美国国家公共电台 NPR 'Washington Post' Reporter Explores How Pop Culture Influences Views Of Police

'Washington Post' Reporter Explores How Pop Culture Influences Views Of Police

play pause stop mute unmute max volume 00:0004:51repeat repeat off Update Required To play the media you will need to either update your browser¹ to a recent version or update your Flash plugin. KELLY MCEVERS, HOST: 

If you talk to cops about people's reaction to videos of police shootings, they say people just don't understand how policing really works. And the reason, they say, is that most of what people know about policing comes from movies, books and TV.

ALYSSA ROSENBERG: "Dragnet," "The Untouchables," "The Andy Griffith Show," "The Mod Squad," "Hawaii Five-0..."

MCEVERS: Washington Post columnist² Alyssa Rosenberg took a deep dive into fictional³ depictions of police work. She read a lot of books and watched a lot of movies and TV.

ROSENBERG: ..."S.W.A.T.," "CSI," "The Shield," "The Wire," "Reno 911!," "Deadwood," "Southland" and finishing up with "Brooklyn Nine-Nine."

MCEVERS: And after all that, she's written a series of articles tracing how police have been portrayed⁴ in popular culture. It's called "Dragnets, Dirty Harrys And Dying Hard." Rosenberg starts with how creators of the 1950s TV show "Dragnet" made a deal with the LAPD. In exchange for access to police to make the show authentic⁶, the LAPD got control over scripts, and that made them look good on TV.

ROSENBERG: The arc of police storytelling is one that kind of travels from censorship to greater freedom of speech. But even as that happened, you might have expected that Hollywood would get more thoughtful or sort of more progressive about police shootings. Instead, the early sort of moral agony that accompanies an officer-involved shooting really sort of leaches⁷ away. So you have Joe Friday, representative of the LAPD, so shaken after a shooting that he can't even fill out his paperwork, wondering if there could have been another way.

MCEVERS: Let's listen to that.

(SOUNDBITE OF TV SHOW, "DRAGNET")

JACK⁸ WEBB: (As Sergeant⁹ Joe Friday) First time I ever killed a man.

DOROTHY ABBOTT: (As Ann Baker) Mmhmm.

WEBB: (As Sergeant Joe Friday) Not a good thing, Ann. I kind of wonder if maybe there wasn't some other way.

ABBOTT: (As Ann Baker) Was there?

WEBB: (As Sergeant Joe Friday) No, we called it.

MCEVERS: So it's this officer showing obvious remorse¹⁰ for shooting someone, even though he's saying, you know, there was no other way.

ROSENBERG: And then you start to get a series of stories where the spouses¹¹ or even parents of people who have been killed by the police end up sort of reassuring¹² the cops...

MCEVERS: Yeah.

ROSENBERG: ...That they did the right thing. There was this "Starsky & Hutch" story where Starsky shoots a 16-year-old. And the way it's shot is really ambiguous. You can't tell if he was raising his hands to surrender or pulling a gun. But the boy's mother ends up telling Starsky that sort of a mother knows what her son was - at least this mother knows - and she sort of absolves¹³ him.

MCEVERS: Yeah.

ROSENBERG: And so we start to get this series of stories where the cops feel bad, but then the people related to the dead person explain that the dead person was no good, maybe they're better off, maybe the person the cop killed abused somebody, maybe he was on his way to a life of crime. And then, eventually, even that goes away. You have this series of cops who take sort of obvious pleasure in shooting people and getting them off the streets. "Dirty Harry⁵" is kind of the embodiment of that.

MCEVERS: Exactly. Let's - I want to listen to that. It's Harry Callahan played by Clint Eastwood. He's taken the law into his own hands when the local authorities tell him not to. Let's listen to that.

(SOUNDBITE OF FILM, "DIRTY HARRY")

JOHN VERNON: (As The Mayor) Callahan.

CLINT EASTWOOD: (As Harry Callahan) Sir.

VERNON: (As The Mayor) I don't want any more trouble like you had last year in the Fillmore District. Understand? That's my policy.

EASTWOOD: (As Harry Callahan) Yeah, well, when an adult male is chasing a female with intent to commit rape¹⁴, I shoot the [expletive] - that's my policy.

MCEVERS: All right, so shooting is my policy, and that's that. Where did it go from there?

ROSENBERG: You know, after that, shooting stops even being something to debate. Especially in the action cop movies of the '80s and sort of early to mid-'90s, shooting just becomes sort of a routine part of the job. And in fact, one sort of emergent trope in action movies is that people who decline to shoot to kill are proved to be foolish in that conviction.

MCEVERS: So how about now? I mean, we know that TV shows and movies are more sympathetic to victims now. How do you think about how police are portrayed now in pop culture?

ROSENBERG: When I was reporting the series, I talked to a number of cops who have either sort of created their own cop stories, someone like Jon Murad, who's the technical adviser¹⁵ to "Brooklyn Nine-Nine." Murad looks at shootings in pop culture and, you know, sees them as sort of overrepresented, which is not to say that the consequences can't be very serious. But if you look at a police department like New York's, the number of times that officers discharged their weapons has fallen dramatically since the department started tracking those discharges. Part of what happens when you over-represent shootings is...

