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Excerpt from Dissident Voices
by Mike Wayne
Counter-Hegemonic Strategies
in
Between the Lines
The
police genre, like most genres, depends
on a high level of recurrent visual imagery
(or iconography), thematic obsessions
and recycled narrative strategies.Õ Despite
this standardisation, the police genre,
like all genres, is not fixed and static
but dynamic and changeable. The possibilities
for ÔbendingÕ the genre have attracted
left cultural workers who have wanted
to both dramatise contemporary social
and political issues and reach large
audiences. Writers, directors and producers
like John McGrath, Troy Kennedy Martin,
G. F. Newman, Tony Garnett and John Wilsher
have all worked within the genre for
this purpose. One of my intentions in
this chapter is to give, as far as space
allows, some voice to the intentions
and perspectives of such cultural workers
in the television industry. Yet such ÔauthorsÕ do
not work in a vacuum.
The
accumulated history of the police genre
pushes the cultural worker in certain
directions, determining how and what
can be said. But at the same time, a
genre is more or less malleable and open
to reinscription. How far the genre can
be inflected in new directions depends
on the wider contexts of production and
consumption as much as on the individual
cultural workers concerned. The context
of consumption, for example, asserts
itself via the conventions of genres
which establish a kind of ÔcontractÕ with
audiences, mapping out the terms on which
cultural workers and audiences meet and
communicate in the semiotic space of
the text. To paraphrase Martin Barker,
a whole range of social relationships
are implicitly sedimented into generic
conventions.2 Thus we can
expect wider sociocultural contradictions
to be inscribed into the terms of the
contract which such conventions establish
with their audiences. I will explore
this in relation to the role of the police
hero/heroine in the narrative structure.
As far as the context of production
is concerned, writers, producers, directors, etc., also
work with and within definite industrial facilities,
constraints and pressures. Central to this context is
the way the text is enmeshed in processes that produce
and define it as a cultural commodity. ÔCulturalÕ because
televisionÕs texts are Ñ in the broadest sense of the
term Ñ symbolic goods, resonating with the meanings,
values, desires and anxieties in wider social circulation. ÔCommodityÕ because
televisionÕs texts are also economic goods, attempting
to accumulate profits, if advertising funded, and/or
(for the BBC) to compete in the ratings wars.
The cultural and economic dimensions of the text are often
pulling in different directions and, as has been argued in
relation to the single play, economic considerations may
transform or even erase the text.3 I will trace
some of the tensions between Between the Lines as
a cultural good and as an economic good, across a few key
textual strategies. Essentially, I have been summarising
Tom RyallÕs recasting of Marxian theory into the model illustrated
in Figure 2.1. This offers a methodology for exploring the
relationships between cultural workers, audiences, genres,
texts and contexts. As can be seen from the diagram, Ryall
completes the methodology by circumscribing cultural production
and consumption within the wider sociopolitical context.
I want to start with a brief sketch of this wider context.
A classic study of the mediaÕs
portrayal of law and order and its relationship to the
wider social context can be found in Policing the
Crisis.5 It was Antonio Gramsci who initially
developed the concept of hegemony into an analytical
tool for Marxism and it is the framing concept for the
authors of Policing the Crisis. Gramsci argued
that capitalist democracies reproduced themselves through
a combination of consent and coercion. In ÔnormalÕ times,
it is the mode of consent which predominates, which is
to say that the political and economic elites are successful
in providing the cultural, intellectual and moral leadership
necessary to secure consent from the subordinate classes
for their socioeconomic agenda. However, it is also the
norm for capitalism to undergo periodic economic crises
(such as the downturn of the business cycle) with all
the attendant social problems that that brings.
Typically, in such a context, the dominant economic and political
elites have to resort more to coercion, as their moral, intellectual,
and cultural roots wither in the parched terrain of economic,
social and political conflict. The authors of Policing
the Crisis argue that this indeed was the case in the
1970s. They chart a modification in the operation of hegemony,
detecting Ôa tilt in the operation of the state away from
consent towards the pole of coercion ... and the powerful
orchestration, in support of this tilt ... of an authoritarian consensusÕ.6 Their
focus is on the print mediaÕs representation of the phenomenon
of muggingÕ. They argue that the image of mugging constructed
served both to articulate a feeling of law and order breakdown,
while also concealing the social forces and contradictions
accumulating within the crime and responses to it, as well
as the wider historical context in which it occurs.
History, it seems, really
does repeat itself as farce. In the 1990s we find Jack
Straw, then LabourÕs shadow Home Secretary, making a
speech in which he attacked ÔwinosÕ, drug addicts, ÔaggressiveÕ begging
and Ôsqueegee merchantsÕ as Ôobstacles faced by pedestrians
and motorists in going about their daily businessÕ.7 The
speech produced a number of responses in articles and
letters that were deeply critical of StrawÕs targets
and emphasis. Some responses, like Suzanne MooreÕs, were
supportive. I want to address some of her arguments as
a way into the question of Ôthe popularÕ, into hegemony
and left interventions.
