Professional Documents
Culture Documents
2 6 1 - 2 7 4 (1990)
All rights reserved. Printed in U.S.A.
GRAEME R. NEWMAN
School of Criminal Justice
State University of New York at Albany
Albany, New York 12222
ABSTRACT
This article reviews criminal justice themes in various popular culture media--chiefly comics, TV,
and movies. It sets up a preliminary scheme for classification o f motifs, points to areas that are crucial
for research, and makes some general observations about the significance of some of the trends observed f o r criminological researchers o f differing viewpoints.
INTRODUCTION
Research on popular culture has surged in
the 1980s, but little work has been done on
popular culture as it relates to criminal justice.~ It has been estimated that in the mid1980s detective, police, and other criminal
justice-related programs accounted for some
eighty percent of prime-time TV viewing
(Berman, 1987). If broader criminal justicerelated themes are included, for example,
crime and punishment, (Marongiu and Newman, 1987), justice and injustice, violence
and corruption, the portion of air time devoted to criminal justice must be equaled only
by soap operas 2 (in which the criminal justice-related content increased considerably
during the time frame covered by this review
[Chase, 1986]) and game shows. If other media are c o n s i d e r e d - - c o m i c books and popular n o v e l s - - t h e imagery of criminal justice in
popular culture is even more pervasive. Comic
books, as discussed below, are a major venue
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GRAEME R. NEWMAN
Television Detectives
Cops and robbers have dominated primetime television since its inception. Martine
Kane, Private Eye (1949-54) and Man Against
Crime (1949-54, 1956) represent the beginning of the ongoing American obsession with
detectives, crooks, and law and order. Critics
have observed that the portrayal of the criminal justice system in these programs is more
mythical than real. However, the genre 6 has
undergone important transtormations during
the course of its history. The early programs
portrayed the detective as the simple, gungho cop (private or regular) out to track down
the despicable foe, the criminal. Dragnet
perhaps displayed this type at its finest. The
somewhat seedy private eye, often at loggerheads with the public police (for example,
Mike Hammer), took over in the 1960s. By
the 1970s there was an enormous variety of
detectives, each with his own modus operandi. Some were violent (Kojak), some were
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Soap Operas
These are perhaps one of the most important areas awaiting study. The more common
image of the cop (possibly "inner-city lowerclass"), as presented on nightly prime-time
shows, is usually absent from daytime soaps.
Instead, the focus is on professional roles, with
an emphasis not so much on life in the big
city (though the soaps may be set in these
settings) but rather on middle-class interpersonal relationships, patterned after the smalltown atmosphere made popular by Peyton
Place. Thus, the realism is often so vivid that
viewers have difficulty distinguishing the actors from the roles they play. Indeed, some
research has suggested that soaps may be a
major source of information about the larger
society for millions of people (Allen, 1985).
Soap-opera characters include a large representation of professionals, such as doctors or
lawyers, and if cops are portrayed, they tend
to be well dressed "professionals" (wellmannered detectives) or small-town sheriffs
who know the other players well.
The fine line between reality and fiction is
well demonstrated by the real-life drama, The
People's Court. The cases are real, but they
are portrayed dramatically on TV. Several
imitations of this show have created fictitious
courtroom drama, attempting to reproduce
exactly The People's Court format (e.g., Divorce Court). The focus in these courtroom
scenes is not so much on the cliff-hanger of
"who dunnit?" (the hook in the traditional
courtroom drama, like that of Perry Mason)
but on the personal lives and conflicts of ordinary people.
Nonfiction Television
Although there is constant coverage of crime
on local and national news programs, this
coverage is not realistic. As Graber (1980)
has shown, crime news presents a picture of
crime that is almost opposite to what official
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G R A E M E R. N E W M A N
Advertising
There is much to be done in analysis of the
advertisement portrayal (and, by inference,
the assumptions made by advertising execu-
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Pop/rock Music
Comics
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G R A E M E R. N E W M A N
the wish for omnipotence, 14there are also important ideas conveyed about what is permissible in dealing with crime and the power
or lack thereof of public institutions in dealing with it.
