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Article Excerpt
Elayne Rapping NYU Press www.nyupress.org 288 pp., $60 cloth, $19 paper
In the 1960s and 1970s, television shows like Perry Mason, Judd for the Defense, and The Defenders featured lawyers as heroes: fighting for the underdog, challenging authority, and championing civil rights. But "this staunch advocate ... has slowly receded from TV screens to be replaced by heroic policemen and D.A.s," while defense attorneys are more often depicted as "sleazy, corrupt, and unscrupulous." And it's not a coincidence--these new shows are "among the most telling markers of our current political times."
>From that starting point, this book is off at a sprint. Elayne Rapping's thesis is that just as politicians and the public are taking a more hard-line approach to criminal justice, their "lock 'em up" attitude--and its attendant disdain for defense lawyers--is reflected in both fiction and nonfiction television shows. She traces changes in the political winds as they affect these shows' themes and characters, charting their progression from an expansive, liberal viewpoint to one that...
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