Justice Provocateur: Jane Tennison and Policing in Prime Suspect

5. Private Troubles and Public Issues

chapter 5 Private Troubles and Public Issues The crime genre has long been characterized by individualism; that is, the criminal bears individual responsibility for his or her crime, and the investigator, a strong and heroic individual, apprehends the culprit. The depiction of the criminal as an evil villain and the detective/cop as the strong hero who saves the day is at the heart of the crime genre’s individualistic narrative, a narrative that privileges a binary of good and evil. Restoring order or status quo arrangements has also been a common theme in the genre. Indeed, as the name of one of television’s most popular crime genre programs suggests, the point is “law and order,” not some progressive agenda. The plots and development of crime genre characters are rarely progressive, and many crime genre programs traffic in unidimensional gender, racial, sexual, class, and national stereotypes. Notable exceptions to these generalities exist, and some will be referenced later, but multidimensional and varied portraits of women, people of color, and gay/ lesbian/transgender and other socially marginalized characters are underrepresented in television generally and in the crime genre in particular. Social problems are often vastly oversimplified and are portrayed either as irresolvable or as easily remedied by simple acts of individual goodwill. As we have noted, our model of progressive moral fiction implies works that offer realistic and sensitive insights into the experiences of socially marginalized groups and locates those experiences within a larger societal context. In this chapter we consider the extent to which the Prime Suspect series provides such insights and a social location for its characters. Our analysis includes an examination of the complexities and nuances of porCav_Jur RevPgs.indd 88 5/18/12 3:41 PM trayals of crime, criminals, and law. We will argue that the series transcends simplistic and individualized notions of crime causation. Yet Prime Suspect’s treatment in this regard is not completely new or isolated in television or the crime genre. In Chapter 1 we discussed how the feminist crime genre works to address the social context of crime as it decenters the heterosexual male domination of the genre. Similarly, work by authors such as African American writer Walter Mosley has challenged negative racial stereotypes in the crime genre. Still earlier social problems films of the 1930s, 1940s, and 1950s addressed a variety of social issues, and British social realism television, which had its heyday in the late 1950s and early 1960s, offered coverage of social issues and working-class communities in a realistic, semidocumentary , although often melodramatic format (Cooke 2003). We will briefly address the history of social problems and social realism film and television and then note the departure from such formats in British television of the 1970s onward as well as the general avoidance of social issue programming in US television throughout the years. We then move on to an analysis of Prime Suspect’s treatment of social issues, in particular , how moments within episodes offer insights into the experiences of socially marginalized persons. Although the series often disrupts the binary between good and evil and destabilizes the white male dominance of the genre, it does not offer comprehensive, modernist policy solutions to social problems. Social Problems, Social Realism, and the Crime Genre The crime genre tends to locate crime at an individual level, using and constantly reproducing a binary of good and evil, of heroes and villains. The crime genre also conveys a sense of alienation and social malaise and even deals with the meaning of order and threats to that order (Krutnik 1991; Brunsdon 2000; Mizejewski 2004). Despite its individualistic focus, sometimes the crime genre also addresses social issues. In the post–World War II period, a number of film genres addressed social problems themes. Some films during this period employed cinematic techniques to enhance their sense of realism while also demonstrating a consciousness of social issues, including alcoholism (The Lost Weekend, 1945) and anti-Semitism (Crossfire, 1947). One film, The Best Years of Our Lives (1946), followed the lives of three veterans who have adjustment Private Troubles and Public Issues 89 Cav_Jur RevPgs.indd 89 5/18/12 3:41 PM problems after they return from World War II. The men deal with war injuries, unemployment, marital breakup, and drinking problems as they try to readjust to civilian life. Some crime genre films during this period also used the social problems theme as...