Suzanne Moore defended Jack
Straw by arguing that he was in touch with the common
experience of the decaying urban environment. The article
is full of appeals to recognise the emotional charge
of this experience, arguing that attempts to explain
and account for the causal factors underpinning it are
inevitably insufficient and implicitly the luxury of
the middle class.
the presence of such people
[the homeless, unemployed, drug addicts] in our midst
may serve as a reminder of the failure of government
policy, of inequalities of the way we live, but I doubt
it. Those who can afford to, avoid face-to face confrontation
if they can. They donÕt use public transport. They donÕt
live in areas in which adolescent crusties huddle with
decrepit winos .... They donÕt take their kids to playgrounds
covered in dog shit and broken bottles, screwed up tin
foil and used condoms. They donÕt see it the same way.
Those of us who do canÕt help but feel uneasy in our
streets. We feel that no one cares, that there is no
one or nothing to stop bad things happening, that itÕs
all out of control.8
This discourse resonates with
the impulses and desires which Adorno recognised to be
susceptible to irrational authoritarianism. Along with
the intellectual retrogression which underpins the rejection
of rational explanation, there is the increasing aggression
evident in the reiterated use of ÔtheyÕ, directed towards
those who can ÔaffordÕ to avoid coming face to face with
this appalling vista of social decay. The emphasis on
feelings and emotions divorced from rational explanation
is linked to the sense that things are out of control,
that ÔbadÕ things are happening, and therefore implicitly
requiring the need for someone to intervene in this hour
of crisis and assert their authority.
Jack Straw, it seems, is MooreÕs Ubermensch. MooreÕs
argument is that we must not be afraid to articulate our
fears and anxieties in relation to crime, for such a denial Ôplays
into the hands of the right more than anything elseÕ.9 Yet
while Gramsci would have agreed that the left must engage
with the Ôelemental passions of the peopleÕ in order to strike
a popular chord,10 he also argued that the leftÕs
intervention cannot reside at the level of emotion and feeling
alone. That way lies the route of the demagogue, something
Gramsci, languishing in MussoliniÕs jails, knew a little
about. Although Moore claims not to know how this law and
order debate Ôdivides up on traditional leftÑright linesÕ11 any
left position worthy of the name must surely begin by tracing
the roots of peopleÕs feelings back to their institutional
causes and the macrostructures and social relationships which
frame them.
This is the basis of any counter-hegemonic
intervention such as Between the Lines attempts.
For the left, the state apparatus constitutes a rather
more substantial locus of oppressive power than Ôsqueegee
merchantsÕ. The task is to touch the people where they
fear, not to frighten them further but to raise political
and social questions rather than promote mythological
solutions. 12 Thus Between the Lines focuses
on the Complaints Investigation Bureau (CIB). According
to Tony Garnett, the producer of the series, this focus
allowed Ôus to pose the fundamental political question,
which is, who shall police the police?Õ 13 Clearly,
the space for such a question to be posed has been prised
open in the context of growing public unease about the
police which mushroomed in the 1980s.
It became clear in the wake of the minersÕ and print workersÕ strikes
that the police were being harnessed to contain the social
fall-out generated by the free market policies of the Thatcher
governments. The debates about the ÔpoliticisationÕ of the
police (a problematic term insofar as it assumes a once neutral
arm of the state apparatus) had barely subsided when, in
the 1990s, a whole string of convictions were found to be ÔunsafeÕ Ñ in
legal discourse Ñ or to be Ôfit-upsÕ, as they are known in
television fiction. The routine competence and honesty of
the police came into question in the wake of a series of
successful appeals by the Birmingham Six, the Guildford Four,
the Tottenham Three, the Taylor sisters, Judith Ward, and
others.
The Context and Process
of Production
Between the Lines ran
for three series of 13 parts each. The first episode
was broadcast on 4 September 1992 and episode 13 of the
first series concluded on 4 December 1992. 14 The
second and third series ran over similar periods in 1993
and 1994. It was produced by Tony GarnettÕs Island World
Productions for BBC1. Across the three series there is
a definite progression. The first series introduces us
to the three main characters; Tony Clark (Neil Pearson),
his Ôbag manÕ Harry Naylor (Tom Georgeson) and Maureen
Connell (Siobhan Redmond), all newly arrived at CIB.
At one level the first series is quite ÔlocalÕ in its
focus on accusations of and actual police malpractice
at various police stations. But the series culminates
by uncovering a web of corruption, hypocrisy and cover-ups,
with CIB Chief Superintendent John Deakin at its head.
The second series continues to move the focus away from
individual police stations and increasingly situates
its narratives within a national and even international
context. This is achieved by looking at the relationships
between Special Branch (an arm of the Metropolitan Police)
and M15, and the struggles between the two agencies for Ôturf,
with CIB trying to hold the ring of accountability. The
final series sees all three principal characters leave
the police force and move into the world of private security,
corporate sabotage, and the drugs and arms dealing industries.
