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You don't have to ask, it is so obvious that you are supposed to be against the police that the filmmakers now scarcely even bother to pile the clichés on particularly heavily anymore. You don't have to see the cop kick a dog or insult a prisoner. The police are so often shown to be corrupt, ignorant, bigoted and violent to the honest decent criminals that we come to expect that message even before we have it “confirmed” by another piece of fiction.

The Good Old Days

In the good old days of Hollywood you knew where you were. The good guys wore white hats and didn't cuss, never drew first or shot second.

The G Men were the good guys and crime never, ever, paid. But now things have swung so far over to the other extreme that most Hollywood films are morality tales in favour of honest theft and no-nonsense psychopathic (differently motivated) behaviour. The folks in the white hats are good for nothing prejudiced rednecks doing down the oppressed minorities and persecuting them when they justifiably turn to activities that the fascist state has called crimes.

An excellent example is the film Entrapment in which the brave and daring criminals are outwitting the plodding and lecherous forces of law and order and property. The whole plot is designed to make you cheer for the amoral egotistical (and good looking) thieves and to hope that they are not going to do anything as nasty as trying to convict one another for grand larceny and conspiracy, crimes which they are clearly guilty of.

Even the targets for their crimes are set up especially for the process of removing all traces of immorality from the thieves acts of daring-do. Their first target is an anonymous corporation flagrantly abusing its duty by keeping a great master painting in an office rather than donating it to a museum for the supposed delight of hordes of schoolchildren and art students.

The second victim is anonymous, although you might imagine that he is some English aristocrat, so, asking for it, isn't he? Flaunting private wealth to the rest of the shallow old money set, he deserves to have it stolen, doesn't he? But just in case you might actually not take that view the filmmaker takes the precaution of not showing the rightful owner at all, in case you could see they were human.

The final theft is almost the epitome of the victimless crime. Far better than simply stealing from shops (shops aren't people) or stealing stuff that is insured, so nobody loses, at least nobody they will ever have to think about meeting. Not just taking small amounts from corporate accounts, but taking small amounts from corporate accounts of foreigners, South East Asian corporations who are probably getting rich from the work that should be done back home in the US of A anyway. How could anybody not want the thieves to get away with it? After all they are not doing it out of greed, they want to set a record for the biggest ever robbery. You have got to admire their guts haven't you? Excuse me, NO!!!!! I don't care how carefully you sanitize it, crime is crime and never laudable.

Making such films is tantamount to encouraging theft, I hope the people who make such films sometimes see the hypocrisy of making films that glamorize criminality and at the same time prosecuting people who infringe on their intellectual property rights.

This is however the tip of a much bigger iceberg, a huge raft of popular images and sentiments that make crime, criminals and antisocial behaviour cool, laudable and fit for emulation.

Maverick, rebel, pirate, buccaneer, rascal, desperado, lone-wolf, hitman, street fighter, rogue, wanderer, back-street boy, alleycat, bandit, gangster, renegade

would all be nicknames that young men would wear with pride. Why? Why is it so cool to be a sociopath, a thief, a deserter from commitment and a begetter of bastards?

Why is it cool to see a gangster rapper surrounded by four painted whores singing in gutter slang about having the sexual habits and morals of a tomcat? Cool? Slapping your bitches about, impregnating them and then running away denying it with a smile is supposed to be cool? “It wasn't me” Oh what a cheeky-chappie he is. Such an ambassador for his people.

Come and look at my swimming pools, my bitches, my Ferraris and my gold records, but hey, I'm not so big that I can't go to the ghetto with a few armed guards and let some of my fans adore me too.

Why do we think it is cool to call ourselves such names; Missy 'misdemeanour' Elliot, what is that all about? Misdemeanours are minor crimes. Is crime cool? Why should we allow criminals to become heroes? Surely things which we have classed as crimes cannot be cool. How can we allow popular culture to make breaking the rules glamorous? The first rule of social cohesion should be to enforce the rules, the second rule should be to shun those that do not do so.

We have now gone so soft that we not only do not enforce the rules we make heroes out of those that break the rules, that cannot be healthy for any notion of society. I feel like a very old and reactionary person to be saying this but I will not let that stand in my way. Society needs rules and standards, it cannot function if the golden rule is “find out what is taboo, then do it, in public”.

Recently there have been several articles in newspapers about how the current generation of rock stars are quite tame compared to those of the sixties and seventies. I'm sorry, I thought the job of a rock musician was to make music not to make headlines or trash hotel rooms. I would be quite happy to see nobody try to gain a reputation as being even madder than Keith Moon. Where would Keith Moon be today if he hadn't killed himself? I can imagine several thousand parallel universes in which Keith Moon died in various non-natural ways, but I cannot imagine him still being alive in any of them.

This is not new, popular culture has often praised the rebel and the outlaw; Robin Hood, Dick Turpin and the Thief of Baghdad. What about the Wild West, how many of those famous men would you be happy for your daughter to marry? Why is popular culture so good at picking psychotics and criminals as heroes and so poor at recognizing those who really make a difference by freeing people, challenging ignorance, healing political and social divisions.

What about the men and women who introduced sewage systems, clean air regulations, universal pensions, education and health provision. They have done more for mankind than Billy the Kid, Butch Cassidy or The Great Train Robbers. What about the real heroes like Gandhi, Rosa Parks and the Suffragettes who challenged attitudes and helped create the climate for change? Or men with amazing courage, like John Glenn who put himself on top of a missile with a terrible record of blowing up because he believed in the goal.

It is time that people realized the truth. There is no hope for a cohesive society if people make gangsters, thieves, drug dealers and even musicians into heroes. Even taking the extreme cases of people like John Lennon and Bob Dylan the achievements of musicians, in real terms, are rather puny compared to the achievements of real heroes who actually do something rather than just sing about it. And as for the antics of the likes of Eminem and Marilyn Manson how do they even begin to compare to people like Ralph Nader, the only Presidential candidate who merited an entry in the encyclopaedia before he stood for a single election.

We need heroes, but we need real heroes, people who take a stand not people who strike a pose. There are people who make a difference with their life and they should be celebrated. Rebels without a cause are no use to anybody, we need people who can see the good in the world as well as the bad, and who can measure the difference between the way things are and the way they could be, and who try to close the gap.

Pointing out the faults of the world is easy, the smart thing is to propose workable solutions and sensible strategies and then to make something happen.

As Marx said

“The philosophers have only interpreted the world in various ways;
the point is to change it.”

© 1999 - 2008 by Martin Willett.

mwillett.org: Debate Unlimited