description: The Public Ideology and the Police Procedural explores the complex role which this subgenre plays in mass culture. The police procedural often creates an illusion of social harmony by reshaping the potentially destructive impulses of individualism into successful participation in a corporate structure, the police squad. However, the authors under consideration - Sjowall and Wahloo, McClure, Freeling, van de Wetering - transform the police procedural into a vehicle which seeks to participate in an ongoing ideological debate about the social order itself. Social, political and moral concerns are foregrounded by these authors, whose books should be seen as sophisticated interventions in the ideological crisis of late capitalism. The emergence of the police procedural in contemporary culture challenges the reassuring myths of earlier forms of detective fiction. They also suggest ways of understanding new, popular forms in the development of dominant culture.
language: English
title: The Public Eye: Ideology and the Police Procedural
titlecomplete: The Public Eye: Ideology and the Police Procedural
publisher: Palgrave Macmillan