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Starsky and Hutch: Nightmare
I meant to do a big post on Starsky and Hutch as a whole, but I was rather disturbed by one episode of it I watched last night, so I'm going to write about that instead.
"Nightmare" is about a retarded girl who is raped. Starsky and Hutch track down the bad guys fairly quickly, so most of the episode is about her trauma, and the fact that the DA doesn't want to prosecute because she's not a good witness and "she knew what she was doing."
A couple of things were startling about this episode. Unlike Law and Order, in which almost every episode is about fighting the system to get justice, in Starsky and Hutch, the conflict is always about getting the bad guy. I mean, this is a seventies cop show, right? Which equates to civil liberties, what? I've only seen one episode where they even mention a warrant, and in that case it was held up as a ludicrous technicality that our heroes should not be expected to get.
There are two episodes I've seen where one of the guys accidentally shoots a civilian. In contemporary cop shows, this would always lead to a witch hunt for our cop—like the season seven arc of CSI where Greg kills a teenager. In Starsky and Hutch, both times, the whole "was this shooting justified"/"should cops be allowed to do this" issue is brushed aside quickly. In "Pariah," Starsky shoots a teenage suspect in an armed robbery. (I should note that they shoot somebody in almost every episode, and usually kill them, and this is not dwelt on at all.) Though at the shooting there's a mob yelling, "he was trying to surrender! That cop just shot him and he was trying to surrender!" at the hearing in the next scene, even the witnesses say the shooting was justified and Starsky is immediately exonerated. The rest of the episode is about some whacko killing cops because Starsky was let off.
In "The Specialist," Starsky and Hutch engage in a running gunfight through a crowded area. A stray bullet instantly kills a civilian woman, who was shopping with her husband. You would think the episode would then be about the repurcusions of that shooting, perhaps indicting them for unsafe practices, perhaps with a media circus, but at the very least telling you whose bullet it was. (Again, I am thinking of a CSI episode where this is what happens.) But no. The husband of the dead woman turns out to be a former black ops guy who then goes after Starsky and Hutch and the episode is about that. It's about pitting them against a trained professional killer and watching them win. The whole oops! we shot this man's wife thing is pretty much ignored. I cannot tell you how bizarre that is to me.
So, back to "Nightmare." The episode is about the nightmare that is surviving rape and trying to find justice. I don't know the state of rape laws at the time, but this seems fairly forward thinking, really pointing to the flaws in the system. Even though a witness saw the rapist leaving, he didn't witness the rape so his testimony is discounted. Even though the victim can clearly point to her rapist, she's so traumatized she crumbles on the stand and the DA drops the charges.
What's interesting to me is their choice to make the victim a retarded girl (their term). There seem to be only two reasons for this: one – even more pathos, and two – they don't have to even address the issue of "she wanted it" because, since she's mentally disabled, she clearly didn't. I would have been interested to see them tackle this type of story without the trump card of "she's retarded!" But maybe they used that because they weren't sure they could be convincing, even to the audience, that the woman was really a victim if she was in full posession of her faculties. Rape is a complicated issue, which is why we have entire crime shows dedicated to it now. So I have to admire them for doing such a serious story in 1976.
The other disturbing thing about "Nightmare" is that they do everything but show you the actual assault. They show you the entire scene of them luring the retarded girl into an abandoned bus. They even show you the bus rocking while you hear her screaming. Now, you know exactly what's going to happen from the second line of the scene. They could've just done that and cut to Starsky hearing about it, but instead I think they're really trying to shock the audience with how horrible rape is.
In any case, I don't have the appropriate cultural context for this episode, but I was pretty shocked to find myself watching serious social commentary on what is normally an emo cops and robbers show.
"Nightmare" is about a retarded girl who is raped. Starsky and Hutch track down the bad guys fairly quickly, so most of the episode is about her trauma, and the fact that the DA doesn't want to prosecute because she's not a good witness and "she knew what she was doing."
A couple of things were startling about this episode. Unlike Law and Order, in which almost every episode is about fighting the system to get justice, in Starsky and Hutch, the conflict is always about getting the bad guy. I mean, this is a seventies cop show, right? Which equates to civil liberties, what? I've only seen one episode where they even mention a warrant, and in that case it was held up as a ludicrous technicality that our heroes should not be expected to get.
There are two episodes I've seen where one of the guys accidentally shoots a civilian. In contemporary cop shows, this would always lead to a witch hunt for our cop—like the season seven arc of CSI where Greg kills a teenager. In Starsky and Hutch, both times, the whole "was this shooting justified"/"should cops be allowed to do this" issue is brushed aside quickly. In "Pariah," Starsky shoots a teenage suspect in an armed robbery. (I should note that they shoot somebody in almost every episode, and usually kill them, and this is not dwelt on at all.) Though at the shooting there's a mob yelling, "he was trying to surrender! That cop just shot him and he was trying to surrender!" at the hearing in the next scene, even the witnesses say the shooting was justified and Starsky is immediately exonerated. The rest of the episode is about some whacko killing cops because Starsky was let off.
In "The Specialist," Starsky and Hutch engage in a running gunfight through a crowded area. A stray bullet instantly kills a civilian woman, who was shopping with her husband. You would think the episode would then be about the repurcusions of that shooting, perhaps indicting them for unsafe practices, perhaps with a media circus, but at the very least telling you whose bullet it was. (Again, I am thinking of a CSI episode where this is what happens.) But no. The husband of the dead woman turns out to be a former black ops guy who then goes after Starsky and Hutch and the episode is about that. It's about pitting them against a trained professional killer and watching them win. The whole oops! we shot this man's wife thing is pretty much ignored. I cannot tell you how bizarre that is to me.
So, back to "Nightmare." The episode is about the nightmare that is surviving rape and trying to find justice. I don't know the state of rape laws at the time, but this seems fairly forward thinking, really pointing to the flaws in the system. Even though a witness saw the rapist leaving, he didn't witness the rape so his testimony is discounted. Even though the victim can clearly point to her rapist, she's so traumatized she crumbles on the stand and the DA drops the charges.
What's interesting to me is their choice to make the victim a retarded girl (their term). There seem to be only two reasons for this: one – even more pathos, and two – they don't have to even address the issue of "she wanted it" because, since she's mentally disabled, she clearly didn't. I would have been interested to see them tackle this type of story without the trump card of "she's retarded!" But maybe they used that because they weren't sure they could be convincing, even to the audience, that the woman was really a victim if she was in full posession of her faculties. Rape is a complicated issue, which is why we have entire crime shows dedicated to it now. So I have to admire them for doing such a serious story in 1976.
The other disturbing thing about "Nightmare" is that they do everything but show you the actual assault. They show you the entire scene of them luring the retarded girl into an abandoned bus. They even show you the bus rocking while you hear her screaming. Now, you know exactly what's going to happen from the second line of the scene. They could've just done that and cut to Starsky hearing about it, but instead I think they're really trying to shock the audience with how horrible rape is.
In any case, I don't have the appropriate cultural context for this episode, but I was pretty shocked to find myself watching serious social commentary on what is normally an emo cops and robbers show.