CSI, Law and Order, 24, Cold Case Files, Without a Trace, Criminal Minds, The Shield, Crossing Jordan, The Wire. I learn a lot about life. For instance, there is evil, sometimes petty, sometimes monstrous, but always deadly. There is good: the police, the prosecutors, and their beleaguered, but heroic witnesses. Of course, there are the squealers, the snitches, the sleazeballs, or simply the entrapped that help get some portion of evil greater than their own off the street. Defense attorneys have pride of place in the evil paragon. They are sort of the Beelzebubs of the evil operations, scheming, unscrupulous, tricksters that made it so difficult for the do-gooders to defeat evil.

Sebastian Shark of CBS’ Shark, for example, is the most dangerous trickster of all, for he now applies his incomparable skills with the tools of evil to serve the good. He now puts evildoers, sometimes even his ex-clients, in jail. Once evil, he has morphed into someone good. The moral of his story is that the good must learn, or stronger still, must be a little evil to get evil off the streets. Justice is a result, not a process, for Shark. His young and beautiful lawyer posse is often revolted by his tactics, but the lesson they are taught by Shark is that evil must be used to ensure that good will triumph.

I prefer Orson Wells in Touch of Evil. Now there was evil incarnate, three hundred ugly pounds of it. Chomping a wet cigar, unshaven, clearly getting the better of his opponent, the goody-goody cop Charlton Heston whom he transforms into someone evil. Only Marlene Dietrich, the borderlands madam, took pity on Welles’ Hank Quinlan. Dietrich as Tanya was not exactly the hooker with a heart of gold. Instead she was the weary, cynical stable keeper for men like Wells whose peccadillos were her bread and butter. As Wells framed hundreds of suspects throughout his career, he had also hooked up with a sneaky, violent, dark-faced, Spanglish-speaking criminal Mexican gang, that he uses to break the mestizo and obviously uppity Heston, the proud husband of the blond-haired Janet Leigh whom the Mexicans kidnap and torture for good measure. Except for Leigh’s Susie, the damsel in distress, everyone else gets more evil, and some of the worst of them kill, die, or in Heston’s case sober up to the need to do evil in order to do good.

Well, that is the big lie – to do evil in order to do good – that TV tells us is the moral of our version of Crime and Punishment. The good must do evil so that the bad are caught, murdered, jailed, and/or sometimes executed.

What do we learn about our civil rights, good or evil as we are? What does TV tell us about the practice of criminal justice in the United States? More accurately, what does TV portray as everyday practice in our daily battle against crime?

The first lesson is that everyone is a suspect and their rights an impediment to uncovering evil. Your are supposed guilty until you prove yourself innocent, and every attempt you make to clear yourself or help the police out will be turned against you. You can be “liked” for a crime, not a compliment on your character or good looks, and become a suspect without knowing it. If and until you are arrested, they do not need to tell you that their “liking” you makes you a suspect in their book, until they find someone better.

So the second lesson is that it is better to remain silent. Cooperation is a mistake. Request a lawyer. If you have no lawyer (woe betide you if you are poor or like most people in America consider lawyers potential road kill), then ask to go home. Whatever you do, seek to avoid staying at the station house because that is where the tricks often occur.

At home, answer the door cautiously, as guns may be drawn, and never, never invite police into your house. If you do, you have invited them to grab up whatever they need for their case against you.

Suppose you are transformed from witness, to person of interest, to suspect. You are arrested. Take the warning seriously and say nothing once more. Ask immediately for a lawyer. Don’t cop an attitude, or they will clock you. A whack on the head or anywhere else on your body, so long as it leaves no bruises, is practically the duty of a morally outraged cop. It seems that the good cop is never quick enough to restrain the bad cop. Ask for aspirin as soon as you can, as you will bruise more easily, and perhaps shorten the beat down.

The good cop, bad cop routine is still the order of the day, and amazing grace at least on TV, seems to work. The good cop is constantly asking you to help them out, or suggesting you help yourself by getting the evil off your chest. It will go easier if you confess now or if you give up your partner in crime. Beware the prisoner’s dilemma: it works too.

I personally can’t understand how cooperating and confessing makes things easier. The image of the prison with which they threaten the accused is an inferno. Sweet young things, male or female, are threatened with gang rape or being sold as sex slaves for a pack of cigarettes. HIV infection lurks in every sex act. The middle-aged are told they will die miserably in jail.

Most criminal indictments end in plea bargains – 85% of them. You may be surrendering your right to self-defense, but your odds don’t improve through jury trials, which for murder suspects ends 85% of the time in conviction.(If you are African-American, please note that you are three and a half times more likely to be convicted of murder through trial by jury than your white counterparts.) But Law and Order’s “Maximum Sam” Waterson’s .750 batting average does represent reality: crime usually leads to punishment. Much of the success, for better or worse, owes to being incriminated before you are arrested, and according to TV, way before you even know you’re “liked” for the crime.