Comics and the detective genre. The detective genre is a tremendously complex subject in itself. Perhaps more has been written
about detective stories than most other aspects of popular culture. 15 One of the most
significant observations that can be made about
the detective genre in comics is that the most
widely acclaimed, and possibly most influential detective, Dick Tracy, was a "regular"
cop. This contrasts with the detectives in
novels, who are almost all private police (with
some minor exceptions, such as Eliot Ness).16
This is of particular interest, since the creator
of Dick Tracy, Chester Gould, clearly intended him to be a take-off of Sherlock
Holmes. 17 It is likely that Gould adapted certain personality characteristics of Holmes, such
as his persistence, his use of modern scientific principles, methods, and technology, and
his single-mindedness, as well as the general
moral atmosphere of the Sherlock Holmes
s t o r i e s - - a kind of singular war against dedicated criminals, many of them incredibly
fiendish. Dr. Moriarty is very likely the model
on which Gould developed his many fiendish, grotesque criminals (just a few examples: Haf and Haf [1966], a character with
only haft a face; the Mole [1941], who looked
like one; Pruneface [1942]; Flattop, [1956];
Brow, [1944]; Mumbles, [1947]; Torcher,
[1980]; Stooge Viller [1933]).
There are, however, vast differences between Dick Tracy and Sherlock Holmes.
While Holmes fought his battle as a "gentleman" and lived generally a gentleman's life,
according to quite definite rules of etiquette,
he caught his criminals after a considerable
battle of witts. The criminals were fiendishly
clever, but Holmes in the end was more of a
genius than Moriarty (though Holmes was
never 100 percent confident that he had rid
society of Moriarty forever). Tracy on the
other hand, was created by Gould in a time
in the United States when organized crime was
at its height, especially in Chicago. In reacting to the violence of Chicago, Gould con-
267
nate, especially in those made before the mid1970s. Indeed, some catalogs of law in film
insist that only those films with trial scenes
should be included in the category. 19 The
analysis by Chase (1986) of law and lawyers
in popular culture using antinomial pairs is
particularly useful in this context since it allows for both the simplified presentation of
issues in visual media, especially in the Hollywood tradition, and the presentation of
conflicting messages and imagery. It fosters
a more complex interpretation than, for example, that of the ideologists of law, who
claim that popular culture presents the law in
the best light to promote false consciousness
and hide the fact that the ruling class uses the
law for its own ends.
The virtuous lawyer is well represented in
such movies as To Kill a Mockingbird (Gregory Peck, 1954) and Knock on Any Door
(Humphrey Bogart, 1949), in which the archetypal American lawyer is portrayed: "a
protector who stands with his or her client
against all the world no matter what the odds;
indeed, no matter what the attorney's personal or political views or estimate of the
client's 'guilt' or 'innocence.'" The "moral
problem" of defending guilty or despicable
clients has for the most part been avoided in
these movies since most clients are innocent.
Perry Mason hardly ever defended a client who
turned out to be guilty. A complication is the
portrayal of the over-zealous lawyer who degrades and belittles witnesses and everyone
else in order to win a case. Young Mr. Lincoln (1939) is the representative film of this
type. However, the zealousness was always
acceptable because it was used to "save" a
falsely accused defendant.
The other side is the lawyer as crook or
cheat, as in Walter Mathau's portrayal of the
personal-injury attorney in The Fortune
Cookie. More recently, the rough edges and
imperfections of lawyers have been examined more closely: for example, Jagged Edge,
a story of a woman attorney who falls in love
with her murderous client; the power-hungry
prosecutor in Slaughter on Fifth Avenue; the
totally corrupt and crazy judge in And Justice
For All (and the equally virtuous lawyer, who
risks his life and reputation to save his client
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G R A E M E R. N E W M A N
from sure death resulting from a traffic offense); and Star Chamber, in which judges
take the punishment of offenders into their
own hands. The latter film appears to have
reversed the early veneration of the law--both
its spirit and letter, as upheld by Atticus Finch
in To Kill a Mocking B i r d - - a n d instead to
suggest that justice is not served by bureaucracy. Rather, direct action--like Dick Trac y ' s - - i s what is required to deal with the crime
problem. Chase noted that in fact a number
of late twentieth-century movies have suggested that there are alternatives to lawyers
(such as zealous policemen) for dealing with
the crime problem. This calls for consideration of the detective and cop genre in movies.
The genre affirms the supremacy of rationality. Klockars (1983) has identified recurring characters such as the wealthy victim,
damsel in distress, sympathetic stranger, and
friend wronged, and he has suggested that the
moral lesson of the detective genre is that
anyone who uses reason and observation can
overcome evil. However, these generalizations are more applicable to the English tradition of detective novels, 2~ and they apply
only to a minority of characters in American
detective lore. The style of Sherlock Holmes
contrasts sharply with the violence of American comic-book heroes. In fact, Dick Tracy
was the first comic-book character to use violence. The classic detectives of the nineteenth century were morally concerned with
means, and thus they disdained the violence
of the criminals they pursued. However, this
distinction between the methods of the detective and those of the criminal slowly but
surely eroded from the birth of detective fiction in nineteenth-century England to creation of some of the characters in late twentieth-century American movies.
