Upthread…
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Well now, that IS pretty realistic. I rather like David Simon’s statement that detectives are the greatest salesmen EVER, because they are selling long prison terms, a product that their customer has no use for. OTOH a friend’s favorite investigative technique was to try to be friendly to the suspects girlfriend. Because at some point he is going to piss her off, and when that happens you want her to know that the best way to get back at him is to get him a jail term. It’s not fast, but it worked pretty well for him.
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That whole Scott Snyder run on Batman is fantastic and after 40 issues of build up, it’s honestly pretty powerful seeing Alfred grapple with the idea of letting Bruce live a life of ignorant bliss, or return him to his trauma for the sake of society.
One of my personal favorite tropes in any superhero comic is the cyclical nature of the illusion of change as it relates to/reflects any mythology. And that particular Batman arc did a great job of exploring that. Gordon bunny ears and all.
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There are also shows/books which are precisely about following the long tedious process of crime investigation - without any flashy violence, ‘wink-wink’ rule-breaking, etc.
I will accept that they may not exist in US programming. I will certainly admit that I’d be hard pressed to name a TV show from the US that doesn’t involve ‘righteous cops hampered by the system, breaking rules to get results and Keep People Safe™’.
Which is to say that I don’t intend to disagree with your point about the shows being ‘copaganda’ (nice portmanteau by the way).
If anything, it reinforces your point. It’s not that we have that kind of TV because other stuff doesn’t have an audience. It’s not just the result of ‘the market’.
We have it because it sends that message.
You could also try The Brokenwood Mysteries if you get that in Oz. Similarly cosy with great soundtracks if you’re into modern NZ Country music.
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The Investigation by Stanislaw Lem is an interesting take on this idea. The police start investigating a series of disturbances, where it looks like someone is stealing (or at least moving) corpses out of morgues. A statistician working with the police has identified a pattern in local disturbances with cancer rates, and can accurately predict where the next disturbance will be. The lead investigator suspects the statistician, and makes him the prime suspect. A lot of the book is trying to figure out how the corpses are being moved in such a way as to appear they are moving on their own power, and the investigation into the (innocent, and correct) statistician.
The police chief eventually cancels the investigation. They should never have taken it on, but because they have, they have to find someone guilty. A truck driver who was in the area each night of the disturbance was recently killed in a traffic accident, and the event – the corpses moving on their own for some unknown, unspecified reason – is conclusively over. The police will pin all the blame on the dead driver and that’s it. The public are happy, the media is happy, and police can go back to their regular business.
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That’s fair.
I think it’s also fair that the actual critique out there is overshadowed by people complaining about one thing or another. Critique has analysis and suggestive corrections at least.
It is hard to directly compare the past with the present. But I also think when someone says “We are better than we used to be.” some people mistake that with they are saying “Thing’s are fine.”
I agree we need to continue to change for the better.
The Punisher isn’t a superhero. He has no powers, and he is not a hero. So yeah, he likes anti-heroes like The Punisher and Preacher. He is too cynical to think Superman would stand for Truth Justice and the American way just because some good-two-shoes farmers from Kansas raised him.
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Even the “true crime” stories that follow said investigations suffer from selection bias, because they tend to focus on the minority of investigations where diligent police work correctly identified a suspect instead of the majority of cases where law enforcement was utterly ineffective at solving a crime.
The result is that even these “honest” procedurals often become a form of propaganda because they make police look more diligent, professional and effective than they actually are.
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It’s an interesting take, but I have to dispute some of the premises, at least with regards to the Dark Knight.
Primarily Batman’s ability to get results in that film (and the prior Batman Begins) are less a result of his willingness to break the social contract, and more because the police are explicitly shown to be too corrupt to effectively protect anyone in Gotham. The character’s explicit goal throughout the Dark Knight is to reform the Gotham justice system to a point where he can retire, using both his Batman persona to root out police corruption, and his Bruce Wayne persona to back a DA who can fairly enforce the law. It’s hardly revolutionary, I admit, he’s essentially working to get Gotham back from the already terrible status quo it somehow dropped under. But the idea isn’t that the police are unable to get results because they won’t resort to violence, but rather that they’re unable to get results because they’re too corrupt. Police brutality and medical neglect of prisoners is event something the Joker uses against the Gotham police department.
Likewise, another major element of the film is that Batman is also willing to go less far than the police. For example, Gotham’s SWAT team is willing to go into a hostage situation guns blazing, whereas Batman has the training, and willingness to take on personal risk, to non-lethally detain both the hostage takers and the SWAT team. Part of the need for Batman, in the film, is that he won’t shoot you, unlike the police.
Now this doesn’t excuse scenes like dropping a guy off a roof, or just beating up the Joker. I would argue that the film depicts both of these things as Batman going too far, with multiple characters commenting on his upped level of brutality on the first one, and the Joker himself pointing out the uselessness of the second one. From what I remember of the other films, his usual MO is to to scare people, but rarely actually hurt them. Hence, both of these scenes act to demonstrate him going off the rails, rather than endorsing these actions. That being said, they do rely on an audience correctly interpreting them this way, which many won’t, so they’re still deeply problematic.
I don’t say all this because The Dark Knight is a precious film that must be immune from criticism. There’s tons to criticize, especially but not limited to Rachel getting blatantly fridged (in true Nolan style). But I do think that the film has a more complicated relationship with the police than implied by the original thread. (Which also isn’t to say the thread isn’t accurate about other Dark n’ Gritty versions of Batman. I’d actually say it’s pretty on-point for something like the Arkham games, where you spend most of your time beating the crap out of people for little reason. Never saw the Snyder take, so I can’t judge that, but a Batman willing to use guns automatically removes one big point of moral high-ground he has over police…)
I like it, it jibes with my idea of a “Green Hornet” sort of Batman where Bruce Wayne is using the Batman persona to distract. All the real detective work is done by Barbara Gordon, giving the whole thing a Remington Steele vibe of the supposed detective being the smart woman’s façade in a time when she would only be expected to be a secretary, and not even her father’s connections can get her into the police.
Thus Batman could be the one claiming the credit for rooting out one nest of Nazi spies after another, whilst the real brains is free to do her work in the shadows.
Heck, I would even change the origin story to be that the real reason Bruce dresses as a bat is because his first outing was whilst dressed for a costume ball, going as the lead in Strauss’ operetta Der Fledermaus. The story about seeing a bat was made up by him to hide his embarrassment. Thus the costume evolves from a tux and opera cape to a wrestling leotard, then the gadgets we know today.
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