Copaganda — Hammer & Tongs Podcast

It's been awhile, but here's a new audio piece which I think you will enjoy, about the way police and law enforcement are represented in U.S. television and movies over the years. In it we ask the question: How did we go from films like those of Charlie Chaplin, wherein he is chased by the cops for stealing and then evades them, and the audience then cheers for him escaping the police, to the current day which is chock-full of shows about police who can do no wrong and where the villains are always to be loathed? How did this change happen? And what did Adam 12 and The Mod Squad have to do with it? And how did Orson Welles condemn Dirty Harry and Starsky and Hutch in 1958? And why is the state always sending anti-colonial soldiers to train U.S. police departments? And why did Hill Street Blues change its famous opening statement?

We answer these and other questions in this episode of Hammer & Tongs! My guest is the returning Alex Vitale, author of several books about policing in the U.S., most recently The End Of Policing on Verso Books. He and I met in San Francisco earlier this summer and spent an afternoon talking about cops and movies and we decided to do this show and so here it is. Please share widely!