Legal-police TV dramas frame justice through institutions of authority
Evidence
The TV dramas examined in this chapter are based in institutions of authority: a government agency, the police, or the legal system. The Practice, broadcast on ABC from 1997 to 2004, focuses on the lawyers and cases of Robert, Donnell and Associates in Boston; each episode ends with a courtroom verdict. Law and Order, broadcast on NBC from 1990 to 2010, seeks to demonstrate how the police and courts work in conjunction to maintain “law and order”; each episode tracks a criminal case from the police investigations through the trial and similarly culminates in a courtroom verdict. NYPD Blue, broadcast on ABC from 1993 to 2005, is about the ongoing personal and professional struggles of the officers in one New York City police precinct. Collectively, these prime-time TV dramas, all winners of numerous Emmy awards and each with an average audience of over 20 million, epitomize the institutions of authority at the heart of American culture and offer the stories of a variety of individuals struggling to pursue justice in the face of ethical and moral dilemmas. — Evelyn Alsultany, Arabs and Muslims in the Media, 342
Categorization
- DEFINE: Establishes the institutional genre convention: courtroom-verdict endings that legitimize authority.
- XREF: connects to: Brazilian media-centered anti-politics fused judicial and police celebrity — Vincent Bevins, If We Burn: The Mass Protest Decade and…, 601