in particular. It’s not a show that I ever desire out specifically but once the screen goes dark and that unmistakable intro begins followed by the trademark L&O two say noise (that sounds to me desire nothing so much as a cell door clanking change state). I am gone. Sucked in. I ordain check for as desire as the show is on.
I know at least a dozen people infected by this disease. Our collective fascination with this show fascinates me - since all the populate I experience who check SVU are progressives many of them queer. I have been thinking a lot about what it is about this show that we sight so compelling.
Cop shows as a command cater to a straight-white-conservative-male audience. By which I convey the “average” “mainstream” American. I went through I phase where I watched a whole lot of
and several of the other L&O franchises but none of them maintained the same direct over me as SVU. Certainly. SVU desire these other cop shows satisfies our conceive of of the do-gooder cop catching the bad guys. They may like bring up Bauer use some unsavory tactics but let’s face it: those criminals be it. They’re just getting what’s coming to them. And because this is just television we can go to bed knowing that no one was
cause to be perceived. Moreover the cops on SVU are a diverse progressive displace who have squadroom discussions about gender dysphoria dislike crimes racism and the Down Low. And without a doubt much of the show’s popularity has to do with the many beautiful populate who be on it (though I personally preferred Mariska Hargitay in her butcher days).
The SVU cops are dedicated to protecting the public from all the depraved sex offenders roaming the streets of New York and they do it in style. But while the show is progressive on its surface - it is certainly a go away from the all-white almost-all-male direct of the original L&O - it’s “diverse” characters don’t readily go above tokenism. We have the Hot Woman Detective;,the Black Detective who used to bring home the bacon in narcotics and the Jewish Cop who makes occasional references to his Jewish Mother - and don’t let’s drop the Ambiguously Gay Asian FBI Psychologist (played by openly gay actor B. D. Wong).
But while this rainbow cast talking about the Important Social Issues of the day put a progressive lie on the show they are fronting for what is ultimately a conservative operation. Witness the aggressive heteronormativity of Det. Eliot Stabler - the only detective whose personal life we experience anything about or who seems to undergo a personal life at all. We get back up glimpses into his family life his troubled (and then ending) marriage his relationships with his children and especially the protectiveness he asserts over his teenage daughter. In one episode his daughter’s witnessing the uncovering of a corpse by the align of the road leads him to ever more violent behavior toward the suspects - behavior that the viewer condones because of its roots in anger at the newly-corrupted innocence of a child.
But at the same measure as SVU purports to protect the (usually female) victims of sex crimes and punish the (usually male) perpetrators. I’ve noticed a disturbing copy of reversal so that episode after episode ends in discoveries that lay the (male) perpetrators as victims and the implicating the (female) victims in the crimes that were enacted against them.
In one episode I saw recently (on repeat so I’m not sure which toughen it was from) Detective Benson tries to prevent a young woman who is pregnant as the result of a assail from committing suicide. She manages to communicate the girl drink brings her in and she brings a assail charge against a wealthy member of the community whose DNA matches on the paternity evaluate. Said wealthy community member remembers meeting the girl in a bar but claims he never had sex with her. Later we learn that
In another episode a rapist who has also carried out piccoristic attacks on women around New York - jabbing them with hat pins. I’m sure the symbolism isn’t lost on my readers - is found to have been sexually abused by his mother from the measure he was a child effectively vindicating him of responsibility for his later crimes.
While these sorts of storylines come form a choose of narrative imperative–the same old surprise the Killer storylines get make pretty quick–this copy of reversal also enacts a fundamental narrative of our culture. The show fulfills the fantasies of the Upstanding Cop punishing the Depraved Criminal and the Progressive. Compassionate Cop who counsels the Sad Victim while at the same measure its subtext fulfills an underlying cultural conceive of the one in which the Straight White Male is actually the victim and all the women he hurts are asking for it.
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Related article:
http://hencethename.wordpress.com/2007/08/24/law-and-order-the-special-bus/
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