American police departments have presided over the business of motion
pictures since the end of the nineteenth century. Their influence is
evident not only on the screen but also in the ways movies are made,
promoted, and viewed in the United States. Screening the Police
explores the history
of film's
entwinement with law enforcement, showing the role that state power
has played in the creation and expansion of a popular medium.
For the New Jersey
State Police in the 1930s, film offered a method of visualizing
criminality and of circulating urgent information about escaped
convicts. For the New York Police Department, the medium was a means
of making the agency world-famous as early as 1896. Beat cops became
movie stars.
Police chiefs made
their own documentaries. And from Maine to California, state and
local law enforcement agencies regularly fingerprinted filmgoers for
decades, amassing enormous records as they infiltrated theatres both
big and small.
As author Noah Tsika
demonstrates, understanding the scope of police power in the United
States requires attention to an aspect of film history that has long
been ignored. Screening the Police reveals the extent to which
American cinema has overlapped with the politics and practices of law
enforcement.
