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THE SHIELD
by Judith Grant
Since HBO's success with what
the "Industry" likes to call "edgy" original
TV shows like The Sopranos and Sex and the City,
network and cable television has had major sex and violence envy.
How could it compete with television shows that have no limits
on nudity and profanity? The FX network appears to have met that
challenge with its new police drama, The Shield. It is
already a success with viewers and critics. TV Guide called the
drama "dramatically tantalizing and morally perilous,"
and The Hollywood Reporter favorably compared it to NYPD Blue.
The Shield, whose promo proclaims, "The road to justice
is twisted," presents an interesting case study in Hollywood's
ongoing fascination with antiheroes and their relationship to
the law.
The figure of the cop-as-antihero
has never had to stretch its parameters as much as it does in
this series. Comparisons that have been made between The Shield
and the Mafia drama The Sopranos are misplaced. Bernard
Weintraub wrote in the New York Times, Detective Vic Mackey,
"seems to evoke the same ambiguity as Tony Soprano."
But is Vic really like Tony Soprano? I suspect that those who
have seen a common moral ambiguity see it in the fact that these
are both occasionally likeable characters that do bad things.
Both shows are also very well crafted using innovative topics
and flashy film techniques. However, in the case of Tony, we
have a hard-core criminal with a conscience. In the case of The
Shield's Detective Vic Mackey, we have a police officer who
openly engages in criminal behavior. The two scenarios are not
the same. Vic is supposed to be protecting people from people
like Tony, not emulating them. Hollywood and many Americans have
been conned into accepting the kind of police hero whose propensity
for rule-breaking is the cost of keeping us safe from serious
criminals. This is a dubious trade-off. However, even if one
accepts this, it is very not clear that one ought to make the
same moral adjustment for a cop who breaks the law merely to
line his own pockets. In the second case, the police become identical
to the criminals they stalk.
Police antiheroes are usually
differentiated from criminal antiheroes by the fact that cops
break laws to serve some higher purpose. For example, Dirty Harry
is fun to watch to the extent that one can forgive his law-breaking--
insofar as it is portrayed as being a necessary evil used only
to lock up bad guys. In contrast, Tony Soprano of The Sopranos
is fun because he's a Mafia boss with a heart of gold. Yes, he
commits crimes to line his pockets, but that's his job. He is,
after all, in the Mob. Tony and Harry are true antiheroes. In
contrast, The Shield presents us with a lead character;
Detective Vic Mackey, who is a kind of Dirty Harry meets Tony
Soprano. That FX wants to treat him sympathetically and to link
him to vigilante pop culture cops rather than to criminals, is
evidenced by the way FX describes Vic on the show's elaborate
website. He is, they say, "an effective cop who operates
under his own rules." FX's writers leave out the part about
him being a common criminal. Make that a common criminal with
a heart of gold. It was established within the first few episodes
that Vic can't stand to watch kiddie porn, and just hates it
when kids get killed in gang cross-fires. He also has an autistic
son. What a guy.
So far, we have seen Vic having
an affair with a co-worker, lying, stealing cocaine and re-selling
it, covering up a murder, beating up a suspect during interrogation,
and being responsible for a gang hit. In the latter case, there
is a clear link made between Vic and the gang activities he is
supposed to be curtailing. Intervening in a conflict between
two rappers, Kearn and T-Bone, who are connected to two rival
gang factions, Vic tries to arrange a truce. Failing in an attempt
to stop drug traffic until a flap about a homicide dies down,
Vic arranges a meeting between the two rappers at the station.
"Give me the money, bitch," says one rapper to the
other. Vic comes up with a solution. "Kearn," he says,
"you take tonight and come up with a number." Turning
to T-Bone, "You revise yours down a bit, then you bring
me the numbers and I decide what's fair." "Yeah, who
are you supposed to be? Judge Judy?" inquires a smirking
T-Bone.But this fails too, and Vic decides the best course of
action is to lock the two rivals in a truck overnight. The plan
goes awry, as when he arrives the next morning. Kearn has killed
T-Bone. "Oh, shit," exclaims Vic. Indeed, he now cannot
arrest Kearn for the murder as he has basically arranged and
made possible. Moreover, at least in real life this would only
escalate the gang conflict. Vic's reaction is telling. After
his initial shock, he turns reflective, and looking admiringly
at Kearn he follows him slowly to the edge of the dock. The camera
shows the back of the two men in silhouette against the sunrise.
