After playing Perry Mason for nine years, Raymond Burr starred in Ironside as a police chief deprived of the use of his legs by a would-be assassin's bullet. Ironside itself ran for eight years, serving as a guide to the transition from mod 60s aesthetics to wide tie/greasy sideburns 70s aesthetics.
In the episode "Down Two Roads", Ironside's assistant Mark graduates from law school. Making his rounds of places to start his law career, he observes at the DA's office. They happen to be prosecuting the janitor at the school Mark just graduated from for burglary. Mark doesn't think the janitor is guilty and he manages to prove it, at the cost of learning that the real guilty party was a friend from his graduating class.
What's notable from the perspective of the present is that both Mark and his friend who turns out to be the thief are both black, while the accused janitor is white. That should be mundane. Law and justice are rooted in truth, and guilt or innocence are independent of race. But in the post-George Floyd moment that hasn't entirely passed, race and other identity markers are always top concerns. Colorblindness is itself deemed regressive.
That's not a good change, and I hope it also passes. The idea that some races are inherently more virtuous than others is never helpful, and will always reappear in ways you didn't expect or want.
Somewhat related: the idea I've seen promoted on some recent TV shows that black people need to constantly record everything on their phones. Come on, kids, Big Brother is your friend!
2 comments:
When Ironsides was being aired in the 70s it was during the time we watched no television. Although I knew Raymond Burr played the character I have next to no memories of the series itself. The premise does sound interesting enough that it would be fun to watch sometime.
Your description of the DA browbeating the janitor into confessing to a crime he didn't commit is reminiscent of most Perry Mason court cases where Hamilton Burger regularly ends up wearing twisted knickers as Perry knocks his case out of the park.. butbutbut.. It's a good thing Perry isn't his only legal adversary because otherwise the poor man would have no job. So Mark ends up doing his own investigation determining it's his buddy from law school who committed the crime. Now I'm wondering if Mark actually went into legal practice - if only Perry Mason was still in business there'd be no question of him taking on a junior partner.
You're right that law and justice are rooted in truth, and guilt or innocence are independent of race. I think the broader issue is related to class. A number of black people belong to the middle class but we need to consider the middle class itself is shrinking in this post industrial era. The more uncomfortable problem is that of crime in black neighborhoods where there are cultural issues related to poverty and criminal violence - the exact circumstance that gave us George Floyd hasn't been repaired.
I thought everybody was recording everything on their phones.. particularly the influencers who might fall to their deaths but got that great last image of themselves for their fans.
It's on Amazon Prime and since it stars Raymond Burr from about a year after he wrapped Perry Mason onward I was curious. It's a pretty good cop drama. You could say that it's comparable to Dragnet but with a little more characterization. Jack Webb seemed not to realize how quirky Joe Friday was, but Burr and the writers knew how eccentric Bob Ironside was. He's a lot grumpier on this show than he had been as Perry Mason.
Hamilton Burger, like Lieutenant Tragg, is used to open-and-shut cases where everyone is what they appear to be. Most of the time his keeping the pressure on he can get a conviction or a plea. Of course Perry being his adversary there are a lot of exceptions to that rule. Due to the nature of the medium he never adjusts, always thinking this time will be different. As for Mark, in the later seasons he becomes a cop with a law degree. You could do that when tuition was relatively cheap, I guess. But maybe sometime after that...
Very definitely there are problems that everyone is avoiding thinking about. It's tragic when anyone is killed when they should still have years left in their life. When a person is shot by police, sometimes the department is at fault. But that also makes an easy scapegoat for cases where the person had no one looking out for them in life. Reducing it to a matter of racism makes for easy answers, but that doesn't make them the right answer.
Oh yes, there's no shortage of people taping everything that goes on with their phones, including really bad concert footage. But it wasn't always thus. There had to be a big sales push.
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