I want to concentrate on the first two series.
At one level, Between the
Lines is very much the product of the dominant
economic logic coursing its way through the television
industry. As Tony Garnett argues:
I think televisionÕs changing
and there will be more and more long running series for
commercial reasons of cost per thousand viewers. With
big sets you can amortise over a number of weeks and
audiences can identify with regular characters. There
will be fewer one-off films which are very expensive
and probably even fewer mini-series except at the more
glossy commercial end.15
But within this logic Between
the Lines tries to articulate cultural values which
run against the grain of the industryÕs economics.
The proof of this is to ask whether the series would
have existed at all on British television in the early
1990s were it not for BBC1. The short answer is surely,
no. The viewing figures for Between the Lines hovered
between 7 and 8 million, which would have been considered
reasonably satisfactory by the BBC. But at that time
BBC2 was not investing in long-running series (this
was several years before the nine-part series Our
Friends in the North). Similarly, so many episodes
of high-budget drama would have been prohibitively
expensive for Channel 4.
That leaves ITV. One of the
paradoxical outcomes of recent government broadcasting
legislation is that it has left ITV at the centre of
a television system powered, more than it has ever been
before, by the narrowly economic logic of market forces.
Yet, at the same time, ITV now ÔenjoysÕ a fractious,
conflictual relationship with its governing body, the
Independent Television Commission (LTC). ITV and the
ITC are the odd couple of television. The ITC is trying
(vainly) to maintain a cultural dimension to television.
It is, to be sure, a very conservative notion of culture
but, nevertheless, it offers some kind of discourse about
television as a cultural good, as well as an economic
good. In its 1995 review of ITVÕs cultural performance,
the ITC concluded that JTV should take more risks, particularly
in the areas of drama, entertainment and comedy. David
Clencross, ITCÕs chief executive said: ÔITV can afford
to take occasional risks with one oils, they do not need
to win every slot, every night.Õ16 Revealingly,
Paul Jackson of Carlton replied: ÔItÕs all very well
for people to say we do not have to win every slot every
day, but the system is that way.Õ 17 It is
inconceivable then that Between the Lines, an
expensive series (costing around £450,000 per hour) would
have found a home with ITV based on projected audience
figures of around 8 million.
So BBC1 was the only place
where Between the Lines could have found a home.
And even here there are commodifying pressures to be
negotiated. The pressures for a text to function as a
commodity are inscribed into the product at inception
(in the case of Between The Lines, for example,
there was a need to have a ÔheroÕ) and are modulated
to a particular level of intensity (how, if at all and
in what ways will the hero be ÔflawedÕ?) which will vary
according to a whole range of variables (e.g. commissioning
organisation, place in the schedules, etc.). The potential
and the tendency is for that pressure to increase over
the lifetime of the commodity with ever-diminishing cultural
returns. One has immediately to qualify the last statement
for two reasons. First, it is not only organisations
and texts which define the cultural uses and values of
symbolic goods. Audiences also play a part, and may be
working to quite different agendas and priorities. Secondly,
and within limits, commodifying pressures at the point
of production can be resisted. As Tony Garnett says:
We consciously pay the price
in the ratings for having a flawed hero and for all the
ambiguities. I could do this show and guarantee to put
at least 3 million, maybe 5 million on the house if we
did certain things, but the stories are complicated and
itÕs not easy viewing.18
Interestingly, not all the
pressures to make a text easy viewing come from the sponsoring
organisation. Commenting on how writers for Between
the Lines often approached the central character
of the series, Garnett complains how many tried to Ôturn
him into a Boy Scout so that heÕs more and more, in an
uncomplicated way, someone you can root forÕ.19 There
is perhaps a generation gap here. If it is true that
many new writers are already attuned to an increasingly
ratings-dominated television system, GarnettÕs experience
in television gives him a reference point back to previous
struggles between television as cultural good and television
as economic good.
This is particularly true
of the first series of Z-Cars which went on air
in the early 1960s. This series has become a celebrated
instance of the possibilities for and difficulties involved
in a left intervention into popular culture. The key
figures here were John McGrath and Troy Kennedy Martin.
As director and writer respectively, they both wanted
to use the police in Z-Cars as a device for representing
the wider social community, for exploring its social
problems and, in McGrathÕs words, for Ôfinding out about
peopleÕs livesÕ.20 According to Stuart Laing,
this interest in the way the wider community is lived,
allowed for Ôa level of latent critical social analysisÕ just
below the surface of the narrative.21 However,
the very success of the series determined its future
development and to a large extent closed the space for
such critical possibilities. As the BBC realised they
had found a popular product, the more the pressure increased
to stabilise that product around a particular set of
imagery and concerns. The only imagery and themes which
appeared each week were the police themselves. Thus,
gradually, the police as known, familiar quantities,
became the main subjects of Z-Cars rather than the vehicle
for exploring the vicissitudes of wider social relationships.
