The other day I was at a dinner with a pretty liberal crowd (grad students, music people) and I said I liked the show COPS. Someone said, “How can you watch that? It demonizes black people!” I was thrown by this, because in my experience I see just as many white people as black people on that show. It seems like there are just as many white meth-heads and felons as black. So that’s what I said: “I think the criminals on that show are a pretty good representation of the population. Also, you see black cops on the show too.”
The young woman just shook her head and said, “I disagree.” The last thing I wanted was a debate ruining my dinner so I left it alone.
But do you agree with this assessment of the show? Really in my experience I can hardly say it paints a negative picture of any one race.
I don’t watch it all that much, but I would tend to agree with you. Perhaps your dinner friend only saw what she thought she was looking for in the show. Many times people have preconceptions that can seem very real when they put them on a subject they have an opinion about. Objectively, I see a good mix of many races in the show.
Because only the rowzers can appear victorious and they never show people getting away with anything, the only type of people Cops demonizes are stupid ones. If they are in Philly that week, or Atlanta, or any real urban place, there’s a fairly good chance you’re going to see the cops go after your stereotypical black thug or crackhead. If they happen to be in a less urban environment, they will almost always go after your stereotypical white trash type. It’s just a game of numbers, how many dumb white people do you see in the rough parts of any major urban city? How many black people hang out at trailer parks?
You hit it. Cops shows morons of all stripes foolishly running from the police. Then they get tackled and start yelling “I didn’t do nuthin’!” while the officers pull dozens of bags of crack out of their shorts.
So it’s simple really, Cops demonizes stupid criminals. But that’s not really an ethnic group now is it?
I think anyone saying “COPS demonizes black men” is just projecting their own subtle racism onto the show by assuming that most criminals would be black men - especially if they’d never even seen the show in the first place.
Michael Moore has a big section of one of his movies (I think it’s Bowling For Columbine) wherein he claims the way Cops represents black men is part of a broader subtle demonisation by the media. Whether you agree with him or not the section of the movie is interesting. I’m sure you can find it on one of those google videos or tubes or what not.
Unless they skew it to show a ratio of more black criminals/suspects than they actually encounter, it’s simply showing reality. If showing accurate reality is seen by some to demonize black men, it’s not ‘COPS’ fault.
Indeed. He uses COPS and “fear of the black man” (a direct quote from Bowling for Columbine) to link gun violence and racism. He might have a point that blacks are economically disadvantaged in America and this leads to poverty and crime, but he wanders into the Twilight Zone when he blames Charlton Heston (then President of the NRA) for an elementary-school shooting.
In any case, has anyone ever compiled a list of the demographics represented on COPS - races of suspects, witnesses, officers?
Well, COPS tends to show only the less wealthy criminals. I don’t recall any episode (but I only watch a couple episodes a year) that show a wealthy looking suspect, excpet for traffic stops.
The show also tends to focus on the somehwta more urban areas, as more TV worthy stuff happens on a given night (including the night the COPS camera crews are riding around with the police). If the show’s producers put a camera operator in a one-police-car town, they may not get anything more exciting than footage of an officer collecting mosquito bites.
So I thin it’s possible, if you crunch the numbers, that black suspects are shown at a slightly higher proportion than their percentage of the population as a whole might otherwise indicate.
(Of course, this is assuming that, amongst the blacks, they tend to live in more urban places than not. Otherwise, my theory could be bunk.)
I do not think that the shows producers are deliberately targeting black folk. I think they are only concerned with collecting entertaining footage.
Another vote for: Seeing What You Want To See. Says more about the person making the statement than it says about the show.
I’ve seen plenty of just laughably bad stereotypical white trash on there too. People who make Cletus and Brandine from The Simpsons look good by comparison.
Exactly. I actually had a brief conversation about this once with the executive producer (he’s family by marriage) and he laughed his ass off. It’s about what makes entertaining television, that’s all. Trust me, he’s a great guy, but he’s not out to make a social statement with *anything *he makes. It’s all, charitably speaking, entertaining crap that makes him lots and lots of money.
From what I’ve seen*, COPS is one of the most racially diverse programs on television.
*And I’ve seen the show more than I care to admit, especially since acquiring a DVR and discovering how much more enjoyable it is when you can skip past not only the commercials, but also the boilerplate “why I became a cop” patrol car monologue and go directly to the hilarious exploitation of the moron underclass.
