TV Series (May 2012)

Entre ombres et lumières : les figures de policiers en eaux troubles, symboles d’une Amérique en perte de repères (The Wire, The Shield, Dexter)

  • Julien Achemchame

DOI
https://doi.org/10.4000/tvseries.1521
Journal volume & issue
Vol. 1

Abstract

Read online

Since the appearance of television series in the 1950s, notably in the United States, the police officer remains a central character in fictions: the privileged witness of transformations in society. We will study the representations of the police officer in several contemporary American TV fictions, by first bringing to light the emergence of a new, complex and troubled figure of the police officer, which appeared in the 1990s with officer Andy Sipowicz in NYPD Blue, and far from the pioneer American police dramas such as The Incorruptables and Dragnet, which put forward models of morality. Next, we will study, through this new figure, the doubtful view that the country takes of its own, increasingly violent society. Through the examples of several major contemporary series, The Shield, The Wire, and Dexter, from three distinct cable networks (FX, HBO, and Showtime), we will analyze several new figures of the police officer: the troubled incarnation of law and order.

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