Critical Investigation tasks

1. Analyse the programs that you will research for your critical investigation. 'Road Wars' and 'Police Camera Action'

2. Reword your working title

3. Put up the rest of your critical investigation from your home computer on to your blog.

Notes and Quotes

“The representation of the police over time can be viewed as the gradual erosion of respect and authority”  - MediaMagazine - 

This quote can be argued to be true because time and time again we see the police involved in controversy which does lead to the gradual erosion of respect and authority for the police. The representation of the police by the media over the last 20 years has been consistently negative. Even when the Manchester police force lost two working officers on the job, the news media still found a way to critique them on the way their jobs where being done and why, for example, the police are unarmed which led to various debates online. However, this negative representation is not consistent within all forms of the media. Relating directly to my critical investigation.

However, by de-constructing the mis-en-scene of programs such as ‘Road Wars’ and ‘crimewatch’ as I have done as part of my case study, the codes and conventions used in this program create something that is completely contradictory of this quotation. These programs are attempting to re-establish clearly attempting to show the police as a powerful force which demands respect however this is not the case in reality as my linked production piece will find out.

"With the Stephen Lawrence case in 1993, the reputation of the police fell to an all-time low" - www.britsoccrim.org/volume5/003.pdf

The inquiry into why Lawrence’s murder was not properly investigated and why his killers weren’t prosecuted made headline news throughout the 1990s, culminating with the Macpherson Report of 1999, which found that the Metropolitan Police was a racist organisation, suffering from institutional racism. It was not just in the UK either that the reputation of the police was sinking: the footage of LA police attacking motorist Rodney King led to the LA riots and had a similar effect on the reputation of the police in the States.

After the reputation of the police had fallen to a all time low, programs such as 'Road Wars' and 'Traffic Cops' began making their way to our screens to attempt to change the hegemonic ideologies that had been created during the Miners strike. Due to the clashes between the 'normal' working class minors and the police, the public had created a us verses 'The Other' scenario and suddenly, the Police because the enemy. This is why during programs such as 'Road Wars' we are often forced to become a police officer and become part of their gang which inevitably leads to the audience supporting the police force in attempting to eradicate criminals. This can be supported by the repetitive use of words such as 'Us' and 'We' which connotes group work, togetherness and safety. Central to the genre of reality police shows is the relationship between the police and the  media. The use of hand-held cameras and the absence of a voice-over in the media ridealong gives an impression of the "real". However '[M]asquerading as reality, these selected 

sequences drawn from the immediacy of live events form nothing more than stories' 

"Fetveit (1999) notes that the reality television show relies on three types of visual evidence, 'authentic footage from camera crews observing arrests or rescue operations; footage from surveillance videos and recordings  (often by amateurs) of dramatic accidents and dangerous situations'. The reality police show is predominantly shot using camera crews and surveillance videos." - www.britsoccrim.org/volume5/003.pdf

The programs that I am basing my critical investigation on follow Fetviet's findings. These programs follow a  expository documentary style. This can be seen by the use of hand held camera and the lack of a voice over. Also, these programs are in fact real life footage gathered from either amateur recordings and footage shot using camera crews. This text also features some narrative theory is the form of Todorov. Chase and arrest are edited to produce an exhilarating experience for the viewer. The journey begins and ends in the patrol car with the officers, a neat circular frame on which the action can be hung. This neat circular frame can be an example of narrative theory because when the camera is in the patrol car with the officers, the audience are made to feel safe and secure but also part of the team due to the direct mode of address. (Blumler and Katz).

"At the same time, the public widely perceived they had lost the presence of the community policeman on the beat." - http://www.ejumpcut.org/archive/onlinessays/JC42folder/UKpoliceShows.html

This quote links in well with my linked production. Programs such as 'Road Wars' and 'Police, Camera, Action!' has sensationalised the police so much that they have made the audience feel as if they are always chasing criminals in car chases and flying around in helicopters rather than just patrolling the local community. This links in well with my linked production because I intend to show a non sensationalist view of the work of a police man in the form of a fly-on-the-wall documentary style. This quote also links into the first quote because by the public perceiving a lack of presence in the local community, 'police over time can be viewed as the gradual erosion of respect and authority'.

"Power in this new type of society, has drained deeply into the gestures, actions, discourses and practical knowledge of everyday lives." Foucault, Michel. Discipline and Punish. (London: Penguin, 1991)

This programs can be related to Althusser Ideological state apparatus [1] because they use these texts as a form of suppressing a revolution. This can be seen by the themes and narrative of the text. In short, 'all the texts seem to display criminals that always take a wrong turn into a dead alleyway' meaning that they always seem to get caught strengthening the idea that a revolution will fail.



[1] Althusser, Louis. "“Ideology and Ideological State Apparatuses (Notes towards an Investigation)”(1970)." Cultural Theory: An Anthology (2010): 204.
By using these programs to control the ideology of audience, this in turn has 'has drained deeply into the gestures, actions, discourses and practical knowledge of everyday lives' because we take into consideration of the high level of competence of the police and therefore choose to continue to live using a capitalist system because we are scared to revolt. However, before making this argument  we must first consider how much these types of programs have an affect on the behaviour of audiences. As Palmer puts it 'These programs are about constructing a new citizenship through fear.'



"Given that most people rarely encounter the police in crime-related incidents and that only 40% have any contact with the police in a twelve-month period, exciting technologically-driven television programs about the police cannot help but inform people's perception of law enforcement agents as controllers rather than carers." - M. Stephens and S. Becker, "The Matrix of Care and Control," Police Force/Police Service, p. 224.

These statistics are interesting from a media perspective because although this is a documentary style programs, they clearly lacks social realism because they are unrepresentative of what happens in reality. "harnessed both to the needs of policing and the journalistic value of offering verisimilitude to the audience."Despite the fact only '40%' have no contact with the police in a twelve month period, programs such as 'Road Wars' and 'Police, Camera, Action' depict a police force that seem to be everywhere, arresting everyone and controlling the streets when in reality they are carers instead of controllers of the streets. 

[2] Schlesinger, Philip and Tumber, Howard, Reporting Crime: The Media Politics of Criminal Justice (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1994), p. 252.