Miami Vice

4. Why Miami Vice Matters

Chapter 4 Why Miami Vice Matters 85 It is now time to explain how Miami Vice achieved the emblem of cultural meaning it so conspicuously bears. Of course, by this point in the book it should be obvious why people cared, and continue to care, about Miami Vice, so my explanation is likely to seem redundant. Nevertheless, some threads can be pulled together along with assorted controversies and criticisms so that we may remove any lingering doubts about whether, and why, Miami Vice matters. “Why does Miami Vice matter?” is at once historical, sociological , aesthetic, and philosophical. The historical context and social conditions of the production and consumption of a prime-time television program provide the basis of an explanation of its status. From an aesthetic and philosophical perspective , the visual, aural, and thematic characteristics are essential to understanding Miami Vice’s audience appeal, influence, and cultural importance. No doubt all these factors play a part in our understanding of the show’s significance, in its own time and in ours. In the preceding chapters, I have approached the program aesthetically, thematically, and philosophically without turning a blind eye to those features of the historical and social milieu that influenced its production and reception. For 86 Chapter 4 example, with its emphasis on the various subcultures in which the professionals of the Vice Division operated, Miami Vice used its South Florida locations as a metaphor for both political and cultural conflict. Here, however, I want to address some of the misunderstandings and criticisms of those who deny that Miami Vice deserves the milestone status for which I have argued in this book. Postmodern Noir for the Small Screen Though the output of noir feature films diminished in the late fifties and sixties, network television in both the United States and the United Kingdom bears the legacy of film noir with Peter Gunn, Johnny Staccato, The Fugitive, Danger Man (aka Secret Agent), and The Prisoner. Miami Vice perpetuated the noir tradition by employing classic noir protagonists and themes (crime, entrapment, alienation, moral ambivalence, corruption). Enriching these themes, Miami Vice added such stylistic devices as tight close-ups, music-driven narratives, hand-held sequences, slow motion, and freeze-frame endings. Jan Hammer’s score and Jeffrey Howard’s art deco color palette suggested how the noir world supervened on the most innocent-appearing details of everyday life, even in sunny South Florida. For such reasons I have referred to “sunshine noir” to denote not only the style of the series but also the style of Miami itself. Miami Vice fused art-house cinema and popular culture for the small screen at a time when so-called neo-noir feature films were entering a second wave in the 1980s following the achievements of Chinatown (Roman Polanski, 1974) and The Conversation. The capacity of Miami Vice to give its characters and themes a noir inflection and infiltrate prime time gave television audiences a new experience, significantly different from the Cold War narratives of 1950s and 1960s television crime drama. With the thematizing of alienation, moral ambiguity, and the fragmentation of personal identity, and its skeptical 87 Why Miami Vice Matters attitude toward technology and American capitalist society, the show embraced a politically progressive critique and commentary that reflected post-Vietnam doubts about America’s national purpose and moral stature. As we saw in chapter 3, these doubts were shaped by the way Miami Vice contrasted the ideals of law enforcement with what it conveyed as the realities of political and corporate corruption. Miami Vice transformed the television cop subgenre and defied its conventions along several lines. For one thing, unlike most police detectives in prime-time television up to that time, Crockett and Tubbs worked as a team that was like a family, with all the ties of loyalty that the latter inspires. For another, unlike earlier site-specific programs, the criminal activities with which the Vice Division was concerned were not confined to the Miami metropolis but extended to other countries, because the market for drug trafficking, gun running, and prostitution is international. The undercover formula of Miami Vice accommodated numerous character types that went beyond the usual stereotypes, including the arms merchant (“No Exit”), the drug smuggler (“The Prodigal Son,” “Yankee Dollar,” “The Great McCarthy ”), the combat journalist (“Back in the World,” “Stone’s War”), the surveillance expert (“Lend Me an Ear”), the terrorist (“When Irish Eyes Are Crying,” “French...