The confusion reached its height with the
Dirty Harry series, in which violence became
the dominant behavior of both cop and criminal. The "justification" for Dirty Harry's use
of violence was illustrated in such movies as
Death Wish and, more subtley, The Onion
Field. These movies reflected the strong
backlash in the 1970s against "coddling"
criminals, suggesting that the authorities either
were too soft on crime or were so hopelessly
bureaucratized that they were unable to see
that "justice" (that is, a severe enough punishment) was done: murderers were able to
escape punishment by the authorities. Thus,
these movies conveyed, much to the delight
of the audience, that sometimes it is necessary for the sake of justice for strong individuals to take the law into their own hands. 22
Chase has insisted, however, that the "ideology" of law propounded by this series of
movies is by no means consistent. Magnum
Force, for example, has Dirty Harry ferreting
out a cell of cryptofascist cops who are bent
on "executing criminals." They take the law
into their own hands, just as he did (although
Dirty Harry's justification was the endemic
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CONCLUSIONS
From this review of the major themes and
media portrayals of criminal justice in popular culture, it can be seen that the potential
for research is enormous. This article has attempted, as a preliminary step, to catalog these
themes and images.
This general review of criminal justice and
popular culture does, however, raise issues
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GRAEME R. NEWMAN
271
NOTES
1. I have found only two articles, both by the same
author, that deal with popular culture in relation to criminal justice. Even these are more concerned with law
and lawyers in popular culture than with criminal justice
generally. However, these pioneering works offer an
outstanding introduction to the area. See Anthony Chase,
Toward a Legal Theory of Popular Culture, Wisconsin
Law Review (1986): 527-69; Lawyers and Popular Culture: A Review of Mass Media Portrayals of American
Attorneys A.B.F. Research Journal 2:(1986): 281-300.
2. These shows have fourteen million viewers every
day.
3. See Time Magazine, 14 March 1988, for a review of Superman at 50. That he should be portrayed
on Time's front cover attests to the great importance of
popular culture in American life. It may be possible to
infer that Time sees Superman as equal in importance
to the political figures it generally features on its cover.
4. For a contrary view see J. L. Freedman, "Effect
of Television Violence on Aggressiveness," Psychol Bull
96:2(1984): 227-246.
5. Wilkins suggested that criminal justice should be
"marketed" to consumers as a ~service."
6. Use of this term is based on recognition that there
is much difficulty and controversy concerning what
constitutes a genre. However, although there may be
some difficulty in identifying a consistent genre of lawyers-in-film, the detective genre is relatively well established (Chase, 1986).
7. That ideology is the "fair players" doctrine, so
well defined and criticized by William Ryan in Equality
(New York: Pantheon, 1981). Budweiser beer commercials during the 1988 winter olympics provided a
recent illustration of the fair-players ideology. The idea
conveyed was that if each individual just applies himself
or herself and works hard with devotion and commitment, he or she can achieve greatness comparable to
that of the olympic athletes. The amount of work involved and the fact that only a small minority ever realizes this dream seem to be denied. The myth that
"anyone can become President" is deeply embedded in
the American popular psyche. The extent to which it is
important to conservative as opposed to liberal ideology
requires further analysis. Criminals are most often portrayed on fictional TV as "losers," which raises the
question of what this does for the self concepts of the
masses of viewers. Clearly the area of criminal and noncriminal identity needs to be studied.
8. For a detailed analysis, see Chase (1986:555-57).
9. On 14 March 1988 the program showed how it
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GRAEME R. NEWMAN
32. This is made very clear in the question of vengeance, which has been clearly demonstrated to underlie the widespread demand to punish, as does the fear
of crime. See Marongiu and Newman, Vengeance.
REFERENCES
Allen, R. C. (1985). Speaking of soap operas. Chapel
Hill: University of North Carolina Press.
Angiolillo, P. (1979). The criminal as hero. Lawrence,
KS: The Regents Press.
Berger, A. A. (1973). The comic stripped American.
New York: Walker and Co.
Berman, R. (1987). H o w television sees its audience.
Beverly Hills, CA: Sage.
Bloom, A. (1987). The closing of the American mind.
New York: Simon Schuster.
Chase, A. (1986). Lawyers and popular culture: A review of mass media portrayals of American attorneys. A.B.F. Research J 2:281-300.
(1986). Toward a legal theory of popular culture. Wisconsin L Rev 1986(3) 5 2 7 - 6 9 .
Crouch, B. (1987). Dick Tracy: America's most f a m o u s
detective. Secaucus, NJ: Citadel Press.
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GRAEME R. NEWMAN