But who knows about innocence? Northwestern University’s Center for Wrongful Convictions found in 2001 that of 86 persons wrongfully convicted and exonerated, 53% were convicted on the basis of mistaken or perjured eyewitness testimony; 20% were convicted regardless of police and prosecutorial misconduct; another 12% were convicted with jailhouse informant testimony; another 9% on the basis of coerced or false confessions; and finally (take that CSI!), another 11% were convicted with what the center calls false or misleading “junk” science. Illinois in 2003 found so many wrongful murder convictions in their midst that the 17 defendants on death row were exonerated, and then Governor Ryan commuted the death sentences of 160 others. The wrongful conviction movement has spread throughout the country and the convicted in many cases exonerated, but this is seldom seen on TV. Instead, alla Cold Case Files, the past offers up its old murderers for the convicting.

This brings us back to what we learn on TV. It is not the truth of the matter, but a rather well-set and coherent collection of ideas about crime and punishment in America. It is rather like the old westerns with good and evil starkly portrayed, and the Indians vested with few, if any rights. This is no Dirty Harry syndrome any more, as in cops hampered by court decisions, and the guilty escaping because of our fecklessness in the face of evil. No, the cops usually catch the culprit under circumstances of their choosing, rather than those once prescribed by the Constitution. If they get it wrong, there is little recourse. Old Gil Grissom, in the recollection of this CSI-addicted writer, has only once worked to exonerate someone whom his office has wrongly convicted.

Outside of the tube and bumping around the everyday world, people are wrongly convicted through abuse, sloppiness, or the rush to judgment. If you are a person of color, watch out especially. All of you whose income falls beneath that of the well-heeled won’t get a snide, slick, and successful defense lawyer. There is no Shark in your future. Instead, you may get an over-worked and under-paid public defender, or a lawyer whom you cannot pay enough to do a really thorough job, given the endless complications of justice in America. Public advocates can only save the few and the really endangered.

An occasional jury will jump the rails and find for a defendant believed to have been treated badly or wrongly, or who they believe to be innocent. In Boston last year, several juries in a row refused to believe police testimony and found defendants not guilty.

But if the TV is about our beliefs, then it seems that we believe that evil is back big time, and evil criminals are caught and punished, even if by hook or crook, and this is really okay. And most of us, me included when I leave my rational world and head into the realms of American authoritarian fantasies, really enjoy it.

… Did I forget your favorite crime show? I confess. Sometimes during a Thursday night seminar, my mind wanders to the question: Will I get home in time for CSI, the real one in Nevada with Gil Grissom and the rest of the gang? Sometimes, I have to content myself with a killing in Miami or New York.

Australian poet and author Peter Nicholson writes 3QD‘s Poetry and Culture column (see other columns here). There is an introduction to his work at peternicholson.com.au and at the NLA.

Poetry is a foreign country: they do things differently there. (Apologies to L. P. Hartley.) And for that very reason I sometimes want to get right away from words, the awful girders and trusses of words, to the freedom of an art form where I don’t have to do any oxyacetylene welding or other territorial revisionism. The world of dance and ballet is one place I can escape to where all of that mental sledging falls away, movement and rhythm in poetry being entirely different things. I’ve always been star-struck by dancers whose abilities I envy and whose ease of movement sometimes seems like the most real poetry.

Dancers would have a good laugh over this, knowing that the apparent ease of movement is down to countless hours of practise at the barre, slipped discs, wretched touring, aching feet, stroppy corps de ballet, partners who were once amenable and now aren’t, and so forth. Yes, I know that, but still—here is an art form where the invitation comes with the possibility of joyfulness that other art forms don’t offer so readily or abundantly.

I can’t think this preference of mine is anything special because I note that one of the most viewed videos on YouTube is Judson Laipply’s Evolution of Dance which has been seen over forty million times! We would all like to move like Fred Astaire or Beriosova, but we can’t, and so we settle for dance performances where music, light, decor and flesh transform themselves into intoxicating rhythms, visions of transport, gravity temporarily defeated. Film sometimes captures these rhythms—Black Orpheus, the end of Les Enfant du Paradis—but usually it happens after choreography, the slow accretion of movements that work from inspiration to the moment when the curtain goes up and there are no safety nets left to hold off error. How touching it can be at curtain call when dancers, thrilled with their own efforts, and knowing they have touched the stars that particular evening, have to come back down to earth. You feel their shared pleasure, and perhaps also a little of the sadness that must ensue after an attempt at the ideal has to be replaced with the usual ordinariness. The makeup is removed, day clothes are put back on and the street looks penny plain.

