I love TV shows, although only about 40% of what I watch is from the last two decades. My top six favorite shows are Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, Star Trek: Voyager, The Big Bang Theory, Supergirl, Roseanne, and Law and Order: Special Victims Unit. There’s a more complete list of shows I like under the “Movies” part of my profile. This is going to be about Law and Order: SVU.
I’m going to assume you are at least sort of familiar with the show, and if you’re not, you can read that wikipedia page.
I have seen every episode (with one exception where I couldn’t fix the disc and Netflix sent another disc that also had the same problem) up to season 18 and in about a month I’ll be done with season 19. I have 6 seasons on DVD in my collection, most of which I got at thrift stores.
Besides the obvious (it’s opposition to sex crimes and child abuse/kidnapping and sexism and misogyny) which is pretty awesome, there’s a lot of other things I like about L&W: SVU.
1) It’s incredibly anti-racist. Not 100% because it is, of course, a little soft on cops. But in general there's a lot of anti-racism. On average, in any episode, something like 25% of the main and recurring characters have been people of color. Of course the population of NYC is much more diverse, but we are talking about the NYPD and I think that 25% is probably a reflection of how diverse the NYPD is, or an appropriately mild exaggeration of how diverse it is. My memory of specific examples is a little fuzzy, but there are a lot of times when the anti-racism gets a little sharper than that.
There is one episode involving a hispanic SVU detective who might qualify as a person of color in a bad fatal shooting that I think the show could have dealt with more critically- I remember thinking that it was too pro-cop. But there is another episode on almost the same topic that is, overall, much better. Some white non-SVU cops, while helping SVU, fire about 15-30 bullets into an unarmed black man. The (main character) Assistant DA who works with SVU insists on prosecuting the cops and I think the last we hear about that is that he gets an indictment from the Grand Jury. The head of SVU disagrees with him but they don’t have a heated argument and there is no falling out and for about 2 seasons after that episode that character is still the Assistant DA for SVU, and I think it would be totally unrealistic if all the SVU members agreed with the Assistant DA. Unfortunately it DOES end on a fairly racist note. There’s a notice about the fatal shooting of a cop, which is kind of a lame ending for what otherwise is a very good episode. I mean, it’s even worse than saying “All Lives Matter” in response to the statement “Black Lives Matter.” It’s responding with “Police Lives Matter.”
As I mention below, Ice-T has played a main character since season 2 and there are now 21 seasons.
I think that the % of defendants that are people of color is probably a lot less than the % of NYC’s population that is people of color, and I’m almost certain it’s not more.
2) It’s incredibly anti-homophobic. Other than the idea that the Assistant DA in seasons 15-19 is gay (there is a lot of speculation but it’s apparently all wrong and he's actually straight (but played by a bi-sexual man)), I can only think of two examples. First, when an off-duty cop witnesses a sex-related crime (while on a date with another man) and notifies SVU, SVU offers to keep his name out of it to avoid outing him to the “brass” of NYPD. Also, the son of the character played by Ice-T is gay.
3) It’s incredibly anti-transphobic. In one episode, for example, a woman transitioning from being male kills her boyfriend when he sees a penis. I can’t remember exactly what SVU does, but I don’t think they prosecute her or they go easy on her or something. I DO remember the Assistant DA saying that in that situation, when a man learns his girlfriend has a penis or used to be male, he simply kills her. In general it highlights violence against transgender people.
4) It’s pro-immigrant. For example, there’s a two-parter about a witness who is gay and an undocumented immigrant from Syria who will be killed if he is deported. SVU tries to keep ICE from deporting him but fail. It’s as damning of our immigration policy as an innocent person being executed would be damning of the death penalty.
5) There are miscellaneous other liberal-progressive elements like OCCASIONAL negative portrayals of the military or corporations.
6) Since the second season there’s been a character, detective Odafin "Fin" Tutuola, played by Ice-T. In the near future I’ll do a post about why I greatly admire Ice-T, but his long-time presence on this show is one reason I like him and his presence on the show is one reason I like the show so much.
7) They intermittently go after other cops.
One thing that I would largely put in the very small negative column is the five or so cross-over episodes with the TV show “Chicago PD.” The main thing is that the senior officer on that show is comfortable with things that at least come close to torture. But it’s not as damning of the creative people behind the show L&O: SVU as you might think because in one of those episodes, the head of SVU criticizes that officer for that, although she focuses exclusively on the impact it’ll have on getting a conviction. It’d be better if she was more principled about it, but A) I think she figured the pragmatic appeal would work better, and B) if I’m wrong about that and she’s not principled about it, that’s disappointing but realistic, and C) it’s better than nothing.
I’ll soon start going through these episodes for the second time and doing “reviews” on this blog of the ones that have something that politically goes beyond the liberal feminism and basic anti-racist stuff that’s dominates the political dimension of the show (when I say “dominates” I mean there are minority tendencies, some progressive and some moderate). (You could say that I'll focus exclusively on highlighting the issues raised that are NOT sex crimes, because of course they have material about that, but they also have stuff about, for example, homophobia or marijuana or homelessness or abortion)
(Mariska Hargitay, who has been on the show since day one (and whose character has been head of SVU for about 6 seasons) and has been a director and producer on L&O: SVU since 2014, founded the Joyful Heart Foundation)
Law and Order
I also watch the original, homicide-focused show. It is overall less liberal-progressive (I think the cops and Assistant DAs are a little more flexible ethically than their SVU counterparts are as far as how they figure out who to arrest and/or get convictions). In an average episode I think that about 25% of the main or recurring characters are women, which isn’t too good considering that of the six main characters, only three are cops. But in an average episode, about 25% are people of color, which isn’t too bad considering that it should be either a reflection of reality or a little more diverse than reality, in my opinion (it’s about the NYPD and the Manhattan DA’s office) (I think that the % of defendants that are people of color is probably a lot less than the % of NYC’s population that is people of color, and I’m almost certain it’s not more). There are some progressive elements here and there, some anti-racism, some anti-homophobia, some stuff where a corporation is the bad guy, etc. (they intermittently go after other cops). At some point in about 2-10 years at the rate I’m going I’ll do the same sort of reviews I mentioned above.
Corporations on both shows
From what I remember, the last thing these shows do is criticize capitalism or express more than intermittent support for labor, but the episodes about corporate people are better than the old TV show Cops which focused exclusively on poor people. And I wouldn’t be surprised if it’s more likely to feature rich criminals than other cop shows, although I wouldn’t know for sure because outside the L&O franchise, I’ve probably watched a total of 30 episodes of cop shows since I became an adult and a socialist (at 18) (I’m 44).
(I should offer my very brief, non-philosophical definition of “liberal.” It’s someone to the left of Bill Clinton and to the right of Senator Elizabeth Warren. More details are here)
(UPDATE 3/18/21 about 1-3 times each episode I am not crazy about some of their tactics when it comes to figuring out who's guilty and when it comes to getting a conviction, but that's only about 10-20% of the time; the rest of the time I am fine with what they do to get someone convicted; I'm not going to make a note about this every time it comes up- in fact I might not ever comment on these small disagreements at all)
ALL THE POSTS WITH THESE REVIEWS CAN BE FOUND BY CLICKING ON THE "L&OSVU" LABEL AND THE "LAW & ORDER" LABEL
No comments:
Post a Comment