Who Is IOZ?: Conquistador

Tuesday, August 03, 2010

Conquistador

Stanley Fish, a professor, has discovered that middlebrow popular entertainments flatter the demographic core of their middlebrow audience by presenting the fictional counterparts of that core audience as the moral center of the community. Like the Europeans of the age of exploration, he has landed upon a well-peopled continent, and like them, he does not care.

23 comments:

zunguzungu said...: Ah, but note: "Law and Order probably doesn't like *you*."; 8:05 AM
Anonymous said...: He fixes the cable?; 8:07 AM
Montag said...: the show venerates police work and moral authority and peddles that shit to its middlebrow audience. isn't that enough?; 8:55 AM
girard said...: Stanley Fish's article flatters the Times demographic core.; 9:00 AM
Leonard said...: Fish mentions the raging criminality of the rich within the world of L&O. This is one aspect of the show's flattery of its audience. Not only is the audience virtuous, but their betters are not! Of course, Fish doesn't mention the class or racial dimensions of the show's distorted reality. Most criminals are not actually rich white people -- they are poor blacks. But showing that on L&O didn't get ratings! It is more feelgoodism for the nice ladies who watch the show, and don't want to think horrifying racist thoughts when they are just trying to relax at the end of a long day.

As girard points out, Fish himself is committing the same sin as L&O: flattering his audience. Slightly different audiences to be sure -- but really, not so very much. The L&O viewers want to be shown their moral superiority to the rich, while not being reminded of their moral superiority to the actual criminal classes. The NYT audience wants to be reminded of their moral superiority to the sort of people who watch L&O. But they, too, do not want to think about real criminals.; 10:44 AM
Anonymous said...: Shorter Leonard:

"The real criminals are the black and the poor".

Way to flatter the teabaggers, Leonard.; 12:19 PM
lucid said...: It's all the welfare Moms! They and their fatherless children... the breeding den of criminals!; 12:36 PM
Anonymous said...: Pirates and emperors, Leonard.; 12:51 PM
George Jones said...: And, gasp, IOZ flatters his audience in denigrating Fish, a professor. Aren't we all supersmart anarchists disdainful of the trappings and presumptions of the meritocracy?; 2:16 PM
mistah charley, ph.d. said...: Aren't we all supersmart anarchists

I'm a democratic socialist who sometimes pretends to be a social democrat.

In the 2008 election I voted for Obama.

Who knows if it's good or bad?; 2:25 PM
lucid said...: I'm loath to call myself anything but a cross between a realist, black panther and a hippie.; 2:59 PM
Steven Augustine said...: "Most criminals are not actually rich white people -- they are poor blacks."

Well-spotted, Leonard. "Criminal", is a pejorative comment on *style* after all. Breaking treaties, despoiling the environment, profiting from illegal arms deals, making and selling child pornography, perpetrating massive violations of the Constitution, defrauding investors on a mind-boggling scale, indulging in judicial corruption and corporate malfeasance, violating the Geneva Convention and the Nuremberg Principles at a near-genocidal level... this is not the work of "criminals"! It's the behavior of iconoclasts, outliers, visionaries and rebels! One has to assume that Blacks are genetically-predisposed towards that Crime stuff.; 3:27 PM
lucid said...: Oh... And I watch Law and Order because it's hilarious & great to take a nap too...; 3:30 PM
Black Bart said...: What bugs the crap out of me about this and the many, many incarnations of 'crime drama' is that is re-inforces the plague that is criminality in this here United States.
Jesus, you'd think that the crime rate these days is higher than it was in the 70's...WAY higher.
I see these shows as another reason for the old folks to vote for more and better militarists.; 5:03 PM
Anonymous said...: Law and Order also hates the Fifth Amendment. The middlebrow sure loves talking to the police.; 7:46 PM
Anonymous said...: Most criminals are not actually rich white people -- they are poor blacks

Correction

Most people who are arrested and put in prison (usually for petty drug offenses) are poor blacks.

Most CRIMINALS (ie Dick Cheney, Larry Summers, Benjamin Netanyahu) are white.; 11:30 PM
Anonymous said...: OOps. Augustine beat me to it.; 11:32 PM
Anonymous said...: The only reason I used to watch Law and Order is that it was the only thing on basic cable.

Now the most available thing on basic cable is NCIS.; 11:35 PM
STFU said...: This

rich people; they are arrogant, they are condescending, they consume conspicuously, and, worst of all, they believe they are above the law.

is inaccurate in what way?; 11:46 PM
almostinfamous said...: Yankee detectives
Are always on the TV
Because killers in America
Work seven days a week

Joe S/ Paul S
1977; 2:52 AM
NutellaonToast said...: He also appears not to have watched much of the show, as there are plenty of counterexamples to his bullshit. D'Onofrio was not a fucking everyman. He was an almost autistic genius. Similarly, Goldbloom; 4:44 PM
HM said...: Forgive me for posing my opinion.

In my experience whenever the show has tackled difficult topics it has distorted the specific reality in the direction of doctrine and in pursuit of vanity.

But it has been popular for a long time.

I would bet many of the show's fans know little about anything. I imagine them clueless and incurious in their own lives, and incompetent, and with jobs in corrupt institutions. Or idle. One way or another.

Thus the show has filled a vacuum. It has shown its fans that someone is doing a good job somewhere! Proof of the American way!

For them the show has been like a martini for the boozer. It has reassured them the world is not going to hell, even as they have loyally supported every freaking thing that is sending the world to hell.

but now in 2010, their collective liver is failing. Meaning: concurrent with the failure of the hope personified as the Obamanation, it is now too obvious that hell will be our collective destination. Thus the show has lost a lot of its appeal.; 8:58 PM
Anonymous said...: He also appears not to have watched much of the show, as there are plenty of counterexamples to his bullshit. D'Onofrio was not a fucking everyman. He was an almost autistic genius. Similarly, Goldbloom

True, and TV detectives are also almost always about 20 times hotter than any real detective.

Angie Harman, Jill Hennessey, how many big city assistant DAs look like that?; 1:38 PM

Tuesday, August 03, 2010

Conquistador

23 comments:

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