[Cue electric violin drone.]
So that’s Hegel’s theory of justice and punishment. How about Dick Wolf’s theory of justice and punishment? To the extent that the Law & Order franchise is about anything, it’s about society’s proper reaction to crime, and while I don’t think for a second that Dick Wolf (or any other individual) was trying to come up with a coherent theory of justice as they wrote it, there is a sort of ad-hoc theory that has developed over the course of the show’s multi-decade run. Like Hegel’s theory, it is retributionist: the utilitarian justification that McCoy et al. are somehow making New York a safer place is given lip-service every now and then, but no more than that. The demands of serial drama dictate that another murderer or rapist will pop up next week anyway. What remains is retribution. Even for a perp that poses no further danger to the community, the fact that crimes have been committed demands a certain response.
But what response? Rehabilitation—perhaps in a sense the reconstitution that Hegel is hoping for—is completely absent here. None of the criminals processed by McCoy et al. show up in a later episode on a work-release program. Punishment, then? Not really. We never see punishment on Law & Order. Trials, sure, and even convictions. But could we imagine an episode that focused on documenting punishment itself, following the prisoners around their daily lives in jail? Even Oz, which was set in a jail, was never really about this. No, when criminals have had their day on Law & Order, they are… simply… gone. All sentences are effectively death sentences: whatever happens to them afterwards, we don’t get to see it. What we do see, remember, are those constant melodramatic recitations of the crime. Occam’s Razor again suggests that these scenes are there for a reason. If the series is about the proper reaction to crime, and [X] happens in every single episode, then [X] is probably the reaction in question.
Law & Order‘s theory of justice then, like Hegel’s, is essentially an informational transaction. The traumatic events that have been concealed must now be brought to light. This means that the confession scenes are a return-of-the-repressed, however, what is repressed is not the crime’s thrill, but the trauma itself. Furthermore, like Hegel’s theory, Law & Order involves a crucial moment of recognition between the criminal and the society that punishes. It would never be enough, on Law & Order, for the criminal to decide that he needs to pay for what he’s done, and do the time. He needs to explain himself to the state, represented both by the characters, who are instruments of the state, and by the audience, who are the body politic itself. Similarly, it’s not enough for the victim of the crime to deal with their PTSD in therapy. They need to get up in front of the court and tell the whole world. (Usually we’re told that this is the only way to start the healing process—but note that we never see the actual healing process, any more than we see the actual punishment.)
Notice that we are not in Hegel territory any more. The crucial recognition for him is that the criminal is not different from the rest of society. In Law & Order, it is just the opposite. The prosecutors force the criminal to confess because he/she has been masquerading as a normal member of society—and in that all crimes on Law & Order are presented as equally depraved, this masquerade is probably what the court system on Law & Order is really meant to prevent. As with Hegel, what damages one member of society damages all of society, because society cannot be whole unless all of its members are whole. But the way around this is not to repair the damage. Rather, it is to cast the compromised members out of society.
The theoretical touchstone here is Julia Kristeva’s theory of “abjection.” Kristeva argues that we define ourselves as human beings by rigorously policing the boundaries of our bodies and our psyches. Each of us makes a rigid distinction between what is “me” and what is “not me,” and maintaining this distinction requires a constant process of physical and psychological casting-off. Look at your hands. Think about how disgusting you consider them (I’m guessing not very). Now imagine all of the fingernails that you have cut off over the past five years, piled up next to your computer. Gross? Yeah, it’s pretty gross. But there’s no real reason for this! Those fingernails haven’t been anywhere that your hands haven’t been first. They are, rather, disgusting precisely because they define the boundary between the “me” and the “not me.” Now replace your own body with the body politic: what must be cast off so that this body can remain whole? Criminals. Or more precisely, the trauma of crime.
And this is where it honestly gets a liiiitle bit completely appalling. The healthy body of society in these shows is represented by the cops and the lawyers. Unlike the criminals (and the victims!), they persist from episode to episode. And while the criminals (or the victims!) deliver these intense, melodramatic narrations of the criminal act, the cops and lawyers spend most of their time being competent and cracking wise. In terms of being cast out of society as an abject thing, Law & Order makes precious little distinction between the criminal and the victim of the crime.
Now, there’s still something wrong with this picture, which is that I haven’t explained why SVU in particular draws an audience. Basically all I’ve pointed out are the ways that it’s similar to Law and Order Regular Victim’s Unit. But I think it’s really just a question of what kind of crime you find most threatening to your idea of a well-ordered society.
