On an episode of the Joe Rogan Experience writer Malcolm Gladwell shared his theory on the 4 types on TV crime shows, he makes some interesting and valid points:
“This is a random thought but I don't know any men who watch them. And I've come to the belief that they are... they're actually for women. They're a very comforting kind of reassuring fantasy about how the world works. That the system is ... This is an incredibly complicated theory that I developed once about these kind of things. So we all know what a Western is.
“A Western is, conceptually, a world in which there is no law and order. A man shows up and imposes, personally, law and order on the territory, the community, right? So there's also an Eastern. What is an Eastern? An Eastern... Let me get this straight. There's four types. The Eastern is where there is law and order. There are institutions of justice, but they have been subverted by people from within. So an Eastern would be the ... Serpico is an Eastern. It's a crooked cop, it’s the bad apple who has screwed up… there are lots, tons and tons, of Hollywood movies are Easterns.
“The Northern is the case where law and order exists, and law and order is morally righteous. The system works. The show, Law and Order, is a Northern. It's a functioning apparatus of justice which reliably and accurately produces the correct result in confronting criminality every single day when it's on TV.
“The Southern is where the entire... all John Grisham novels are Southern. They are where the entire apparatus is corrupt and where the reformer is not an insider, but an outsider. So in every John Grisham novel, and I love John Grisham, let's be clear. But they all proceed from the same premise which is the system is rotten to the core, and only this white knight who comes in from the outside can save us.
“So in the Western, there is no system. In the Northern, there's a system and it's fantastic. In the Eastern, the system is reformed from within, but in the Southern the system has to be reformed from without. You can place all art about law and order, about criminal the world, criminal justice, into one of these four categories. So the Brits love the Northern, Sherlock Holmes, he’s a Northern. The system is like, there's no corruption in the police department. They may be bumbling and Sherlock's got to help them out, but no one is off on some... there's never a case where there's a rotten cop who's selling out everybody.”
Here’s the entire episode with Joe Rogan and Malcolm Gladwell discussing a wide range of topics.
