Imagine a realistic cop show that starts with the protagonist brutalizing a homeless person, showing up to a hit and run and telling the victim there’s nothing they can do, and then pulling into a McDonald’s parking lot and scrolling through TikTok for the rest of their shift
There are cop shows that do this sort of thing, the issue is that people are conditioned to see the cops actions as justified - cop pulls up on a homeless man, gun drawn? Completely reasonable - the homeless are dangerous criminals, unpredictable! He sees him twitch a little bit and fires three into the chest? He could have been reaching for a weapon!
The lesson people will take away from this is that good people sometimes make regrettable mistakes, that policing is dangerous and cops are professionals who actually need more funding, not less!
This is how it’s always going to be with a show where the main POV is a cop unless the message is so heavy-handed it makes the show unwatchable.
that’s what makes the difference between effective copaganda and ineffective
people watch a show where the cops are angelic and it rubs against what they see in reality, even if they are a 100% pig bootlicker
but if people watch a show where the cops do the same fucked up shit that you see on the street or in the news but it’s all justified, that is effective, no dissonance, easy to swallow
Imagine a realistic cop show that starts with the protagonist brutalizing a homeless person, showing up to a hit and run and telling the victim there’s nothing they can do, and then pulling into a McDonald’s parking lot and scrolling through TikTok for the rest of their shift
There are cop shows that do this sort of thing, the issue is that people are conditioned to see the cops actions as justified - cop pulls up on a homeless man, gun drawn? Completely reasonable - the homeless are dangerous criminals, unpredictable! He sees him twitch a little bit and fires three into the chest? He could have been reaching for a weapon!
The lesson people will take away from this is that good people sometimes make regrettable mistakes, that policing is dangerous and cops are professionals who actually need more funding, not less!
This is how it’s always going to be with a show where the main POV is a cop unless the message is so heavy-handed it makes the show unwatchable.
^this
that’s what makes the difference between effective copaganda and ineffective
people watch a show where the cops are angelic and it rubs against what they see in reality, even if they are a 100% pig bootlicker
but if people watch a show where the cops do the same fucked up shit that you see on the street or in the news but it’s all justified, that is effective, no dissonance, easy to swallow
Then posting a video in hysteria that their mcmuffin was poisoned with fentanyl (they have IBS)