While strolling down Sixth Avenue the other day, I noted a weary mother
disciplining her young daughter. They played the roles of mother/child,
discipliner/disciplinee, powerful/powerless, right/wrong, just perfectly.
Mom, peering down at her child from a height, looked stern and serious as
her daughter scowled, averted eye contact, and shifted her small feet. As I
brushed past the two I overheard "Look at me when I'm speaking! No! Don't
interrupt!"

    I then walked directly to my apartment and tuned into NBC for my two-hour
dose of justice with Judge Judy and The People's Court. It seems I needed
Court television is not a new phenomenon. America's fascination with the
workings of the legal process may be traced to earlier days of our nation's
history, when audiences at trials spilled over into balconies and doorways.
In the past 50 years, our legal system has found itself represented and
replicated on police dramas, legal dramas, sitcoms, talk shows, the news,
news magazine shows, and specialty programs that reenact the legal process
specifically for the television viewer. The shows of the last variety are
the most authentic, most pure, and most popular at this moment.

    Today the number of court television shows on non-cable networks has
reached an all-time high. One hour of The People's Court - now adjudicated
by Judge Jerry Sheindlin - is followed by an additional hour with Judge
Judy. Judge Joe Brown, Judge Mills Lane, and Judge Mathis each preside over
half-hour sessions that are sprinkled throughout the UPN, WB, and Fox
networks.
    Court television has officially replaced the daytime talk show as the
primary American forum for law, order, and morality. A short time ago,
Ricki Lake and Jerry Springer's programs served as the stage upon which
morality plays were dramatized and resolved before our very eyes. Talk
shows were appealing in their bare authenticity, their access to the real.
Today, however, these programs are simply not real enough.
 
    Enter the televised courtroom. Real cases. Real people. And most
importantly, real judges. What could be more authentic than watching the
American legal process in action - and even in its natural courtroom
setting of austere, dark-wooded cleanliness, complete with gavels,
bailiffs, black robes, and elaborate legal language?

    Authenticity, however, is not the only appeal of courtroom television.
American audiences seek the type of hard-edged, clear-cut discipline that
only a true judge can administer. American audiences crave to be taught
right from wrong. And it takes a reality television program to fill a real
void in American culture.

    The past decade is filled with evidence that the culture is suffering from
a severe crisis in parenting. Children are "out of control teens" on
daytime talk shows. They are failing in the classroom. They are dying of
alcohol poisoning on college campuses. They shoot each other in school.
They are rude and impolite to other children and adults. They lie, cheat,
and steal to get what they want.

    The country is undisciplined. And now it's a serious problem.

    The solution: to allow parental figures - simulated parents in the form of
television judges clad in black robes - to discipline the culture in place
of actual parents.

    Judge Judy emerges as the model for this new cultural movement. She is the
ultimate matron, a tough-talking mother-figure who praises the good and
admonishes the bad. In her traditional black robe - adorned with a frilly
lace collar - Judge Judy is the perfect blend of law and mother. Not only
her dress, but her mannerisms and speech all suggest a no-nonsense
matriarch who has just passed the point of irritation. She frequently folds
her arms and views defendants over the top of her reading glasses, while
berating them with comments like "Put your hand down," "You interrupt
again, I'm going to put you out," and "Look me right in the eye! You think
you can put one over on me?"

    Each day, Judge Judy reduces plaintiffs and defendants to insecure,
sniveling children. Complainants at the podiums stand in the judge's
shadow. They shift their weight, invent unfathomable excuses, and try to
displace the blame onto anyone else involved in the case. And we all keep
going back for more. The show has no shortage of plaintiffs and defendants
willing to try their cases in Judy's court. Loyal audiences flock to their
television sets each day to regard the whole event like curious spectators
The wreckage in this case is the spectacle of American failure and renewal.
Our culture has failed as disciplinarians. Our nation of children - and
adults who behave as such - is literally seeking out the punishment that
parents have failed to provide.

    The result resembles a third-grade classroom. Judge Judy corrects her
complainants' grammar, tells them to stand still and quit fidgeting,
demands that they spit out their gum, warns them to keep their hands to
themselves - all the while dispensing "justice with an attitude" that
sounds more like motherly words of wisdom than doctrines of the American
legal system.

    Approximately half of the cases tried in Judge Judy's courtroom involve
domestic issues, the majority of which are property disputes after failed
relationships. Such cases provide Judge Judy with the ideal forum to
lecture on basic behavior. She tells young people to appreciate their
parents because "You will never have a friend like your mother." She asks
financially-depleted ex-girlfriends why they ever put their trust into
their ex-boyfriends, demanding "What's the matter with you?" Justice in
Judy's courtroom is like receiving a slap on the tush and being sent to bed
without dinner.

    Parents have served as judges throughout American history, however now it
appears that justice has finally failed the household. The home is not pure
enough, the threat of punishment not strong enough, to keep the culture
from falling into disorder. Americans desire the type of discipline that
educates and instructs. We have reduced ourselves to a mass of infantilized
masochists willing to turn to simulated justice to satisfy our need for
actual discipline.

    Once again, television has come to the rescue. Brand-name justice,
accessible to all, will discipline our pesky culture, once and for all. I
feel ashamed already.
 
 

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