That experience has stayed
with Tony Garnett, but in John Wilsher he found a writer
who could devise some textual strategies which might
keep the series moving in new directions so as to keep
it fresh and attuned to exploring contemporary social
realities. Wilsher set to work constructing a narrative
framework which would have enough shape to appeal to
commissioning editors, while still leaving room for the
writers of individual episodes to have some creative
input. Here he is describing his role:
I provided a fairly extensive
overall outline, laying down the basic format which says
who these characters are and what the context is that
they work in. I then lay out what I describe as a dummy
magazine, that is to say 12 or 13 possible individual
stories which also indicate overall plot and character
developments. I said to the other writers, ÔIf you like
those individual ideas, pursue them. If you can come
up with something that will carry on our overall plot
in a satisfactory way, by all means do that.Õ Some people
followed my suggestions and some people came up with
entirely new notions of their own.22
The idea of the first series,
and it is one which Garnett and Wilsher concede did not
always work, was an ambitious one. It was to operate
on three levels. Watching the entire 13 episodes, the
text would hang together as a single narrative Ôlike
an episodic nineteenth-century novelÕ, according to Garnett.
At another level, there was a strong serial element whereby
storylines would play out across a number of different
episodes (for example, Jenny DeanÕs story). ÔWhat weÕre
at least attempting to do,Õ Garnett suggests, Ôis allow
the characters to grow through the experiences they are
having Ñ the serial element is helpful there.Õ23
At the third level there was
a series structure whereby there would be at least one
narrative that would get resolved each week. It was through
this multilayered, dynamic structure that Between
the Lines tried to keep open creative possibilities
for its producer, writers, directors and actors. The
linchpin is the serial element, linking individual episodes
and the resolution of individual storylines, to the macrostructure
which is much more ambiguous, ambivalent and shifting
than some of the parts which make up the whole. It is
a lesson in thinking strategically about cultural form
that the serial device plays such an important role in
setting up resistances to the pressures of commodification,
when the serial as soap opera is the television systemÕs
main weapon in the ratings war of attrition.24
Narrative and the Concept
of Ôthe HeroÕ
The police have a contradictory
position in social life under capitalism. On the one
hand they are supposed to function for the protection
of the public, implementing the law fairly and impartially;
yet they also function as part of the stateÕs coercive
apparatus. So many people inevitably experience the police
in ways which contradict the protective, public service
function. It may be as a worker on a picket line, as
a black person getting stopped in the street, as a legitimate
demonstrator, or as an anti-road and veal export protester,
or other such flashpoints, but wider layers of society
are coming into contact with the police in ways which
force them to ask ÔWhose law and whose order?Õ Outside
a revolutionary context, such a question will, in all
likelihood, co-exist with the dominant representation
of the police which, after all, is a deeply appealing
and reassuring image. This tension is captured by veteran
writer G. F. Newman when he says,
Individuals are afraid of
all sorts of things and they want to believe that there
is this thin blue line that can protect us from the marauding
hordes. The problem is, the thin blue line very often
is the marauding horde.25
As Geoffrey Hurd has argued,
it is possible to trace the contradictory position of
the police and public perceptions of policing in televisionÕs
police genre.26 We can trace such contradictions,
embedded in the terms of the contract which genres establish
between texts and audiences, around the figure of the
police as hero/heroine.
Take, for example, the classic
19 70s cop show The Sweeney . The central character,
Jack Regan, is an iconic but contradictory type. On the
one hand he seems to represent one of the currents flowing
into that authoritarian consensus which Hall et al. mapped
out in Policing the Crisis. Tempting as it may
be, it would be a mistake to situate The Sweeney as
simply preparing the ground for that ÔtiltÕ towards the
rule of coercion. For The Sweeney does not ÔreflectÕ that
wider social reality but reconstructs it within the genreÕs own rules.
One of those ÔrulesÕ is that the hero be clearly separable
from the institution of law and order which he serves.
Regans appeal lies largely in the fact that, like the
earlier lawman in the western genre, he is an outsider.27 In
the Western genre, the sheriff struggles to establish
the law against the complacency, cowardice, opposition
or plain ineffectualness of the town.
Whereas in the Western the individual is the law,
in the modern urban setting of the police drama the individual
is only one component of a larger organisation. Here it is
the institution of the law itself which is characterised
as complacent and ineffectual because of its massive inertia
under the weight of bureaucracy, its sensitivity to political
pressures and its adherence to Ôthe rulesÕ which the Regans
of the world will break, if necessary, to establish social
order. This deep attachment to the integrity of the individual
complicates the seriesÕ relationship with the shift towards
the more authoritarian state. For indeed, anything which
suggested a more general, systematic and institutionalised coerciveness
would make identification with Reganesque characters, for
most of the audience, deeply problematic. In the contradictory
world of popular culture, the flipside of Regan, the anti-hero,
reveals the sinister image of the state apparatus casting
its menacing shadow over the people, instead of protecting
them.