TV crime shows are almost overwhelmingly pegged to two kinds of criminal: murderers, and (a distant second) rapists. These, then, are the criminals we are most anxious to cast out of our society—those which, in fact, we are least likely to identify with. There is no analogue to Ocean’s Eleven where a raffishly handsome ex-con pulls together a dream team to pull off the perfect sexual assault. (At least I hope there isn’t.) So yes, watching SVU implies a that you are comfortable, on a certain level, with seeing sex crimes and crimes against children. It means you’re comfortable with seeing them abjected. It does not mean that you are necessarily comfortable with them on any other level at all. The show is still pretty ideologically suspect… but reducing it to subconscious erotica does a disservice to the text and to its fanbase.
“There is no analogue to Ocean’s Eleven where a raffishly handsome ex-con pulls together a dream team to pull off the perfect sexual assault.”
Or, as I was discussing a week ago, there’s no spin-off of Dexter where a likeable rapist rapes other, eviller rapists.
I like your arguments about L&O quite a bit, but I wonder if you can apply them to other shows. For example, on House, the episodes often end with Dr. House (or sometimes the patient, or sometimes the patient’s family) describing how the patient could have fallen ill with this particular disease. Then, at the end of the episode, the patient goes home, or into the television ether, not to be seen by the audience again. Would you argue that we’re trying to cast out the victims of illness from our society, too, even after we cure them?
I think what motivates viewers to watch L&O, and, indeed, any criminal procedural, is simple curiosity. It’s a mystery. Why do people like mysteries? Because they want to know what happened. When you watch the news and hear about a crime, you almost never get to find out what happened. When you watch L&O, you always get to find out what happened. It’s as simple as that.
You know what, Mlawski, you’re right. “When you see hoofprints, think horses, not zebras,” right? I was kind of thinking zebras with this post. Whatever else might be going on in those shows, people are basically tuning in because they like to see stories get told.
Law & Order is a little strange for a mystery, though, right? You usually find out whodunit about halfway through the episode. And the reveal of who committed the crime is usually handled really lightly: someone walks in and says “Oh hey, we found a blood stain on Kevin’s fish scaling knife,” and then in the next scene they march Kevin out in handcuffs.
@stokes: True, true. And yet, when I watch Criminal Intent, which doesn’t have the tacked-on court case part of the show, I feel robbed, somehow. Maybe L&O: The Original and SVU both have TWO mysteries that need to be solved. The first half answers “Whodunit?” and the second half, even more importantly, asks “Why-dunit?” I guess we just want to know that criminals work somewhat logically–“I killed X ’cause he was cheating on me” or “I raped Y because I wanted to get back at her dad.” I guess you can argue that sort of thing is a ritualistic way of making us (the viewers) feel better about human society. These people are criminals, but at least they make some kind of sense.
with regard to House – I’m not sure that the same model really applies. The way we think about sickness is a lot different from the way that we think about crime… while we tend to think of crime as something that happens to other people, everyone gets sick.
On House, the sick people often are presented as “unclean.” The symptoms of the disease-of-the-week are usually made as grotesque as possible. But you typically get to see them looking healthy again at the end of the episode. So I think that the show really is about curing people (or rather, about solving the mystery and getting the cure as some kind of bonus prize). It’s not about curing them so they can live a long and productive life — again, that’s not something we ever get to see. Maybe they all get run over by the ambulance driver on their way out the door. But it is about getting them to stop looking so gross.
And I think that the “these people are criminals, but at least they make some kind of sense” factor that you bring up is a really important one. But it’s not enough for the motivations just to become known to the audience: they need to be publicly aired. I mean – well, I’ve never watched an episode of Criminal Intent all the way through. But isn’t the point there that you get to actually see the criminal’s motivations as they’re committing the crime? And somehow that’s less satisfying than having them confess, or having the DA ferret out the secret later on.
I think this is well and charmingly argued, and I agree with the main point, which is that the narrative in the Law & Order shows functions by bringing to light a repressed trauma that is never depicted but is later narrated and then by casting the offender out of society.
(I’ll mention but pass over the related point that in SVU it’s not just the perp’s confession but often the victim’s account of the crime that gets the slow-dolly-in electro-violin treatment. In terms of narrative function, the two are of a piece, which is a point you make… I am less morally troubled by the conflation than you are, because it is merely a consequence of the narrative form. Episodic television requires new episodes, which require new characters. If you want to watch victims of a crime endure the long aftermath—some ending well and some ending badly—watch The Wire.)