Vic looks at Kearn. "You hungry?" he asks. The end.
Vic and Kearn are linked, not in moral ambiguity, but in a macho
and violent street ethic.
New York Times writer Weintraub
quotes Peter Liguori, chairman of FX, who affirmed the importance
of the recent film Training Day in pointing to a previously
unknown audience for a "fully dimensionalized representation
of the police." Just as the parallels to The Sopranos
are problematic, so are the ones made to the film, Training
Day. True, like Vic Mackey, the lead character in Training
Day (played masterfully by Denzel Washington) is both a vigilante
and an outright criminal. However, he is not held up as the hero
(or even a true antihero) the way that Vic Mackey is on The
Shield. The hero in Training Day is an honest rookie
cop (played by Ethan Hawke) who upends Denzel's criminal career.
In fact, Denzel's character is so unsympathetic that even we
root for the gangbangers to help rid the neighborhood of his
bad influence in the film's penultimate scene. In contrast, the
honest rookie cop in The Shield is not the hero. He is
portrayed as an uptight bible-thumper who is also, by the way,
a closeted gay, black man. He has a conscience, but his own struggle
with being a gay, which he believes to be a sin, places him dramatically
as merely a different kind of hypocrite with a psychological
axe to grind.
It is undoubtedly the case
that a slew of police corruption scandals also helped to create
an audience for The Shield. People seem to have significantly
lowered their standards for law enforcement officers, and have
accepted these kinds of portrayals as entertainment. The connection
to the Los Angeles "Rampart" scandal, for example,
is indicated by the series of name changes undergone by The
Shield. It was originally called The Barn (an ironic
use of the name of the place where pigs live). The show's title
was then, quite remarkably, changed to Rampart. This was
an allusion to the 1998 Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD)
corruption scandal of the same name. At that time an LAPD spokesperson
lamented to The LA Times that the show capitalizes on sensationalistic
headlines and "negatively influences youth." FOX, the
parent company of FX, countered that the show was not intended
to be about the actual police department, citing the dubious
distinction that they were "not setting the program at the
actual Rampart Station." Attempting to take a naïve
high road, Lt. Horace Frank, LAPD's director of media relations,
said, "I think it's very unfortunate that FOX would seek
to capitalize on such a disturbing and depressing part of our
history for money." It is, of course, quite a bit far from
unimaginable that a television corporation would try to capitalize
on something for money! Still, the LAPD complaints appear to
have prevailed, and FX ultimately chose a third name for the
show, settling on The Shield. They then set the show in
the fictitious town of Farmington. Farmington, of course, looks
a lot like the seedier sections of Los Angeles.
Despite FX's protestations
that The Shield had nothing to do with Rampart, the LAPD
Rampart District scandal, in fact, had a lot of cops who looked
a lot like Vic and his friends. Both have cops who stole cocaine
from the evidence room for later re-sale, were part of a high-
prestige, anti-gang task force with a great deal of autonomy,
hired themselves out as security to rap record labels, and ran
their own versions of street justice. These included physical
intimidation, covering up of criminal activity, murder, robbery,
and in the case of Rampart, framing innocent people. The Shield's
website announces that the show takes place in a "tough
morally ambiguous world." But seen in the context of its
distinct similarities to Rampart, The Shield is less "morally
ambiguous" than it is just morally irresponsible.
Works Quoted:
"When
Cops Attack!" by John Nelson
When"In FX's Hit 'The Shield,' Means Justify Ends,"
April 3, 2002, New York Times, By BERNARD WEINRAUB
www.fxnetworks.com
Posted May 22, 2002
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