Law, Order & Entertainment

For this essay I have chosen to analyze a popular and time tested television show, Law and Order. I chose Law and Order for several reasons, the most obvious of which was that assumedly it would be a breeding ground for soft toned racial discrepancies. Also, I saw a show revolving around conflict a more entertaining choice for analysis, as it would provide for a hopeful plethora of material to critique. In theory I hoped Law and Order would be a suitable source for an argument that television and entertainment, like the rest of us, expresses extreme racial disparities and must be changed.

Law and Order originally aired in 2002 on NBC. This particular episode aired on TNT. Law and Order has been on the air since 1989, seventeen years. Law and Order is a detective show where we audience follows the discovery of a crime all the way through to the conviction of the offender. The characters in Law and Order are lower-middle, to middle-middle class. The characters played were New York City officers, attorneys, FBI agents and federal judges, as well as criminals. The characters do not appear to live outside their fictional means, however they also never mention financial struggles, which are a part of everyday life. They dress and act modestly, the characters who were attorneys, and worked as judges, etc. were dressed more formally, but again not outrageously so. I do not believe those characters to be living outside the characters their fictional means either. While there were no clues or specific evidence as to which social class each member belongs to, according to www.nypd2.org, the starting salary for a New York City police officer is $32,700, after 5 years that salary will cap out at $59,588. Neither is exceptional. Upon researching, the black detective lives in an apartment, the cheapest and smallest apartment listed for New York, New York was $ 2425 a month. $59,588 comes to roughly $ 2,000 dollars every two weeks. With out any other payments that rent takes up 1 ј of a paycheck. Disregarding the fact that to rent any apartment you must prove you make three times the rent, which would put a New York police officers salary at $7,275 a month and $87,300 a year. Another officer lives in a three bedroom home, the cheapest three bedroom home listed was $440,000. While the characters appearances may not seem outside of their reach their homes speak differently.

The characters play against stereotypes. Of the two detectives in this particular episode, one was a much older white man, and the other was a middle aged black man. I found it strange that the race and/or relationship of the two did not come up at some point. In my opinion, it is not logical that the two would have a functional relationship, not only are they from different generations, but they are from different races. At the end of the episode the older white gentlemen is the one who presses the criminal up against the wall and cuffs him, waiving a very clear picture of a white hero. If the black man had done such an aggressive arrest he would have been scrutinized.

The remaining racial breakdown for all of the other characters is simple. There were five ethnic characters. Those five characters were the black partner, the black female police captain, a Hispanic detective, and an Italian father and son who were the criminals of the episode. Regarding the backround characters, in every scene there was one black person. An unrealistic portrayal considering that the white population will be a numeric minority in 2050 (Jansen, Race and Ethnic Relations). Delving further into the representation of the black community, even if the producers had as many as five different backround actors (a number I presume is very high), not only are they misrepresenting this community, but they are depriving the black actors of employment in the process. Misrepresenting a race so badly will only reinforce an already oppressive white community. I assume that such misrepresentation is a show of content as a reflection of audience preference(C&H 199). Meaning that the producers are assuming that since they are creating a crime drama that the American people, or white people, do not want to see a high number of minority faces because of the reaction that may ensue. This stereotype also reinforces white's as the "norm" (C&H 201) against which all other races are measured and defined. The only time this issue has ever been addressed in television was in the 1980-1990's and that abundance of minority television has since passed. As Entman says, this is modern racism, "stereotypes are now more subtle, and stereotyped