The representative hole that you put at the center of each episode reminds me that these are functionally mystery stories, where a missing narrative element is revealed. (N.B. I wrote this last immediately after reading this post in the hopper. Shana makes the same point above.) In print, Sherlock Holmes is a classic example, pertinent here for filmed drama because the discovery is mediated through tropes of seeing and sight (e.g. “bring to light”). In film, I’d point to Mildred Pierce, where the missing bit of information is a reverse shot—we see the sleazebag playboy killed, but don’t see who did the killing until the end.
But the criticism of the point I tirelessly—and perhaps tiresomely—make about SVU on the These Fun-loving Teenagers podcast is a straw man argument.
I am to blame, I think, for supplying you with the straw man. It’s true that I’ve been focusing on the most sensationalistic example—the sexual assault of adorable nubile cheerleaders—of a more general point I am trying to make. This is a mistake, and I apologize, not just because I seem to have offended at least one fan of the show, but because it does the more general point—which I still believe is true—a disservice.
Since Aristotle, one defense of dramatic art has been that it has instrumental benefits—that it is good for the state. Either our pity and fear are cathartically purged; or we learn to be better citizens; or, and this seems to be your argument, we are confirmed in our right relationship to the state by seeing undesirable people expelled from it. (In this, you seem to say, L&O is not so much good for the state as it is a recapitulation of the state’s workings—even its more dehumanizing effects.)
But I have been reaching, thus far I fear unsuccessfully, to make a point not about narratology of the work but rather about the psychology of the viewer.
There is a primal psychological reason that we want to see these traumas represented (as we have throughout human history and will continue to). I’m not satisfied with the argument that “It’s just a mystery, simple as that.” “Who stole the cookie from the cookie jar?” is a mystery, and it’d make for lousy TV.
I suggest it is not all to do with casting the offender out of society, not all to do with confirming our right relationship to the state, but rather indulging briefly in the pleasurable fantasy of beingthe offender, that is to say, the fantasy of being in wrong relation to the state and our fellows. For a moment, the viewer can imagine not sublimating every urge—especially the most unacceptable ones, like murder—in the name of civilization.
This is not the only thing going on with this kind of crime show. A sandwich made entirely of bacon would not be much of a sandwich. Lettuce and tomato are necessary—where by lettuce and tomato I mean “the narrative apparatus for bringing the trauma to light and restoring order.” We appreciate these, I think, precisely because we understand that so many of our impulses are unacceptable in the context of civilized society. (Not to be all, “my theory predicts your objection” or anything, but this is why we’re so cagey about this kind of pleasure.) So the restoration of order, the retribution—these elements bring relief. But I think the pleasure—the individual psychological pleasure, the aspect of these shows that is not merely interesting but compelling—comes not from order restored but rather from disorder (however briefly) entertained.
(Also, I may be shooting myself in the foot by using crime shows as the textual evidence. A better example might be Shakespeare’s comedies, where the spate of orderly marriages at the end can’t obscure the licentious fun we had in the forest in acts II through IV. The crime shows are a much darker forest, but I think the principle is the same.)
I am saying, in other words, that one among the pleasures of eating a BLT is that bacon is bad for you. It is not its only pleasure, and perhaps not its foremost pleasure (you and I, I suspect, would disagree about this point). But still, the bacon is all the more satisfying because it is enjoyed over the objections of your superego or your doctor or your mother or whatever, whose tiresome carping you can briefly forget when it is drowned out by the delicious, salty crunch.
One of Wrather’s more elegant ways of getting at it is to claim that “We go to entertainment to see things we secretly wish we could do… if you are watching [SVU], you want the cheerleader to be raped. If you were not happy with a representation of the adorable nubile cheerleader being raped, you would turn off the show.”
I think this premise is incorrect. I think people are tuning in to see bad guys caught — by any means necessary. By this premise, people also hate the Constitution, because that’s what’s routinely raped on Law & Order*.
This is interesting, Wrather – thanks for explaining more fully! So are you arguing that what we want to fantasize about is not “to commit [heinous act X],” but rather simply “to transgress?”
@stokes — Sure, if you like, that’s the general basic wish which I’m suggesting a lot of drama fulfills. The transgression takes its specific form depending on the viewer and the material viewed (or read or sung or whatever). I think I was shooting myself in the foot by focusing on the most lurid and controversial example. (What, me sensationalize? Never!) Then again, the podcast is called These Fraternizing Teenagers.
@Tom P — I’d point to 24 as a more egregious example. L&O at least pays lip service to a system of civil liberties protected by law. (Though it’s true that these are treated more as an obstacle to “real” justice than as a cherished bedrock principle of our society.)