It is precisely this flipside
which the police genre has to register in the 1980s,
while not entirely relinquishing the sociopsychic appeal
of Ôthe thin blue lineÕ. This tension is again resolved
by the outsider motif, but now reversed. In one-off dramas
such as Black and Blue and mini-series such as Prime
Suspect and its sequels, the central characters are
outsiders not because they Ôbend the rulesÕ and are coercive
where the institution is weak, but rather because they
are black, or are women, encroaching Into the bastions
of white male power. In Lynda La PlanteÕs Prime Suspect, the
male detective initially in charge of the murder case
is a Reganesque character, cutting corners and boisterously
boosting his masculinity by engaging in ÔladdishÕ record-breaking
games (for example, trying to break the record time for
receiving a murder case to charging a suspect). When
DCI Tennison (Helen Mirren) takes over the case after
the male detective has a heart attack, the prime suspect
has to be released precisely because, as Tennison finds,
procedures have not been adhered to and the evidence
has not been accumulated in the proper manner. If the
defining characteristic of the outsider in the 1970s
was the cop who transgresses the rules, in the 1980s
the ethnic and gender identities of the cops are mapped
onto an argument that the outsider is someone who believes
in the effectiveness of the law as an institution and
practises its legal procedures. This allows the drama
to highlight problems with police malpractice, which
is then often linked with the wider discriminations of
race and sex which the institution has internalised.
Of course this still allows the police drama to hold
out the possibility that the institution can be reformed
by the good practice of the lead characters. This route,
taken by Prime Suspect, obviously leads the drama
in an affirmative, consolatory direction.
In formal terms, the police
hero/heroine is defined as the narrativeÕs problem-solving
agency. The more interesting police dramas are those
which call into question the hero/heroineÕs capacity
to resolve the multiplying and overlapping problems of
corruption, sexism and/or racism which the crime and
the pursuit of the criminal throw up. In G. F. NewmanÕs
bruising representation of the police in Black and
Blue, the black police officer at the centre of the
narrative, Maurice Knight (Christopher John Hall), is
torn between the principle of law enforcement and the
black community who suffer the practice of law enforcement
in 1990s Britain. Unlike the Western ÔknightsÕ (for example, Shane), Maurice
Knight is an outsider not by choice but because he cannot
belong to both his ethnic and professional community.
He is stranded between them, caught in the racist wilderness
that separates the black community from a white-dominated
police force. As far as the prospect of reform is concerned,
the ending is decidedly ambiguous. The hero returns to
the community centre on the estates where he has been
working undercover. A youngster tries to steal his recently
awarded QueenÕs Medal for bravery, but when caught, tosses
it back saying, ÔIt ainÕt worth shit,Õ to which the black
cop replies, ÔThatÕs for sure.Õ The tensions between
registering systemic corruption and maintaining
the appeal of Ôthe thin blue lineÕ have in this drama
become so acute that it is not clear whether our narrative
hero is still in the force, and if he is, whether his
presence makes for anything more than a token difference.
It is this tension between making a real difference and
having only a token effect, between reforming pressures
within the force and a deeply entrenched institutional
paralysis and self-serving stagnation, between having
a hero who resolves narrative problems and a hero who
is confronted with overwhelming, pervasive corruption,
which Between the Lines tries to sustain in over
two dozen episodes.
Between the Lines
Like DCI Tennison, Tony Clark
is a massively ambitious and upwardly mobile career cop,
something which the Jack Regans of the world rarely are.
But the gendering of police heroes/heroines, which is
pervasive in the genre, means that this attachment to
procedures threatens to emasculate Clark, installed as
he is in the upper echelons of the police bureaucracy
and tasked with policing the Jack Regans of the force.28 One
of the least successful aspects of the first series was
the wild sexual adventures which Clark enjoyed in his
personal life, as if the series was trying to ÔproveÕ his
masculinity in the light of his professional location.
It could be argued that the sexual betrayals in which
Clark engages (he is initially married) raise the possibility
of whether he would betray his professional life. This
appears to be where the series is heading as it is gradually
revealed that his lover, another police officer, Jenny
Dean, is also implicated in corruption. However, the
question of whether his personal life would overwhelm
his professional conduct is closed off by the suicide
of Jenny Dean. This leaves Clark successfully to pursue
his corrupt boss at CIB, John Deakin. In other words,
although Tony Garnett complained that some writers tried
to Ôwhiten ClarkÕ, Clark is already fairly ÔpureÕ in
that his professional integrity remains untarnished,
no matter how dubious his personal conduct might have
been.
In the first series, it is
not the personal moral shortcomings of Clark which make
him an interestingly flawed hero. Rather, it is in the
hints and glimpses we are given as to the limits in which
he operates, limits which check his ability to function
in the conventional heroic mode and resolve problems.
For the problems identified are often not amenable to
individualistic solutions, or are held by his bosses
to be outside his brief. Thus the real flaws, it is implied,
are structural and institutional. This is further developed
in the second series which consolidates and extends the
strengths of the first series while avoiding some of
its weaknesses. It becomes increasingly clear that CIB
is not a crusading department, but rather a pragmatic
one, whose investigations into corruption become weighed
down by trade-oils and deals between various parts of
the political, judicial and security apparatus.