In my youth the Australian Ballet seemed—was—terribly glamorous, and there was always a special theatrical intensity in its performances. Australians have always had an interest in dance and we now have contemporary companies providing every kind of dance style imaginable. Robert Helpmann and Peggy van Praagh were in charge of the Australian Ballet in earlier times and regularly starred great dancers from yonder, Margot and Rudolf for starters. I remember Margot Fonteyn slaying everyone in the aisles in an act from Raymonda. There were unexpected delights too such as Lucette Aldous and Alan Alda dancing a spectacular Spring Waters or the pleasure of seeing an all-Australian The Lyrebird, music Malcolm Williamson, choreography Robert Helpmann, sets Sidney Nolan. The first director of the Australian National Gallery purchased a basketful of one hundred Ballets Russes costumes which, now cleaned and restored, still convey something of the excitement of the Diaghilev era. The same kind of excitement can be seen practically leaking from the screen in the balletomania of Michael Powell’s The Red Shoes. Anton Walbrook drives Marius Goring’s composer and Moira Shearer’s dancer to the point of self-destruction. Obviously there is a warning in the film, taken as it is from the Hans Christian Andersen story, of the dangers in dwelling too much in pure aesthetic realms, and of seeking perfection en pointe.

For some, it’s breakdancing, or ballroom dancing, the tango, salsa, Indian or African tribal dancing, that is the spellbinder. The body can be made to move in so many remarkable ways. How awkward and unsatisfactory one feels in the face of the choreographed visions of Cranko, MacMillan and Graham or loose-limbed winging it on the dance floor.

If going from the ballet world to the other one we must usually occupy is a little like going to bed as Margot Fonteyn and waking to find yourself Peggy Hookham, that doesn’t invalidate those ephemeral moments when the visionary gleam catches fire. Sluggish limbs recall great transformative dance experiences, whether Jiri Kylian’s Nederlands Dans Theater or a distantly-recalled Ballet Folklorico from Mexico, incense engulfing Her Majesty’s Theatre amongst the leaping and the noise.

I’m not qualified to comment on dance technique, but I know technique is needed to contain and convey emotion. I’ve read that some big names in the past didn’t have have the technique of today’s dancers. Perhaps, but how hard it must have been, for example, for Madam, Dame Ninette de Valois, to build a British company of dancers equal to de Bournonville and Fokine, almost from scratch. And dancers then had personality in spades. Our age seems rather anodyne in comparison. The ballet world can be split by factionalism, as any of the arts, and stories abound of carryings-on and put-downs of various leading lights. That is the negativity you always get when anyone aspires to something beyond the status quo.

Think about the sheer variety of dance styles—Sammy Davis, Jr., Yuri Soloviev, Merle Park, Chita Rivera, Maria Tallchief, Michael Jackson, Leonide Massine, Bob Fosse. These heterogeneous dance styles suggest some mysterious energy, a parallel universe, where movement attains a condition of transcendence, however impermanent. Balanchine especially seems to make his dancers move with a gracefulness and fluidity that can raise whole evenings to a level of exaltation. Stravinsky said Nijinsky didn’t understand music and thus made his choreography too complex for the dancers, but Nijinsky must have had some charisma and ability to have captured his historical moment so acutely. Nijinsky’s sister, Bronislava, was also a fascinating choreographer. However, Balanchine seems to have worked out the way forward from the classical style of Petipa to the contemporary with a wit and elegance that can encompass Sousa marches and Ravel, the sinew of Agon and the brilliance of Ballet Imperial.

Well, back to poetry country. Silence, exile and indolent strumming may be needed to get along in that place, but there’s always the flight to freedom available over the border in dance land, where words turn into rhythms unavailable to letters, and you can temporarily escape their manacles. 

                                                               *

               Top Hat

   Fred Astaire d. June 23, 1987

Gingering the boredom
Of awkward tribulation,
That near lean on a stick
Spins firecracker variations
With legs in a suave equation.

This is style
Mapping the screen,
Planetary movement
Reducing to top hat, white tie and tails
Stardust of the Milky Way.

It ends with the usual stillness,
Those toe-tapping terrors
Trapped, perfection cracked,
Yet up in the evening sky
A ghostly footprint whizzes figures of eight.

