I shall runners peter clowney, original scoring by luis gara, mastering by flown williams and engineering pending alerts.
Thank you to everyone. The neurons put festival, including lindsey philips.
Amy, breccia,
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Transcript generated on 2023-12-03.