Title Sequence
It is worth considering the
title sequence of Between the Lines for it tells
us, as title sequences often do, an awful lot about the
kind of programme we are about to watch. The sequence
consists of a mix of images beginning with a shot of
the River Thames at Battersea Power Station and finishing
with the Houses of Parliament. Given that this series
is about the circumvention of democratic power and accountability,
beginning the sequence with an image of the abandoned
power station and finishing with the Houses of Parliament
is a provocative way of raising questions about the status
and role of the House in relation to the state and wider
society. In addition to weaving this metaphor about power
out of the physical landscape of London, we see clips
of the central characters Ôin actionÕ and various images
of urban conflict (mounted police, riots, etc.). The
images of the police we see are not about resolving individual
crimes (as, for example, in the way the opening sequence
of The Sweeney dramatises); rather they are images
which foreground social and political relationships which
are in crisis. There is also the intriguing image of
Tony Clark himself watching these images which suggests
that he himself is troubled by them and that his relationship
to these social conflicts and the police is problematic
and uneasy. These images are placed within a ÔwidescreenÕ ratio,
with the titles ÔBetween the LinesÕ sliding repeatedly
above and below the image, right to left. Thus the sequence
offers the images (and the programme which follows) as
a reading Ôbetween the linesÕ of the official reports,
documents and public announcements which constitute the
stateÕs relationship with the public. The reiterated
theme in episode after episode is that the full story
never gets told.
The prominence and importance
of London in the title sequence is typical. The city
is a crucial component of the symbolic geography of the
police genre. It almost always figures in title sequences,
including American police dramas such NYPD Blue, Homicide and Hill
Street Blues. This is because, as we have seen, the
streets of the city, with its various and diverse Ôrecesses
and labyrinthsÕ,29 provide the crucial testing
ground for the heroÕs masculinity. The authors of Policing
the Crisis also regarded the image of the city Ñ or
rather a specific location within the city, the ghetto/slum Ñ as
playing an important role in the print mediaÕs representation
of ÔmuggingÕ. They suggest that the image of the city
that was mobilised with its Ôapparent richness of description
and evocation stood in place of analytic connectionsÕ.30 The
authors argue that posing some answers to the relationship
between crime and the environment would require Ôcalling
into question some fundamental characteristics of societyÕ.31 The
image of the city offered by the print media blocked
off systematic analysis in favour of presenting the city
as a vast amorphous place of fear and fate, secreting
crime as naturally as it presents the diversity of humanity.
The title sequence of NYPD Blue is a particularly
striking example of this representation of the city.
Something very similar is, arguably, operating in most
television crime drama. By contrast, Between the Lines (as
the title sequence implies) does try to make analytic
connections and reveal something of the political topography
and power relations of London.
ÔNew OrderÕ
The first episode of the second
series was ÔNew OrderÕ written by J.C. Wilsher. The hints
at fascism in the title are immediately confirmed in
the first image as a skinhead climbs to the top of a
mosque and fastens a pigÕs head onto one of the minarets.
In the streets below, a Moslem self-defence group clash
with a group of fascists. The police arrive. In the ensuing
melee the fascist who planted the pigÕs head, and who
has now joined the fighting, is arrested by a police
officer. But then there is mutual recognition between
them. ÔFor ChristÕs sake, Steve,Õ implores the fascist.
Shocked, the arresting officer releases him, but is seen
by one of the Moslems. Immediately then the narrative
has set up a question in the mind of the audience concerning
the relationship between the police and fascist organisations.
This theme will run throughout the episode but only as
part of a more complex, more contradictory and bigger
picture.
There is however an important
sub-plot to this episode which is part of the serial
element of the series. This concerns the Ônew orderÕ within
CIB itself. Having arrested his own boss at the end of
the first series, Tony Clark is now Acting Chief Superintendent
of CIB and is hoping that the position will be made permanent.
His old boss, Deakin, is still on trial and a new officer,
Graves, has joined the CIB team. Graves is a Ôuniversity
manÕ or ÔflyerÕ as Clark calls him, and as such is also
seeking rapid promotion within the force. Traditionally
in the genre a figure from such a background is suspect,
particularly in terms of their masculinity. But in Between the
Lines ClarkÕs animus towards Graves is just one of
many references to the class tensions that exist within
the police. Clark does however appear to be on an upwardly
mobile trajectory himself, answering the phone as ÔActing
Chief SuperintendentÕ with evident relish and assigning
Graves and Harry the job of looking into the ÔMosque
troubleÕ. In the first half of this first episode, then,
Clark is increasingly associating himself with Ôthe officeÕ,
while his subordinates work on the streets. This desk-bound
trajectory would appear to undermine his qualifications
to be a ÔheroÕ in the genre.
