Crime dramas amp up violence and quick dialogue while delivering opposed but likable cop characters who solve intricate crimes for TV.
Today, the genre has never been more popular. Crime shows outnumber every other drama subgenre, including family dramas and medical shows, on broadcast networks and is among the most-watched kind of series on TV, according to a June 20, 2020 article by The Hollywood Reporter.
During the September-May season of 2019-20 TV, there were 19 crime shows on the broadcast networks, which represents just under 20% of the 97 scripted shows that aired, according to the same Hollywood Reporter article.
Zaki Hasan, San Jose State radio, TV and film professor who has expertise in media and culture, said these shows have a long-standing social narrative that has spanned decades.
“People have to recognize that television is television and fiction is fiction,” Hasan said. “It seems like an obvious thing to say and yet it’s hard to optimize now.”
He also explained that when an audience spends more time with a character while watching a TV show, the more they’ll support the character even as they skirt into a gray area.
As more time is spent watching the lore of a show, the audience becomes complicit.
“I think ‘NYPD Blue’ is one of the greatest TV series of all time but absolutely copaganda is a real thing and it’s something that needs to be addressed,” Hasan said.
Copaganda is a portmanteau of cop and propaganda. It’s when police departments use the media to depict themselves as heroic, fun-loving community members who outweigh bad-cop actions exposed in the news and social media, according to an Aug. 5, 2020 Teen Vogue article.
Capri Burrows, SJSU alumna and radio, TV and film professor, teaches a special topics seminar that focuses on the portrayal of cops on TV.
She said copaganda in one of her first modules.
“[The police] are always working against this character that they have in society where it’s like we know you were corrupt for a while but they’re like ‘No, no, no, no, that’s all cleaned up and now we’re totally the good guys,’ ” Burrows said.
When asked why she thinks police departments are interested in their portrayal in the media, Burrows said there are very few professionals that value their portrayals online and it’s especially prominent for them because they’re funded by the government.
In other words, cops need a good image because they need to be seen as good guys in order to receive funding, she said.
“There’s a lot of medical shows and hospital shows and there’s a lot of stuff that’s distorted about how it actually works in the medical field and you’ll hear from those people sometimes, but their lobbying arms just aren’t the same as you get from these police unions,” Burrows said.
She started her special topics course, RTVF-185, or “Cops on TV,” in 2020 after noticing some big networks were hiring consulting firms to help change the portrayal of cops in their shows.
On Aug. 12, 2020, in the middle of national protests against police brutality, CBS Television Studios signed an agreement with law enforcement and public safety advisory group, 21CP Solutions, to consult writing staffs for CBS’s crime and legal dramas, according to an Aug. 12, 2020 Variety article.
“A majority of Americans have had no contact with police, but everything that they know or think they know comes from media portrayals,” Burrows said. “That includes news, reality TV like ‘Cops,’ but it also includes fiction, dramas, comedy movies.”
Police procedurals are standard fare on TV, according to NPR’s Feb. 6, 2020 “Morning Edition” podcast episode. A recent study said the way TV portrays police and the criminal justice system halt attempts at reform, according to the same NPR episode.
The study discussed in the NPR “Morning Edition” podcast breaks down which characters do the wrongful actions, what kind of actions they are and what actors play on-screen roles.
Audiences are left with a perception that this is what cops have to do in order to keep the general public safe.
Burrows said most of the cop shows get away with cops doing the wrong things for the right reasons but as long as they get the “bad guy” then it’s portrayed as OK.
“Breaking the rules and beating up suspects is often the only way that fictional TV cops are considered effective,” she said.
Kyle Dimick, SJSU radio, TV and film junior, is currently in Burrows’ special topics seminar.
Dimick said he was interested in taking the class because it deconstructs what a police show is, their history and how the “flaws that are present in damn-near every show” manipulate the public’s ideologies on policing.
“Police reform and all of the things that we do to physically change the police force is important but also our depictions of people or things in the media really play into the collective [consciousness] more than the reality,” he said.
A 2019 Norwegian study found that viewing habits can affect thinking, political preferences and even cognitive ability, according to a July 25, 2019 The New York Times article.
The content replaces more enlightening ways of getting information or spending time.
“I think it’s imperative that we educate people on the way that media is impacting their modes of thinking,” Dimick said. “Or at the very least, feed people content that's progressive.”
