Human Nature and Cop Art: a Biocultural History of the Police Procedural Jay Edward Baldwin University of Arkansas, Fayetteville
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University of Arkansas, Fayetteville ScholarWorks@UARK Theses and Dissertations 7-2015 Human Nature and Cop Art: A Biocultural History of the Police Procedural Jay Edward Baldwin University of Arkansas, Fayetteville Follow this and additional works at: http://scholarworks.uark.edu/etd Part of the American Film Studies Commons, Mass Communication Commons, and the Sociology of Culture Commons Recommended Citation Baldwin, Jay Edward, "Human Nature and Cop Art: A Biocultural History of the Police Procedural" (2015). Theses and Dissertations. 1277. http://scholarworks.uark.edu/etd/1277 This Dissertation is brought to you for free and open access by ScholarWorks@UARK. It has been accepted for inclusion in Theses and Dissertations by an authorized administrator of ScholarWorks@UARK. For more information, please contact [email protected], [email protected]. Human Nature and Cop Art: A Biocultural History of the Police Procedural Human Nature and Cop Art: A Biocultural History of the Police Procedural A dissertation submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Comparative Literature and Cultural Studies by Jay Edward Baldwin Fort Lewis College Bachelor of Arts in Mass Communication Gonzaga University Master of Arts in Communication and Leadership Studies, 2007 July 2015 University of Arkansas This dissertation is approved for recommendation to the Graduate Council. Professor Thomas Rosteck Dissertation Director Professor Frank Scheide Professor Thomas Frentz Committee Member Committee Member Abstract Prior to 1948 there was no “police procedural” genre of crime fiction. After 1948 and since, the genre, which prominently features police officers at work, has been among the more popular of all forms of literary, televisual, and cinematic fiction. The received history suggests that much of the credit for this is due to Jack Webb, creator of Dragnet. This study complicates that received history and traces the historical emergence of this signifying practice to early 20th century ideologies of social control and the conjuncture of social forces that ultimately coalesced in the training practices of the Los Angeles Police Department, which was itself at this time undergoing unprecedented change. It is there that the form is born as “cop art”, an expressive formula unique to a new American police subculture. From these beginnings the genre has established an important presence within the global media landscape. In tracing the genre’s circulation within the cultural economy, 1948-present, I consider the intersection of the cultural and the biological, or, simply, the biocultural. The biocultural perspective asserts that social behaviors, even signifying practices such as the procedural, may be motivated or otherwise determined not exclusively by culture or nature, but co-determined; i.e., the product of an evolved human nature acting in relation to the constructed environments (culture) resulting from human symbolic action. Acknowledgements H.L. Mencken once wrote, “Life is a dead-end street.” That’s true enough, I suppose. Fortunately, we don’t have to travel the road alone. The list of family, friends, professors, colleagues, associates, staff, students, and strangers who’ve assisted me in ways big and small, often unknowingly, would simply be too long to include here. Your support, encouragement, chiding, and forgiveness has been and always will be more greatly appreciated than I could say. My note to all of you is, “Thank you.” A special note of gratitude is owed to my dissertation adviser, Professor Tom Rosteck. Your willingness to allow me to explore Darwinian ideas relative to cultural work was very gracious. I know doing so added a lot of work on your part to familiarize yourself with ideas outside the field of cultural studies. I don’t think every professor would be so accommodating. Thank you. Your reviews of earlier drafts of this project always made the writing better and the thinking clearer. Also, to the other members of the committee, Professor Frank Scheide and Professor Thomas Frentz, thank you both. Your quick work in reviewing this project is very much appreciated. Moreover, it’s been your collegial mentorship during the years of my coursework I’ll remember most. Believe it or not, you’ll both serve as (partial) models for the kind of professor I aspire to become. And finally, to the one likely to be next to me when I reach the terminus of life’s dead- end street, my wife, Kim. Your suffering as I tortured myself over this project will be rewarded—I promise! Thank you for being there in every way when I was here, in front of my computer, writing. I love you. Dedication To the processes of blind variation and selective retention, you’ve made a biocultural man of me. Table of Contents Chapter/Section Page Introduction…………………………………................................................................ 