5/18/2023 0 Comments Dragnet nation![]() ![]() ![]() In 1955, a decade before the Watts riot, 75 percent of American households - nearly 37 million strong - owned at least one television. The clipped, “just the facts” demeanor Webb adopted as protagonist Sergeant Joe Friday became a meme before we knew what memes were and the show’s weekly case file format almost single-handedly laid the foundation for the next 60 years of procedurals. Jack Webb, the show’s creator, producer, and lead actor, was profiled in dozens of magazines and newspapers. What began in 1949 as a radio show ultimately blossomed into a sprawling franchise that included a television series (1951–19–1969) a comic a movie pulp novels and toys and cereal box prizes. In the 1950s and 1960s, no television drama so fully saturated American popular culture as Dragnet. But what most of us don’t know is that Dragnet was also calculated propaganda: the Los Angeles Police Department did far more than provide technical assistance, essentially co-producing the show. And, as viewers were reminded each week, all of it was true. It did no less than fashion the idea of modern policing in our cultural imagination. ![]() Everything we think we know about crime and law enforcement - and everything we believe about the police - bears the imprint of the show. When we see a cop on TV, we’re seeing the legacy of Dragnet. ![]()
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