19 thoughts on “Culture and Entertainment

  1. More than that: a police officer who would do that is having some kind of a breakdown and needs treatment.Report

      1. Dirty Harry is a great movie. Yeah its way over the top and turns cartoonish at the end, but it’s well crafted. It is a clear trajectory from Bullitt to DH which led to most of action/crime movies since the 70’s. Sadly most modern movies have to much of the soulless dead eyed violence of DH instead of the humanity of BullittReport

      2. Dude, I very much enjoyed Dirty Harry… but I’ve seen it.

        (I’ve actually heard that you can measure the ebbs and flows of how society feels about crime based on which aspects they focus on. Are the biggest shows the ones about Defense Attorneys? Are the biggest shows about the District Attorney? The cops themselves? Prison? This makes me hopeful about Orange Is The New Black’s rise to prominence, if only a little. Anything that might take the wind out of the sails of Law&Order/CSI.)Report

      3. I’ve heard that though i’m not sure i believe it. CSI, at least when i watched it 10 years ago, made a show of showing the cops to be wrong at times and forensics as neutral searchers for truth.

        I’m not sure where Colombo fits in with that theory.Report

      1. Worse still, when he failed to save the life of a choking man because he kept yelling “Does anyone here know the Heimdall maneuver?”Report

      2. What really showed his mental derangement though was his insistence that for some reason Ridley Scott had made a nonsensical prequel to one of the most iconic, beloved and influential sci-fi/horror films of all time. That’s just crazy talk. I wouldn’t want to live in a world where that was true and not just the rantings of a lunatic [shudder].Report

    1. This. It’s remarkable to watch the show and see how everyone else in the force actually thinks they should follow the rules. In the US, cops not following the rules is considered a feature, not a bug. The rules are there to protect criminals from prosecution. The main lesson I got from Luther was how foreign that idea must be to a British audience.Report

      1. To be fair, I think this theme extends beyond cop movies/shows – American media is, and has been, for a long time, in love with the romantic rebel against institutional authority, to a degree you just don’t see as much in British popular media. Even the biggest “British” hero, Bond, has his actions sanctioned by the govt. – he’s got a license to kill.Report

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