Interrogating The Shield

246 Pages·2012·2.231 MB·English

by  Nicholas Ray

The Shield
Interrogating
Television and Popular Culture
Robert J. Thompson, Series Editor
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Interrogating
The Shield
Nicholas Ray
Edited by
Syracuse University Press
Copyright © 2012 by Syracuse University Press
Syracuse, New York 13244-5290
All Rights Reserved
First Edition 2012
12 13 14 15 16 17 6 5 4 3 2 1
∞The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of the American
National Standard for Information Sciences—Permanence of Paper for Printed Library
Materials, ANSI Z39.48-1992.
For a listing of books published and distributed by Syracuse University Press, visit our
website at SyracuseUniversityPress.syr.edu.
ISBN: 978-0-8156-3308-2
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Interrogating The shield / edited by Nicholas Ray. — 1st ed.
p. cm. — (Television and popular culture)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-0-8156-3308-2 (cloth : alk. paper) 1. Shield (Television program) I. Ray,
Nicholas, 1975–
PN1992.77.S476I58 2012
791.45'72—dc23 2012028689
Manufactured in the United States of America
Contents
Acknowledgments vii
Contributors ix
Introduction: Trees Falling 1
1. The Derivation of a Television Crime Drama,
Concepción Cascajosa Virino 11
2. The Meaning of Messiness:The Shield and the Production
of Television Style, Gary Needham 30
3. Sound Policing: Attending to Acoustic Matters in The Shield,
Nicholas Chare 43
4. Fitting the Profi le: Dutch Wagenbach, Realism, and the Ensemble,
Lorna Jowett 65
5. Quality, Controversy, and Criminality:The Shield as Post-Sopranos
Cop Show, Glyn White 87
6. Scenes from the Interrogation Room: Power, Character, Truth, and Justice
in The Shield, Douglas L. Howard 105
7. “You Want Me to Lick Your Balls, Daddy?”:Masculinity, Race, and Power
in The Shield, Mike Chopra-Gant 124
8. Glass Ceilings: Gender, Sexism, and The Shield, Jason P. Vest 145
9. “A Different Kind of Cop”: Exception and Complicity in The Shield,
Nicholas Ray 166
10. Cracking Ice:The Shield and the Middle-Class Crisis of Social Reproduction,
Stephen Shapiro 186
References 209
Index 219

Acknowledgments
Thanks are owed fi rst and foremost to Jennika Baines at Syracuse Uni-
versity Press for the effi ciency and support with which she oversaw the
volume’s completion. I am also greatly indebted to Annie Barva for her
painstaking reading of the manuscript. Kim Akass and Janet McCabe dis-
pensed sound advice and welcome encouragement at the inception of the
project. For inspiring discussions on television studies in general and on
The Shield in particular, I am deeply grateful to Herbert Garvie, Paul Tay-
lor, Toby Scammell, and—most of all—Lucy Frank.
An earlier version of Mike Chopra-Gant’s chapter was published as “The
Law of the Father, the Law of the Land: Power, Gender, and Race in The
Shield,” Journal of American Studies 41, no. 3 (Oct. 2007): 659–73.
vii