1 The Problem………………………………………………………………………. 4 Conceptual Framework…………………………………………………………… 7 Method…………………………………………………………………………… 16 Literature Review………………………………………………………………… 17 Organization……………………………………………………………………… 25 Chapter One: Production……………………………………………………………… 27 Prelude to the Procedural………………………………………………………… 28 Officer Training Gives Rise to the Form………………………………………… 44 Storytelling and Status…………………………………………………………… 47 Chapter Two: Texts…………………………………………………………………… 58 Definitions……………………..………………………………………………….. 66 Procedural………………………………………………………………………. 66 Text……………………………………………………………………………. 67 Representation…………...……………………………………………………. 67 Structural Dimensions of the Form………………………………………………... 68 Psychology of Social Exclusion…………………………………………………… 82 “The Human Bomb” and “Twenty-five Acts”…………………………………….. 85 Chapter Three: Audience……………………………………………………………… 99 Radway, Morley, and the Biocultural……………………………………………… 101 Audience Response………………………………………………………………... 107 Conclusion…………………………………………………………………………….. 121 Biocultural Studies………………………………………………………………… 133 References……………………………………………………………………………... 137 Introduction The present work begins from a simple observation of everyday life in 21st century America: Our society and culture are awash in cops.1 Look around. Need a police officer? Dial 911 or, instead, you might go to your nearby shopping mall, where your local police department operates a convenient retail storefront. More commonly, however, cops are looking for you. Local traffic patrols on streets and highways are pervasive, as are any number of various security, sobriety, immigration, and contraband checkpoints. Public transportation facilities—airports, train and bus stations—are crowded with local police and a new breed of post-9/11 federal cop, the TSA agent, whose daily interactions with passengers seem to violate the rules of basic human dignity. Public spaces of all kinds, city, county, and federal administrative offices, courthouses, post offices, local parks, recreational facilities, sports stadiums, and seats of governance are all characterized by a highly visible police presence. Even primary and secondary schools, colleges and universities too, have police officers patrolling their campuses as a matter of course. Beyond perhaps the church, temple, or synagogue, there are few public spaces without a visible, if largely unnoticed, police presence. Police ubiquity extends to the virtual world, too. News stories involving police activities fill the headlines of printed newspapers and online news sites; police stories dominate radio and television news broadcasts and provide endless fodder for the blogosphere and social media. Additionally, fictional representations of the professional police officer daily flood the imagination of millions of Americans. Such representations make policing the single most represented occupation across popular media platforms, literature, film, television, video games, 1 As a former police officer, an ex-cop myself, I use this colloquial term with deepest respect. 1 and music (Harris, 2004). That these representations are overwhelmingly violent is common knowledge and supported by years of research. In fiction as in everyday life, the cops have us surrounded. Contemporary policing practices reveal not only the ubiquity of police but also the attitudes and tactics of cops themselves. I refer here to the well-documented rise in the use of violent, military-styled raids and para-military units, a.k.a. SWAT teams, for routine and otherwise low-risk law enforcement activities (American Civil Liberties Union, 2014; Balko, 2013; P. B. Kraska, 1996, 2007; P. B. Kraska & Cubellis, 1997). There is something remarkable about the pervasive use of armored personnel carriers, grenades, and semi-automatic rifles in assiduously choreographed assaults by men clad in flak-jackets and camouflage and whose putative duty is to protect life and property and to serve the People. Eastern Kentucky University criminologist Peter Kraska estimates that paramilitary police units conduct 50,000 such raids on American homes and businesses annually (P. Kraska, 1999; P. B. Kraska, 2007; P. B. Kraska & Kappeler, 1997). A 2014 report issued by the American Civil Liberties Union (ALCU) estimates that 79% of SWAT deployments are searches for contraband (i.e., not takedowns of violent criminals). As I write these words, police in the U.S. city of Ferguson, Missouri are drawing international attention to this issue as a result of their use of such militaristic tactics to conduct crowd control at a public protest. A simple internet search of the terms “police militarization”