don't raise your hopes for some dramatic act of defiance to happen based on today. be afraid of what the administration wants. but also do not *ignore* how pathetic of a spectacle this was

like, the fact that they felt this spectacle was necessary is itself evidence that they don't have the military support that they want

Ezra is right to call attention to his own struggle over how best to respond to that. But I think it also reflects a certain lack of preparation that, as TNC points out, Black Americans and other marginalized and vulnerable groups have never been able to afford.

Coates knows that the role of the millions is to suffer and try and maybe not affect much, but to make as much change as possible against powerful people, much more powerful than us, so hopefully, someday, we get to the cycle where things are better. Klein sees us as the protagonists of history

Murder She Wrote was actually pretty good at handling this by having her travel around all the time - it gave them latitude to have some competent cops and some crappy ones!

For current shows, maybe Poker Face has the ability to do something similar? I haven’t watched enough of it to know though.

I would argue that you could also show the implications, but that‘s definitely going to impact the tone of your show - either it’s a stone-cold bummer or you‘re basically making Batman.

And here I would have SWORN that Bosch was a political-fixer show (aka a non-cop-show cop show)!

I know I’m already all over this thread like a bad rash, but I think part of the argument against ‘copaganda’ is that it DOES normalize the ideas that the police get to pry into anyone’s life (and that only guilty people can want lawyers, etc.) and that’s Not Good!

…well, my immediate response is that the justification could be ‘because the particular cops in this story suck’. 😄 If that’s not something that audiences are willing to accept, that might also be indicative of a cultural narrative that needs to be challenged?

I think I disagree! Someone else brought up PIs, there’s medical shows, and even political shows have tons of options within that category - you can do The West Wing or House of Cards or Veep!

It’s an interesting point, because ‘propaganda’ does need specific intent behind it - so what should we call something that maybe isn’t specifically made with the goal of valorizing a certain group, but potentially contributes to a positive feedback cycle of heroic narratives about them?

The Good Wife comes to mind as a quasi-cop show that wasn’t actually a cop show - obviously real lawyers aren’t actually investigating cases the way those characters did, but CSI techs don’t interrogate suspects either, and most audiences seem to be able to suspend their disbelief.

Counterpoint though - there are so many examples of these types of stories (historical
and modern) where cops aren’t the protagonists, I don’t know if it’s actually that much harder to find a non-cop option?

I don’t know, I think at this point there’s a lot of material in the realm of ’things authorities allegedly care about/will investigate but actually don’t’.

Why did they use the design scheme from 90s Apple ads though

How so? I guess one could make the argument for spending money on charitable donations to humans instead but “person who owns a lot of cats should actually just have kids“ doesn’t make much sense.