Law and Order: Special Victims Unit is currently one of NBC’s highest rated shows. When this spin off of Law and Order began in 1999, it quickly jumped to one the most popular television shows of the new decade. Not only is this show a form of popular culture, but it also inspired parodies in other media pop culture. Shows such as Sesame Street’s “Law and Order: Special Letters Unit, The Simpson’s “Law and Order: Special Elevators Unit”, Or even Broadway shows such as “Forbidden Broadway: Special Victims Unit", have been inspired from this top rated show.
Coming from someone who is completely enthralled with Law and Order: SVU, it is hard to understand how others cannot love a show that involves Ice-T, Mariska Hargitay, and murder mysteries. However, when it comes to my boyfriend Elias, his feelings about the show differ greatly from mine.
Elias is a New York University college student who belongs to the Tisch School of the Arts for acting (even though his first love is singing). His average hours of studying and practicing acting are approximately twenty-four hours per week. Elias’ day also consists of separate classes for movement, ballet, improvisation, Shakespeare, scene study, and character. I think it safe to assume that he gets more than enough training when it comes to the area of acting.
Even though Elias is very busy with his acting classes, he does find time to enjoy television. At most, he consumes seven to ten hours of television per week. Most of this television enjoyment is spent watching reality shows such as Big Brother, American Idol, and Top Chef. I was sure that by the end of this interview I would get to the bottom of the reason as to why he is so reluctant to watch Law and Order: SVU, and why he prefers reality television over any drama series.
I began our interview by getting some information on his daily consumption of popular culture. Continuing on, I asked Elias if there has been any history of violence of any sort involving himself, or anyone that is close to him. This was to see if he had formed a bad opinion on Law and Order: SVU because of the paralleling violence in the show and from the past. After he answered no, I decided to see if there was more of a subconscious reason for his dislike of the show. I asked him if he has many dreams of violence or crime of any sort to try to delve into the part of his mind that is not fully aware. Unfortunately, he answered no again. We discussed what he does dream about most of the time; he thought for a moment and came to the conclusion that he dreams most about auditioning or performing acting or singing. Suddenly something clicked. Elias’s acting experience was a major factor in his dislike for this show.
We developed a deeper conversation on his feeling about Law and Order: SVU as I asked him to use a few words to describe the show. He replied by using words like “repetitive”, “phony”, and “ugh”. I began thinking of times that I have tried to watch the show with Elias, and in all of those times I can remember Elias laughing at some point throughout the show. After getting further into this discussion he kept stressing that fact that the show is very repetitive in the story line, and that the acting is “very laughable.” Taking all of this into consideration I developed a theory that Elias’s distaste for the show derives from his strong education in the field of acting. He cannot help but constantly critique aspects of acting in which he considers incorrect, or that he believes he can do better. While he is trying to apply his teaching to his acting in his own life, he sees the actors in Law and Order: SVU using techniques that he is told are wrong.
As for Elias’s dislike of the plot themes of the show, it is once again because of his education. While he is studying Shakespeare (which everyone knows is complex, and for the most part spoken in a completely different language), it is actually difficult for him to watch other people act in, what he thinks of as “one-level story lines.” The plays in which he recreates scenes from are extremely intricate unlike shows such as Law and Order: SVU.
Reality television is an escape from Elias’s everyday life. It is not easy for him to watch a television drama series, such as Law and Order: SVU, and not review the improper aspects of the show. Reality shows give him a break from his already tedious acting life, and allow him a break from correcting the wrongs of “bad” acting. “Law and Order is a vessel for semi bad young actors, or burnt out stars of Hollywood” says Elias; and even though he also stated that he would “of course” be a guest star on any of the Law and Order series, his dislike of the show will never change, because according to him “there is just too much wrong with a show like Law and Order: SVU.”
2 comments:
Whoops. Sorry for skipping out on you for my last comments. Back again to jaw and blah.
I would've asked him to comment more on the structure of the show. I completely agree about the generalized plot of the show but at the same time, if the actors are doing such a banal job then why are so many people still drawn? The characters are dramatized and yet maintain an adequate level of relation to the audience.
In many ways Law & Order, SVU or otherwise, is a hero epic for every episode. The detectives are the stars who cleverly battle special villains who commit dastardly deeds. See, I think it's the simple structure that lowers the brow as well as catches the viewers. It's not the acting that's poor, or even that any part of it is poor being that it succeeds as performance material (gets a huge audience!). It is, however, the same dumb hero chase every single show.
That and sometimes it turns into a huge, morbid morality play with John Q. Everyman and all. Funny thing is, "Reality" TV does exactly the same thing!
Interesting interview and a lot of persistence on your side to get to the bottom of Elias’s true feeling toward the NBC drama of Law and Order: SVU. Law and Order: SVU is one of my favorite shows and tried to see what Elias saw on the show after reading your interview. Yes it is repetitive, but is it not all crimes repetitive too? To Elias’s credit, the plot of the show will never change as it is revolving around heinous crimes, which is part of humanity since our beginning with various twist.
The one thing that changes for me though is that the degree of the shock the crime projects in my feeling changes tremendously. Season after season I have watched so many types of crimes, criminals and investigating techniques with the common denominator of human cruelty toward other human beings. The acting, if you dissect it and watch it through the glass of the acting student or professionals, definitely presents its unrealistic approach to solving the crimes.
If all detectives work like those in the drama, probably we would have a different statistics on crime reporting today. Overall I really loved the way you persistently tried to find the real reason of why he does not watch the show. One last think for Elias’s attraction to reality shows, Law and Order: SVU is really a reality show if watched with the perspective of reality shows in mind.
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