Reading is my life.
I know, it sounds laughable—both melodramatic and cliché; however, reading truly is my life.
It’s a pathetic –yet exciting—existence, exploring the wards of Greenlaw College with Faris Nallaneen, sobbing uncontrollably with Harry after his beloved godfather falls to his death, and catching criminals with Sam Vimes on the tough streets of Ankh-Morpork.
I own more books than most people read in their entire lives and I have read every single one, multiple times. I’ve even reread the ones I hated, like The Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison. It was both dry and dull, but words have power over me. Even dry and dull can pull me along to see if the next page will be an explosion of action or eloquence.
Words move people. The right speaker can set people on fire. Fewer people, however, are moved by the written word. I am one of those lucky people, and reading sets my world alight.
Corruption is rampant in law enforcement.
"The Taskmasters" really struck a chord with me on the topic of corruption in law enforcement. It really brought to mind a quote from a book I have read.
In Night Watch, by Terry Pratchett, a seasoned officer is discussing the morality taking bribes with a younger officer.
“Put it like this, Lance Constable, would you let a murderer off for a thousand dollars?”
“No, Sir!”
“A thousand dollars’d set your mum up in a nice place in a good part of town, though.”
“Knock it off, Sarge, I’m not like that.”
“You were when you took that dollar. Everything else is just haggling over the price.”
High level corruption like the situation in The Taskmasters is not a rampant problem in the U.S. police force, but I’d have to say that low level corruption is a problem. There are the neighborhood heroes of America, then there are the cops who speed ten over because they have the ‘high speed training’, or drive drunk on the back roads because they ‘know what they’re doing’. As the daughter of a police officer, I’ve seen petty corruptions in action.
To me, this story took a problem we have in America and exaggerated it, or ‘upped the price’. It begs the question: What draws the line between petty corruption and full scale murder and framing, like in the story? Morally, is there really a difference?
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Let's see how long-winded I can be (I don't know about you, but I'm excited)!
ReplyDeleteI liked the second-hand G. B. Shaw (often misquoted as Winston Churchill) reference.
Let's try another one: "Reading made Don Quixote a gentleman, but believing what he read made him mad."
I don't mean to denigrate you opinion on the police; you obviously know what you are talking about very well. In fact, I would be hard-pressed to find anyone so knowledgeable about such things as you without going severely out of my way. First-hand experience will do that to you.
My point is that taking to heart points from literature that are to specific is dangerous. We can't always believe even Shaw - he was virulently agaist vacciniation, and compared it to manslaughter (pun intended).
Thus, I would say that the ethical dilemma which you pointed out isn't necessarily produced by upping the ante, but is simply an intrinsic effect of the plot. I didn't see much evidence of overstatement in the story. Hyperbole can indeed be an effective device, but often backfires into a self-caricaturing plugged gun in the hands of lesser writers. I couldn't find the requisite smoking gun and blackened face (I love Elmer Fudd cartoons), nor could I find the social satire (a usual haunt of skilful hyperbole).
In fact, I didn't think that the law-enforcement setting was intrinsic to the plot. The conspiracy of corrupt persons to cover their tracks is not restricted to any one group of people (although it doesn't hurt to have power that can go to your head). The story was simply about three evil persons attempting to sucker and bully a fourth into becoming a sacrifice to themselves.
Then again, one should not imbue things with significance beyond what they truly possess. Most of the time, suspense stories are not meant to convey any grand meaning, but only to effect emotion in the reader. This is true for many newer (1800s and younger) genres. Horror films as a rule do not argue for civil rights, but comedy, a very ancient form, can present people and behavior as derisible by making us laugh at them. It would be wrong to make a mountain out of a molehill.
That sounded smarmy. Hmm. Wasn't supposed to.
Oh - holding reading so dear isn't weird in the least. What's weird is my refusing to spell "doughnut" without the "gh."