MCEVERS: Right.

ROSENBERG: ...Not simply that you give the impression that there are a lot of them, but that you give the impression that this is routine and that officers act with great calm and coolness because they're doing this all the time.

MCEVERS: That's Washington Post columnist Alyssa Rosenberg talking about her series "Dragnet, Dirty Harrys And Dying Hard." Thank you very much.

ROSENBERG: Thank you.

1 browser   

n.浏览者

参考例句：

• View edits in a web browser.在浏览器中看编辑的效果。
• I think my browser has a list of shareware links.我想在浏览器中会有一系列的共享软件链接。

2 columnist   

n.专栏作家

参考例句：

• The host was interviewing a local columnist.节目主持人正在同一位当地的专栏作家交谈。
• She's a columnist for USA Today.她是《今日美国报》的专栏作家。

3 fictional   

adj.小说的，虚构的

参考例句：

• The names of the shops are entirely fictional.那些商店的名字完全是虚构的。
• The two authors represent the opposite poles of fictional genius.这两位作者代表了天才小说家两个极端。

4 portrayed   

v.画像( portray的过去式和过去分词 )；描述；描绘；描画

参考例句：

• Throughout the trial, he portrayed himself as the victim. 在审讯过程中，他始终把自己说成是受害者。
• The author portrayed his father as a vicious drunkard. 作者把他父亲描绘成一个可恶的酒鬼。 来自《现代汉英综合大词典》

5 harry   

vt.掠夺，蹂躏，使苦恼

参考例句：

• Today,people feel more hurried and harried.今天，人们感到更加忙碌和苦恼。
• Obama harried business by Healthcare Reform plan.奥巴马用医改掠夺了商界。

6 authentic   

a.真的，真正的；可靠的，可信的，有根据的

参考例句：

• This is an authentic news report. We can depend on it. 这是篇可靠的新闻报道, 我们相信它。
• Autumn is also the authentic season of renewal. 秋天才是真正的除旧布新的季节。

7 leaches   

n.（将化学品、矿物质等）过滤( leach的名词复数 )；（液体）过滤，滤去

参考例句：

• People consume it when it leaches from plastic into baby formula, water or food in container. 当它被从塑料中经沥滤而入婴儿配方奶粉、水或罐装食品当中的时候，人们将其摄入。 来自互联网
• After this article uses is also the microwave pretreatment, leaches the method with the solution. 本文采用的也是微波预处理后用溶液浸取的方法。 来自互联网

8 jack   

n.插座，千斤顶，男人；v.抬起，提醒，扛举；n.（Jake）杰克

参考例句：

• I am looking for the headphone jack.我正在找寻头戴式耳机插孔。
• He lifted the car with a jack to change the flat tyre.他用千斤顶把车顶起来换下瘪轮胎。

9 sergeant   

n.警官，中士

参考例句：

• His elder brother is a sergeant.他哥哥是个警官。
• How many stripes are there on the sleeve of a sergeant?陆军中士的袖子上有多少条纹？

10 remorse   

n.痛恨，悔恨，自责

参考例句：

• She had no remorse about what she had said.她对所说的话不后悔。
• He has shown no remorse for his actions.他对自己的行为没有任何悔恨之意。

11 spouses   

n.配偶，夫或妻( spouse的名词复数 )

参考例句：

• Jobs are available for spouses on campus and in the community. 校园里和社区里有配偶可做的工作。 来自辞典例句
• An astonishing number of spouses-most particularly in the upper-income brackets-have no close notion of their husbands'paychecks. 相当大一部分妇女——特别在高收入阶层——并不很了解他们丈夫的薪金。 来自辞典例句

12 reassuring   

a.使人消除恐惧和疑虑的，使人放心的

参考例句：

• He gave her a reassuring pat on the shoulder. 他轻拍了一下她的肩膀让她放心。
• With a reassuring pat on her arm, he left. 他鼓励地拍了拍她的手臂就离开了。

13 absolves   

宣告…无罪，赦免…的罪行，宽恕…的罪行( absolve的第三人称单数 )； 不受责难，免除责任 [义务] ,开脱（罪责）

参考例句：

• Not making a decision absolves procrastinators of responsibility for the outcome of events. 不做决定让他们不会为事情的最终结果承担责任。
• Moist soil absolves absorbs more heat than loose, dry soil covered with much mulch or vegetation. 湿润的土壤，相比有覆盖物或有植物的稀疏、干燥土壤能够吸收更多的热量。

14 rape   

n.抢夺，掠夺，强奸；vt.掠夺，抢夺，强奸

参考例句：

• The rape of the countryside had a profound ravage on them.对乡村的掠夺给他们造成严重创伤。
• He was brought to court and charged with rape.他被带到法庭并被指控犯有强奸罪。

15 adviser   

n.劝告者，顾问

参考例句：

• They employed me as an adviser.他们聘请我当顾问。
• Our department has engaged a foreign teacher as phonetic adviser.我们系已经聘请了一位外籍老师作为语音顾问。