I don’t doubt that this is a thing that happens in some entertainments. It would be hard to understand Ocean’s Eleven in any other way. But it seems a little reductive to claim that all depictions of wrongdoing are there so we can fantasize about doing wrong. When people watch Hotel Rwanda, are they indulging in a pleasurable fantasy of genocide? (Now who’s being lurid?)
by the way, speaking of 24: Slavoj Zizek has an interesting piece here about how the terrorists AND Jack Bauer’s CTU team are don’t get to have human rights on that show… by being involved in the struggle they forfeit their right to be human. Not really related to our discussion here, but it’s an interesting read if you want to think about 24 and the Constitution.
@Wrather: I view Law and Order and 24 differently. Law and Order is just a weekly raping of generally common people. 24 has more spent 8 years asking people at what point do principals break down and you can still feel OK about it.
*** 24 Spoilers below ***
Like this past week’s episode 24… 150,000 New Yorkers who didn’t ask to get irradiated when they woke up for work that morning and turning the Upper West Side in to radioactive wasteland vs. not negotiating with terrorists. Or in previous seasons — torturing a murderer vs. nuking Los Angeles. Those aren’t constitutional issues — they’re moral principal issues. Those are very different issues than Jack McCoy’s unconstitutional discovery process.
This is what I was thinking as I read the piece itself, and I think it still fits in with the discussion thus far because it provides yet another alternative while still about “pleasure.” Sorry if I’m taking it too off-topic.
What if it’s not sexual erotica, but “erotica” in the sense that it creates a stimulus [i.e. pleasure] in the audience? What I mean is, the success of these kinds of narratives, ones depicting (or narrating) acts we’d find atrocious or “bad” is prolific: horror movies, comedies, dramas, it doesn’t matter, seeing (or at least knowing about) characters in discomfort brings audiences pleasure in some way because it discomforts AUDIENCES. The underlying masochism* is what makes it successful and desired. As such, the crimes in the various versions of _Law and Order_ or any other cop show (I kept thinking of _Castle_ as I read, which does the same stuff- sometimes we see it, sometimes the perp tells us, sometimes Beckett or Castle tells us, but we always know what happened in the end) are a source of the highest internal discomfort, since the ideas of rape, murder, (child) abuse, etc., in and of themselves, even outside the context of the show(s) (or whatever else we’re using to “experience” them) make us more uncomfortable than the idea of stubbing your toe; and since a guy stubbing his toe has no real moral implications, the idea of a person molesting a five-year-old cuts at something else in our consciousness AND sub-consciousness, and it is that feeling, that cut, we crave.
*One could also argue it’s a vaguely sadistic impulse, too, and with a similar train of thought, but I’ll let it lie for now.
Sorry I’m late to the party. But I’ve been watching a LOT of Law and Order recently, so I feel the need to post a comment. Truthfully, I’m not sure I understand a lot of the subtle, grad school arguments being advanced in this piece and the comments. But I didn’t see much discussion of the peculiar two-act nature of Law and Order (the mothership). If you asked me to say why the show is addicting, WITHOUT overthinking anything, I’d say you get two types of entertainment in one hour. You get to see detectives solve a mystery. And you also get to see prosecutors take on murderers in court. These are two very different pleasures: seeing Lenny interrogate witnesses vs. seeing McCoy try to deflect motions to exclude evidence from swarmy lawyers. But these stories seem so well-crafted and organic it all feels like one whole.
To me, CSI seems kind of primitive – almost every episode ends with them finding one undeniable piece of scientific evidence. Then the murderer either confesses, or the audience is lead to believe that conviction is 100% assured. In Law and Order, no case is ever so airtight that the outcome isn’t in doubt. Even in cases where the evidence is of the CSI sort, the defendant always has a trick up his sleeve.
Anyway, that’s the Law and Order 1-2 punch: can we find the murderer, and then can we nail him? I use “we” purposefully, because I always root for the characters. I root for the characters a lot easier than I root for the characters in, let’s say, House. That’s because in House, the characters are real 3-D characters, with lives and feelings and interests outside the case of the week. I might enjoy watching them, but I don’t feel like I want to BE House. In Law and Order, the characters have personalities, but the details are notoriously vague. The show is legendary for how little you ever find out about the characters. This makes it easy to step into their shoes.
Anyway, I don’t believe the pleasure of Law and Order has much to do with the details of the actual crime. For me, it’s more about COMPETITION. It’s good guys vs. bad guys. You keep watching, because you want to see if the good guys will win. That being said, I’ve never understood the appeal of SVU, which DOES seem to revolve around a fascination with the victims, not the criminals.
I realize little of this has to do with your actual thesis – I just enjoy writing about Law and Order.
Then how about a Law and Order week?
;)
I would be quite in favor of a law and order week, and could probably poop out another post on the topic. Anyone else interested?