Written 1987 Published 1994 Such Sweet Thunder 69

Maria Bylova and Leonid Nikonov of the Bolshoi Ballet dance Spring Waters here. 2′ 27”

The great, big, fat, extravagant Indian wedding is back, straight from Sudeley Castle, Gloucestershire to the Umaid Bhawan Palace and Mehrangarh Fort in Jodhpur, Rajasthan, India. The royalty in nuptial question is none other than an obscure Indian by the name of Arun Nayar (no relative of mine!) and a has-been British actor by the name of Liz Hurley. The seven million pound week long extravaganza has kept the media in India and Britain hooked, even though none but Hello! ,the magazine which paid two million pounds for exclusive rights to cover the wedding, were allowed anywhere near the gates of the Mehrangarh Fort. In fact, in the hurly-burly of it all, some journalists even managed to get beaten up by security (who says that glamour journalists have it easy) as they tried to catch a glimpse of the tamasha, rather foolishly, through the lens of their cameras. Anyhow, it’s all over now as I write, and I have no intention of buying a copy of Hello! to see what it was all about. Suffice to say that it wouldn’t have quite matched up to that other (and earlier) great, big, fat, extravagant, Indian wedding in the Palace of Versailles where the world’s fifth richest man, India’s own Stalin (meant only literally, as in Russian) Laxmi Mittal, married his daughter by spending a mere fifty five million pounds of his vast fortune. After all India’s biggest film stars danced there. And Michelin starred chefs cooked the supper. The only thing in common to the two weddings was that they continued the old Indian tradition of the girl (and her family) funding the festivities. Liz Hurley apparently made up the difference between the actual costs and what Hello! paid. Arun Nayar’s claim to fame is not his riches (he isn’t even in the Forbes list of the richest Indians), but this marriage-Indian Ishtyle! (and my apologies for the Hinglish style, but we Indians are like that only!)    

But that’s just the glitzy side of Indian weddings. There is a side which is darker, but ironically as extravagant. Take the case of Mr. Ram X. (name changed for reasons of privacy). He is a clerk, earning a lowly wage. He married his daughter recently. He spent a lot of money, nowhere near what the Hurley’s and the Mittal’s spent, but in fact much more, disproportionate to his own income. He went to the extent of borrowing money, some from friends, some from exploitative moneylenders. He had to pay for his daughter’s dowry ( a scooter, fridge, microwave amongst other items). And then he spent on the festivities. He would have been happy with the debt had his daughter been happy after marriage. Sadly, her new family harass her, beat her sometimes for more dowry, and constantly demand more money from her father. He can’t afford it. He can’t bear to see his daughter suffer. He will bring her back. Ram X. is just one of millions of fathers-of-the-bride who are arguably more extravagant than the richie-riches (given that they go into debt, compared with the pocket change celebs spend) when it comes to their weddings, but unfortunately don’t get any pleasure out of it. This too is a facet (admittedly negative) of getting married-Indian ishtyle. Incidentally, some believe that dowry is actually an English custom. The British famously received the island of Bombay in dowry from the Portuguese, when an English prince married a Portuguese princess.

And before this gets too teary eyed, let us move to the scenario of Indian marriage where age old tradition marries the new age and all its technology and facility. Yes, I am referring to the ‘Arranged’ marriage now facilitated by the world wide web! It’s now easier than ever for parents (and often young people) to find brides and grooms of their choice on the internet. Shaadi, jeevansathi, bharat matrimony, go4marriage, anmolrishte etc DOT.COM are amongst the innumerable sites where one can find profiles of young people looking to get hitched. There’s big money in it for the web portal owners (as is evident by the number of advertisements they release on prime time television). Everyone who signs up pays a fee. Some of these sites claim up to 700,000 successful matches. Others, in competition, claim 710,000! Whichever way, and whomever you believe, this is a big time activity. These portals are actually quite sophisticated. You can search for a partner by sifting through various categories based on religion, community, caste, region, language etc. The downside of this, of course, is the realization about how parochial we Indians can still be, when it comes to choosing a partner. Marriage across different categories is rare. The other interesting observation is about what is valued as an occupation: H1B US visa, working for a MNC (multinational corporation) in India, and a good job in the elite government services probably top the list.  In a rather ironical twist, it is amazing to see the number of people who want their partner to be ‘fair’ skinned. I thought we were ALL outraged by the racism meted out to poor Shilpa Shetty on Big Brother! Oh, and lest I forget, it’s always better to be a homely girl! Like it or not, all a part of getting married-Indian Ishtyle. Did I hear someone say arranged marriage is outdated?!

So there you are, a very brief journey through the great Indian wedding: that almost impossible blend of tradition, modernity, extravagance, happiness and sometimes sadness. I have to say, that by observation, most Indian weddings these days tend to be great, big, fat and extravagant. This in part due to the influence of Hindi films which depict weddings in the lavish Punjabi style, with all the song, dance and fun. Other parts of India, often have weddings which my Bengali friend in Chicago says resemble funerals more than a celebration. He, and a lot of others, believe in adopting the Punjabi way. Weddings should be fun after all.

Long live the Indian wedding (free of dowry and other such outdated and abominable practices). Lets only hope (and here is where it gets a little mushy!), that like in the Hindi films, there is always a happily-ever-after sort of ending.