Gradually Harry, Maureen and
Graves find out that the fascist released by the police
officer is called Joe Rance, that he is himself in the
force and later they discover he is working undercover
for Special Branch. Clark comes into conflict with Special
Branch, believing that Rance may have Ôgone nativeÕ,
something which various shots of Rance (in bed with his
Union Jack bedspread, engaging in military-style fitness
programmes, etc.) appear to imply. But this is not simply
a question of an individual loose cannon since the episode
maps out the wider political relationships in which Rance
moves. Rance has become a driver for Derek Lee-Metford,
the national organiser for a fascist grouping called
New Order. The role of driver for Rance allows the text
to map a set of political relationships. For example,
we see Rance collecting a suitcase of money for his boss
and we later learn that this is a donation from an Arab
embassy towards anti Zionist and anti-Semitic propaganda.
When Rance expresses surprise at the source of money,
Metford argues that, Ôa political movement has to make
strategic and tactical alliances, even with its enemiesÕ.
Contacts, networks, alliances; this is the substance
of what Between the Lines likes to explore.
The scene then cuts to the
lawns in front of the Houses of Parliament where a Conservative
MP, Douglas Carter, is being interviewed by a television
crew about the case of a Mr Ingram, an American fascist
historian whom the Home Office has granted a visa to
enter the country to promote his new book. Carter evidently
has a reputation as a right-winger because his interview
is cut short by anti-fascist demonstrators. In the next
shot we see Carter being interviewed in a television
studio about IngramÕs book A 20th-Century
Myth in which (like the real life ÔhistorianÕ Robert
Faurisson) Ingram argues that the Holocaust was an invention
of GermanyÕs wartime enemies.32 The scene
then cuts to a bar where Harry and Clark are playing
pool; the television interview with Carter is playing
in the background.
They are discussing ClarkÕs prospects for promotion. This
sequence of shots is significant. Most police dramas (such
as The Bill and NYPD Blue) never have a scene
without the presence or imminent presence of the police.
The narrationÕs perspective is thus anchored in their experiences,
which makes for exciting drama certainly but is structurally
unable to explore the contexts in which policing takes place.
By contrast, Between the Lines does not feel compelled
to locate the police in every single shot of the programme.
This allows the text to sketch the wider sociopolitical forces
whose alliances and conflicts the police are caught up in
but cannot, in any simple way, control. Thus we have moved
from an opening image which is very local, that of the London
mosque and the struggle to defend it against the fascists,
up to the national (Douglas Carter) and international (Patrick
Ingram) context.
Metford, of course, also wants
his fascist movement to move from the local to the global
and so he visits Carter to give him a signed copy of
IngramÕs book. lie persuades Carter that it would be
beneficial to everyone if he and Ingram were to meet.
Carter agrees, but only if the meeting is secret. On
the doorstep of CarterÕs plush country home, the combination
of this most ÔEnglishÕ of mise-en scenes with
MetfordÕs discourse creates an unsettling picture of
alliances being forged. Metford declares of Ingram:
HeÕs changing the climate.
After all, we represent three different paths to the
same broad goal. I can speak for the lads at the sharp
end, on the streets. IngramÕs engaged in the battle for
ideas and you are part of the political establishment,
although not compromised by it. ... Who knows what might
be allowed to speak its name next?
Metford has obviously read
Gramsci! Political leaders, the intelligentsia and Ôthe
massesÕ were, Gramsci argued, three key social forces
involved in the struggle for hegemony (whether it be
a fascist, parliamentary or socialist hegemony). Between
the Lines situates the police as occupying a contradictory
position in relation to these wider social forces and
this is evident in the final scenes of the episode.
The climax builds. In the
light of Deakin being found not guilty in court, Maureen
warns Clark that perhaps, with his promotion prospects
under consideration, Clark should not challenge Special
BranchÕs undercover operation. Clark however argues the
case that Rance is still subject to the law and so continues
surveillance of RanceÕs movements. With Special Branch
pulling one way, C~ (under Clark) another, the local
police are facilitating IngramÕs arrival at a New Order
meeting by smuggling him through the anti-fascist demonstrators
in a police uniform. ÔYour British police are wonderful,Õ Ingram
declares to Metford once inside the hail. During the
subsequent meeting the anti-fascists break into the hall.
Fights between the police, New Order and anti-fascists
break out. On MetfordÕs instructions, Rance leads Ingram
out of the back of the hall, intending to drive him to
his secret meeting with Carter. But once outside, Rance
assaults photographers and anti-fascist demonstrators
as he bundles Ingram into a van. Clark, Harry and Graves
arrive and arrest him. However, the indications that
Rance has become too immersed in the fascist culture
seem to be contradicted when they discover recording
equipment taped to his body.
