HaCKeRz KrOnIcKLeZ 3/HaCKeRz_KrOnIcKLeZ.iso/drugs/reality.tv

Text File | 1996-05-06 | 10KB | 235 lines

Newsgroups: alt.society.civil-liberty,alt.law-enforcement,talk.politics.drugs
From: [e-mail] (Patrick B. Hailey)
Subject: Harper's article on "reality TV"    (Like COPS)
Message-ID: <[e-mail]>
Date: Sun, 7 Nov 1993 09:03:21 GMT

The November Harper's has an article called "Tales From the Cutting-Room
Floor" by Debra Seagal.  Debra got herself a job as a "story analyst" for
"American Detective", one of the zillions of "reality-based" programs out
there (this one was canceled over the summer).

Internally, the "story analysts" are actually called "loggers".  They go
through the hours of video tape the camera crews send in, looking for
suitable material.

Some excerpts follow:

May 18

[ ... ]
... We are to hope for a naturally dramatic climax.  But if it doesn't
happen, I understand, we'll "work one out".

May 26

... Among other tasks, we're responsible for compiling stock-footage
books... This compendium is used to embellish stories when certain images or
sounds have not been picked up... ...[most] frequently, the shouts of the cops
on a raid ("POLICE!  Open the door!  Now!")  in an otherwise unexciting ramrod
affair.  Evidently the "reality" of a given episode is subject to enhancement.

... Searching for the scraps of usable footage was like combing a beach for
a lost contact lens.  The actual bust - a sad affair that featured an
accountant getting arrested for buying pot in an empty shoe-store parking
lot - was perhaps 1 percent of everything I watched.

June 10

... While an undercover pal negotiates with a drug dealer across the
street, the three detectives survey an unsuspecting woman from behind their
van's tinted windows.  It begins like this:

    [Interior of van.  Mid-range shot of Commander Brooks, Special Agent
    Gravitt, and Detective Cooper]

    COOPER: Check out those volumptuous [sic] breasts and that vulumptuous
 [sic] ass.
    BROOKS: Think she takes it in the butt?
    COOPER: Yep.  It sticks out just enough so you can pull the cheeks
 apart and really plummet it.  [Long pause] I believe she's not beyond
 fellatio either.

    [Zoom to close-up of Cooper]

    COOPER: You don't have true domination over a woman until you can spit
  on 'em and they don't say nothing.

    [Zoom to close-up of Gravitt]

    GRAVITT: I know a hooker who will let you spit on her for twenty
  bucks...[Direct appeal to camera] Can one of you guys edit this thing and
  make a big lump in my pants for me?

  [ ... ]

June 15

  [ ... ]

 ... Within a few weeks the finished videos emerge from the editing room
with "problems" fixed, chronologies reshuffled, and, when necessary, images
and sound bites clipped and replaced by old filler footage from unrelated
cases.

By the time our 9 million viewers flip on their tubes, we've reduced fifty
or sixty hours of mundane and compromising video into short, action-packed
segments of tantalizing, crack-filled, dope-dealing, junkie-busting cop
culture.  How easily we downplay the pathos of the suspect; how cleverly we
breeze past the complexities that cast doubt on the very system that has
produced the criminality in the first place... [The detectives] ambush one
downtrodden suspect after another in search of marijuana, and then, after a
long Sisyphean day, retire into red-vinyl bars where they guzzle down beers
among clientele that, to no small degree, resembles the very people they
have just ambushed.

June 23

  [ ... ]

 ... One of my colleagues has a photograph of our executive producer and
Lieutenent Bunnel with their arms around a topless go-go dancer somewhere
in Las Vegas; underneath it is a handwritten caption that reads, "The
Unbearable Lightness of Being a Cop."

June 29

  [ ... ]

 ... They seem to become pals with the C.I.'s [confidential informants].
Sometimes, however, they have to muscle the guy.  The tape I saw today
involves a soft-spoken, thirtysomething white male named Michael who gets
busted for selling pot out of his ramshackle abode in the Santa Cruz
mountains.  He's been set up by a friend who himself was originally
resistant to cooperating with the detectives.  Michael has never been
arrested and doesn't understand the mechanics of becoming a C.I.  He has
only one request: to see a lawyer.  By law, after such a request the
detectives are required to stop any form of interrogation immediately and
make a lawyer available.  In this case, however, Commander Brooks knows
that if he can get Michael to flip, they'll be able to keep busting up the
ladder and, of course, we'll be able to crank out a good show.

So what happens?  Hunched in front of my equipment in the office in Malibu,
this is what I see, in minute after minute of raw footage:

     [Michael is pulled out of bed after midnight.  Two of our cameras are
      rolling and a group of cops surround him.  He is entirely confused when
      Brooks explains how to work with them and become a confidential
      informant.]

