“What's holding up the lab report?”

Law follows life. Movies and television follow life. Thus, the detective/mystery genre found visual expression and a compelling voice in motion pictures of the 1930s and 1940s.

Though situations, circumstances and resources have changed over the decades as the culture changed, the elements of the genre endure: a crime occurs, the protagonist (policeman or private detective) intervenes to solve the crime; justice is served and right order restored.

Stories Evolve

Prohibition and the effects of economic depression in the early 1930s precipitated unemployment; desperate people moved to cities. Over-taxed law enforcement systems and crime, organized and unorganized, created fear.

In response a genre emerged in which justice prevailed and perpetrators removed from the social scene. These films proved comforting and the characters memorable.

This piece focuses primarily on the evolution of content and characters in television today. What is changed in today's crime stories? Obvious elements are the emphasis on science and dogged investigation.

The intuition of a '30s investigator has given way to lab work, computer searches and office white boards on which markers write information as it occurs. Science aids crime collection at the scene. There is far more emphasis on the law officers' ability to control nature rather than being subject to its caprices.

Family Ties

The detective, rootless in the past, has evolved to one who has family connections that are fragile or broken entirely (Eliot on Law and Order: Special Victims Unit) or one estranged from a family member (as is Jack Malone on Without a Trace).

Though the presence of children endures, their function of admiring the hero detective has changed to physical absence from the screen and life only in the conversation of a guilty, work-obsessed parent.

Lawmen of the '30s movies betrayed no interior life. And women were mere decorations. This was true of early television as well. Consider Joe Friday of Dragnet, for example.

In television today, however, lawmen are psychologically isolated, dealing with interior motivation and biases, and acting out of those biases in apprehending evildoers. Ironically, they remain lonely despite the fact that television detectives, women and men, work in teams or in a group, each member contributing uniquely to the solution.

There are hints occasionally that one or other of the team seeks to touch base with his or her community of origin, an estranged parent and even with a spiritual base. This didn't happen eight decades ago.

Not a few characters today still have connections “in the hood.” despite the upward mobility that set them free. There is often a “Father Mike” or “Reverend Johnson” about to lock up the chapel when he or she stops in for a quiet time.

Broader Range of Criminals

Criminals aren't often violent hoodlums or crime bosses today. Perpetrators emerge from big business, the insurance establishment, doctors' clinics, college campuses and federal agencies instead of from gang-ridden areas.

Sometimes a highly placed officer within the detective unit itself directs a drug ring or destroys evidence for money.

Women, adolescents and clergy are not exempted from those who commit murder, though their motivation is often softened: protection of a child or ailing mother, saving a church from hoodlums or dispatching a violent abuser.

Where the issue of sexuality occurs, current fare is far more explicit today than in the '30s and '40s. A successful private eye then attracted women and, just before the final credits rolled, may have kissed her as passionately as the industry rating offices ruled decent. But the rest was left to the viewer's imagination.

What we watch today on our televisions reflects “just yesterday's” culture. Life continues, and television follows in its wake.

As you read this, the puzzle pieces are coming together, mostly unnoticed, from today's experiences, attitudes and practices. Through that process, the next shape of the detective/crime drama is gestating.

What is important for those of us who are viewers is to reflect on why we do it. How is it that the original Law and Order series has morphed into several spin-offs on network television alone, all of which remain popular even in cable reruns? What are these series telling us about ourselves, our fears, our culture?

About the author: Mary Alma Sullivan, BVM (Robert Emmet) is professor emerita of communications at Loyola University Chicago.

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© 2007 Sisters of Charity, BVM