The conclusion of this narrative
problem does not however operate as a vindication of
Special Branch, their Reganesque man, Rance, or even
CIB. Back at the office (traditionally the police narrativeÕs
moment of closure) a number of questions and outcomes
remain unanswered and problematic. Maureen, wondering
what Special Branch would have done with the recording
that Rance was going to obtain, is told by Harry (who
is ex-Special Branch) that they would have kept it for
their own purposes of leverage over a political figure,
rather than Ôgoing publicÕ with it. It then becomes clear
that the professional relationship between Clark and
Graves has altered. We find Clark protesting that Rance
is not going to be charged with assault. Graves appears
to be handing information down from superiors. ÔNot in
the public interest,Õ he declares; Rance has left the
force, he informs Clark/the audience, and Special Branch
now believe he was working for MI5 all along. The final
image confirms why Graves has suddenly become the authoritative
source of such information. As Clark, Maureen and Harry
file into the room for him to Ôspell out the lessonsÕ of
the Rance case, Graves shuts the door of the Chief SuperintendentÕs
room. It has his name on it.
Conclusion
The problem for Clark is that
he never learns his lesson. He does not see a conflict
between his career ambitions and what CIB is supposed
to stand for. He is, rather like Maurice Knight in Black
and Blue, something of a naive character. This naively
is a crucial component of the textÕs generic contract
with its audiences. It represents the audienceÕs sociopsychic
investment in the possibility of reform even as episode
after episode reveals CIBÕs complicity in undermining
democratic sanctions, its emphasis on institutional survival
over and above accountability, and its public relations
function. The lesson for the audience, is simply this.
The police operate (albeit contradictorily) within the
institutional and cultural hegemony of the status
quo. Irrespective of the good intentions of individuals,
they are part of the problem, not part of the solution.
By revealing this on prime-time television, Between
the Lines can be said to be a counterhegemonic text.
Notes
1 For a discussion of iconography,
see Ed Buscombe, ÔThe Idea of Genre in the American cinemaÕ,
in Film Genre Reader (University of Texas Press,
1986).
2 Martin Barker, Comics, Ideology, Power and the Critics (Manchester
University Press, 1989), P. 275.
3 Carl Gardner and John Wyver, ÔThe Single Play: From
Reithian Reverence to Cost-Accounting and CensorshipÕ, in Screen, vol.
24, nos 4Ñ5, 1983.
4 Tom Ryall, TeachersÕ Study Guide 2: The Gangster Film
(BFI, 1979).
5 Stuart Hall, Chas Critcher, Tony Jefferson, John Clarke,
Brian Roberts, Policing the Crisis: Mugging, the State
and Law and Order (Macmillan, 1978).
6 Hall et al, Policing, p.217.
7 Guardian, 5 September 1995, p. 1.
8 Suzanne Moore, ÔOn The Real Mean StreetsÕ, Guardian, 2,
7 September 1995, p. 5.
9 Moore,ibid.
10 Gramsci, quoted inJamesJoll, Gramsci (Fontana,
1977), p. 101.
11 Moore, ÔMean Streets, p. 5.
12 Richard Sparks discusses how in the police genre Ôthe
invocation of fear is deeply integrated in both the discursive
structures and saleability of cultural goodsÕ, thus heightening
the consolatory powers of the texts when we see effective
police action. See Television and the drama of crime:
moral tales and the place of crime in public life (Open
University Press, 1992), p. 1 59.
13 Tony Garnett, interviewed by Peter Keighron and Mike
Wayne, 6 April 1993.
14 The first series is now available on video.
15 Garnett, interview, 6 April 1993.
16 Guardian,12 April 1995, p.6.
17 Ibid.
18 Garnett, interview, 6 April 1993.
19 Ibid.
20 Quoted in Stuart Laing, ÔBanging in some reality: the
original Z-CarsÕ, in John Corner (ed.) Popular
Television in Britain (BFI, 1991), p. 127.
21 Ibid,p.134.
22 John Wilsher, interviewed by Peter Keighron, 15 April1993.
23 Garnett, interview, 6 April 1993.
24 Mike Wayne, ÔTelevision, Audiences, PoliticsÕ in Stuart
Hood (ed.) Behind the Screens: The Structure of British
Television in the Nineties (Lawrence and Wishart, 1994),
pp. 58Ñ62. 25 G. F. Newman, interviewed by Peter Keighron,
16 April 1993.
26 Geoffrey Hurd, ÔThe Television Presentation of the
PoliceÕ in Tony Bennett. Susan Boyd-
Bowman, Colin Mercer and Janet Woollacott (ads) Popular Television
and Film (BFI, 1981),
pp. 64Ñ5.
27 Alan Clarke, This is not the boy scoutsÕ: Television police series
and definitions of
law and orderÕ in Tony Bennett, Colin Mercer and Janet Woolacott (eds) Popular
Culture and Social Relations (Open University Press, 1986), pp. 219Ñ21.
28 Hurd, ÔThe Television Presentation of the PoliceÕ, p. 67.
29 Sparks, Television and the Drama of Crime, p. 126.
30 Halletal.,Policing the Crisis, p.118.
31 Ibid.
32 For FaurissonÕs theories see Christopher Norris, Uncritical Theory:
Postmodernism,
Intellectuals and the Gulf War (Lawrence and Wishart, 1992), pp.
71Ñ4.
ISBN 0-7453-1324-8 (Published
by Pluto Press)
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