     MICHAEL: Can I have a lawyer?  I don't know what's going on.  I'd
 really rather talk to a lawyer.  This is not my expertise at all, as it is
 yours.  I feel way out numbered.  I don't know what's going on.
     BROOKS: Here's where we're at.  You've got a lot of marijuana.
 Marijuana's still a felony in the state of California, despite whatever you
 may think about it.
     MICHAEL: I understand.
     BROOKS: The amount of marijuana you have here is gonna send you to
 state prison... That's our job, to try to put you in state prison, quite
 frankly, unless you do something to help yourself.  Unless you do something
 to assist us...
     MICHAEL: I'm innocent until proven guilty, correct?
     BROOKS: I'm telling you the way it is in the real world... What we're
 asking you to do is cooperate... to act as our agent and help us buy larger
 amounts of marijuana.  Tell us where you get your marijuana..
     MICHAEL: I don't understand.  You know, you guys could have me do
 something and I could get in even more trouble.
     BROOKS: Obviously, if you're acting as our agent, you can't get into
 trouble...
     MICHAEL: I'm taking your word for that?...
     BROOKS: Here's what I'm telling you.  If you don't want to cooperate,
 you're going to prison.
     MICHAEL: Sir, I do want to cooperate-
     BROOKS: Now, I'm saying if you don't cooperate right now, here, this
 minute, you're going to prison.  We're gonna asset-seize your property.
 We're gonna asset-seize your vehicles.  We're gonna asset-seize your money.
 We're gonna send your girlfriend to prison and we're gonna send your kid to
 the Child Protective Services.  That's what I'm saying.
     MICHAEL: If I get a lawyer, all that stuff happens to me?
     BROOKS: If you get a lawyer, we're not in a position to wanna
 cooperate with you tomorrow.  We're in a position to cooperate with you
 right now.  Today.  Right now.  Today...
     MICHAEL: I'm under too much stress to make a decision like that.  I
 want to talk to a lawyer.  I really do.  That's the bottom line.

     [Commander Brooks continues to push Michael but doesn't get far.]

 [ ... ]

     BROOKS: How old is your child?
     MICHAEL: She'll be three on Tuesday.
     BROOKS: Well, children need a father at home.  You can't be much of a
 father when you're in jail.
     MICHAEL: Sir!
     BROOKS: That's not a scare tactic, that's reality.

 [ ... ]

     BROOKS: How much money did you put down on this property?...Do you own
 that truck over there?

 [ ... ]

     BROOKS: I hope so, 'cause I'd look good in that truck.
     MICHAEL: Is this Mexico?
     BROOKS: No.  I'll just take it.  Asset-seizure.  And you know what?
 The county would look good taking the equity out of this house.

 [ ... ]

     [Brooks huffs off, mission unaccomplished.  He walks over to his pals
     and shakes his head.]

     BROOKS: That's the first white guy I ever felt like beating the
 fucking shit out of.

If Michael's case ever becomes an episode of the show, Michael will be
made a part of a criminal element that stalks backyards and threatens
children.  Commander Brooks will become a gentle, persuasive cop who's
keeping our streets safe at night.

October 1

[ ... ]

 ... Maybe the undercover cops ask the girls to do a little dancing before
getting down to real business.  They sit back and enjoy the show.
Sometimes they even strip, get into the motel's vibrating, king-size bed,
and wait for just the right incriminating moment before the closet door
bursts open and the unsuspecting woman is overwhelmed by a swarm of
detectives and cameramen.

 [ ... ]

 ... And what I see, what the viewer will never see, is the women -
disheveled, shocked, their clothes still scattered on musty hotel carpets -
telling their stories to the amused officers and producers.  Some of them
sob uncontrollably.  Three kids at home.  An ex who hasn't paid child
support in five years.  Welfare.  Food stamps.  Some are so entrenched in
the world of poverty and pimps that they are completely numb, fearing only
the retribution they'll suffer if their pimps get busted ... Others work a
nine-to-five job during the day that barely pays the rent and then become
prostitutes at night to put food on the table.  Though their faces are
fatigued, they still manage a certain dignity.  They look, in fact, very
much like the the girl next store.

 [ ... ]

------------------------------------------------------

There's much, much more.  Gratuitous brutality on the part of the cops.
Camera people carrying guns and badges, and the cops not seeming to care
about the blurring of roles.  Cops making fortunes by making sure they
create good TV.

That's the November "Harper's", folks.  I highly recommend it.

   Thanks awfully,
       Patrick "that's our job, to try to put you in state prison" Hailey

(and to enjoy prostitutes, steal property and money, all that fun stuff
that lands regular people in prison)