Hill Street Blues was a popular TV show during my teen years. I never really watched it - at least not regularly - I didn’t follow TV dramas when I was a kid. But if you aren’t familiar, it was a police show. IMDB describes it as:
The original "ensemble drama," this is the story of an overworked, under-staffed police precinct in an anonymous inner city patterned after Chicago. We follow the lives of many characters, from the lowly beat and traffic cops to the captain of the precinct himself.
Although I wasn’t engaged with the show itself, what I did know, and like, was the theme song (YouTube video above). I wasn’t alone - the theme song won Grammys for best pop instrumental performance and best instrumental composition in 1981. For a relatively violent and rough show (for the time), the soundtrack was gentle and melancholy, rather than gritty. I was taking piano lessons at the time and my teacher let me try to learn the song from sheet music I bought. I thought it was really great. A few months back I was looking for some 80’s TV theme music and stumbled across it again. I hadn’t listened to it in years, but I loved the version I found (close enough to the one above in the YouTube video), which included the dispatch directing units to respond to an armed robbery. Every time I listen to it, I get a little teary. It really hits me in the feels. Some of that is because it brings me instantly back to the early 80’s when I was a kid and with it a corresponding flood of memories. But mostly it is because it implies submission of the self to the needs of the Other.
In this interview, Mike Post, the song writer, said, “you’d normally do something kind of funky and streety” but instead he said to Steven Bochco, the producer,
I said well you could go against it - you could write something really kind of poignant but not sloppy sentimental. Just kind of like make you nod your head and go man there's going to be somebody born, there's going to be somebody die, there's going to be a whole lot of stuff going to go down in this 42 minutes, but the clock's going to keep ticking.
And that is why the song is so poignant, as Post says. This kind of drama has all the craziness of real life - about 10 lives worth - in each 42 minute episode. People are hurt, people are dying, people need help. And the song kind of says to me, here we are again, heading out to help, again. Every day. It’s dangerous. We might be hurt or killed ourselves. And it’s never going to end because people are always going to need help because even in a world where people are decent and good, people are going to need help because bad things happen. Unfortunately, in reality, while most people are decent and good, enough are not, so more bad things happen, and someone has to help. The dispatcher’s flat affect as she announces that there is an armed robbery just reinforces the banality of it.
Last week I talked about the socialism/capitalism dichotomy, with socialism equating to sharing, and capitalism equated with (peaceful) market exchange. If you are a parent, I am reasonably sure you experienced the same thing I did when you first held your baby - I said to myself, I would do anything for this squawling being, anything up to and including sacrificing myself. That instinct is hardwired into most animals, but especially humans. Not to diminish that sentiment, but there is also nothing particularly remarkable or admirable about it. A lack of such an instinct, on the other hand, is shocking and raises a great deal of disgust. Someone who neglects or hurts their children is reprehensible and generally not to be trusted, and should at best be dealt with at arm’s length, and always with suspicion. If you do not protect those who are closest to you, what will you do, given the opportunity, to those of us a few rings out from you?
As I talked about last week, historically, most pre-capitalist societies which were primarily built around tribe and kin networks, and not on market exchange with strangers regarded strangers and dangerous at best, and always as potential marks for profit. I quoted Cicero who said stranger and enemy were the same word in pre-market, tribal communities. I like the idea of the Other, who has no rights to protection in society because he is outside the community. It is only in capitalist societies that are built on trade that humans begin to see the stranger not Other, and outside of the protection of society, but potential friend and partner. In these pre-market societies, the Other can be hurt or stolen from if it is profitable. An Other in distress might be ignored, or even watched as they suffer. One doesn’t have empathy for an Other. In modern society, racism is a process of Othering. One need only look at pictures of crowds standing around at a lynching, watching the suffering of an Other without pity or remorse, and perhaps even a bit of celebration. The instinct to Other runs deep in our human brains and it is only through the deep conditioning of a market society that we come to not see strangers as Others.
Part of the cultural conditioning process is the art that we consume. For example, cop shows like Hill Street Blues show very ordinary people going out into dangerous situations to render aid to strangers.
Police dramas capture our minds because they occur at the edge of our circles of familiarity, and at the edge of our duty to serve. In the opening of the Hill Street Blues theme song, the police officers are being called to respond to an armed robbery - a situation of grave danger - and a situation that likely involves people they do not really know - who are at best at the outer ring of community with respect to the officers, but more likely beyond their personal community and in fact are in the realm of stranger. And yet they are prepared to sacrifice themselves to protect these strangers.
In a market society, we have an obligation to care for and serve the people closest in to our self, just as we would in a tribal society. Our children, and parents and siblings, our close friends. Even the people in our neighborhood. Unlike a tribal society, we continue to believe that we have an obligation to treat those beyond the boundaries of our community with dignity and respect. Strangers are not Others, they are potential trading partners and friends. We don’t owe them service, but we owe them fair treatment. What is so intense about police dramas, as well as hospital dramas, and legal dramas is that usually the person or people the heroes are called to serve are near to strangers or are strangers (the red circle). This is what makes the heroes heroic. It is not, like ancient stories like Beowulf or the Iliad, that the hero brings home goodies for the tribe at the expense of the Other, but just the opposite. The heroes go out into danger to serve those who we know in our hearts could easily have been Others, but instead are treated as friends. They treat strangers, who are far from their relational core, as if they were family in that they put their lives at risk to serve them.
If a police officer rolled up onto a scene and simply allowed some awful violence to occur against a stranger, or worse yet, the officer himself abused a stranger, as if he were an Other, we would be appalled. We are appalled. One need only reflect on the horror of the George Floyd incident. We can argue about the prevalence of such moments today, but we are all shocked by such incidents - at least anyone of good will and heart. If the fire department was called and refused to put out a house fire because they saw the owners of the house and decided those people were Others and therefore they would not risk themselves, that would be appalling. It’s shows like Hill Street Blues that condition us to see such behavior as beyond the pale. That is, in some sense, the role of art in society - to teach us right behavior. It is necessary to condition humans in this way, because the default is the tribal perspective - that strangers are the enemy, the Other.
We admire first responders and military service members because they serve, and submit themselves to the needs of those whom they would not be obligated to serve. I’ve never been a first responder (police officer, fire fighter, paramedic), and I’ve only served around emergency rooms and other life and death situations, but I did spend a couple of decades in the Army, in service. My perspective on service is that it’s a whole lot less romantic than what TV shows and movies make it out to be. It’s mostly grinding away, and disciplining yourself to remember your duty. Service before self is a common phrase in the military. For a market society to work, we have to believe in the rights of the stranger, and we have to protect them.
So, when I listen to the opening credits of Hill Street Blues, the genius of the song strikes me. It captures the grind of service in a way that something more gritty and funky would not. “Once more unto the breach, dear friends, once more”, it says, but not in a romantic, sexy, dramatic way. Instead it sounds like, we are all tired, maybe we are scared, we don’t even know you, but we are coming to help, once more. And, to me, that is service and submission.