Dick Wolf, of Law & Order Fame, Can Suck It

Dick Wolf, creator of TV's Law & Order

The headline in Variety magazine’s online edition says everything: “Dick Wolf Fires Writer From ‘Law & Order’ Spinoff for Threatening to ‘Light Up’ Looters.” The brief subsequent article announces that writer-producer Craig Gore tweeted photos of himself wearing a face mask and carrying a large-bore rifle, threatening to “light up” protesters threatening his property. In response, Dick Wolf, the Paradigm talent agency, and others dropped Gore from their roster.

I understand Wolf’s urgency to publicly denounce Gore, and subordinates like him, who offer to exacerbate violence during an already tense time. Gore’s high-profile presence on a lucrative media franchise makes him potentially explosive, and Wolf, a noted donor to center-left political causes, needs to visibly place distance between himself and such language. The quantities of money riding on Wolf’s decisions make polite, reserved dignity an impossible option.

However, I question the sincerity of Wolf’s actions. Not the sincerity of his decision to drop Craig Gore, but the sincerity of attempting to create another Law & Order property, particularly one featuring returning star Christopher Meloni as Elliot Stabler. Despite his moderately left-wing politics, Wolf’s star franchise has long favored “hero cops” who consider themselves too important for boring old rules, and Stabler ranks near the top of that category.

According to the Law & Order fan wiki, Stabler has killed six people, two offscreen. The same wiki lists Stabler having longstanding authority issues, including a refusal to seek mental health treatment following officer-involved shootings and other traumatic incidents. The show has historically shown Stabler roughing up not only suspects, but witnesses and bystanders who display his same anti-authoritarian tendencies. The storyline takes pride in Stabler’s “loose cannon” ways.

Yale-trained social scientist David Graeber notes, in his book The Utopia of Rules, that American police dramas tend to favor police who disdain authority. Stabler comes from the same stock as Dirty Harry, Murtaugh and Riggs, and John McClaine, rogue forces operating outside the official sphere of supervision, often without organizational support. Graeber notes that it’s common for “hero” cops, in media, to turn in their badges and go hunting.

Stabler never surrendered his badge, not in any episode I remember. (Yes, I’m an audience member of the show I’m condemning. I’m not deaf to the disjunction.) However, his adversarial relationship with Internal Affairs was such an integral part of the show’s arc that his investigating officer became a recurring guest star. In one episode, Stabler and his investigating officer sat opposite one another, sarcastically complaining about a fabricated charge.

The scene was played for laughs.

Christopher Meloni as Elliot Stabler

In early seasons, the series established Stabler as damaged by his occupation, but ultimately honorable and reliable, a force for good. However, as often happens in series television, the character became increasingly defined by a smaller and smaller number of characteristics, which became exaggerated by overuse: his tendency toward violence, disregard for procedure, and thrill-seeking behavior. He became cartoonish and, worse, he became as destructive as the criminals he hunted.

This partly reflects fan service: the behaviors audiences respond well to, generally become prominent through repetition. That keeps audiences hooked, and ad revenue rolling in. But it also reflects something deeper underlying the franchise’s philosophy: that law is worth defending, even when it’s demonstrably unjust. As political scientist Ian Haney López writes, “law and order” is a longstanding dog-whistle for suppressing dissidents and protesters.

Historically, Stabler has tap-danced around the spirit of the law, while remaining friendly with the letter. However, he used techniques, onscreen, that, in a military interrogation, would count as war crimes. Stabler’s behavior became so caricatured that, when actor Christopher Meloni moved laterally to the series Happy, that show’s writers’ room played the same behavior for low comedy.

Therefore, when Dick Wolf acts publicly outraged when his writer emulates the same behavior, I have little interest in his crocodile tears. Wolf helped glamorize the idea that police would torture suspects, utilize physical violence, and get away unscathed. He is, partially, responsible for the cultural moment which produced George Floyd’s murder, and countless other murders by police who expect bureaucrats, and society generally, to accept this behavior.

I don’t mean Dick Wolf caused this moment. He exists in a continuum with previous Hollywood police writers who directly glamorized official violence and top-level lawlessness; for him, it’s simply a job. However, he needs to recognize that his job helped create the cultural conditions which made current events possible. His official protests of innocence don’t interest me. And firing one writer is a case of “too little, too late.”