What's the matter with male coppers?

Conference: Great Writing

Dates: 12-13 July 2025

Abstract:

It may have been an accident of scheduling. Or maybe a response to the divisive state of American politics, and politics elsewhere. But there seems to be a lot of strong female detectives in cop shows lately facing arrogant and awful male colleagues. If that’s right, what might the causes be, and what the effects? Let’s consider the evidence, analyse it, and then mull hypotheses. I’ll outline five recent television series and a new novel from an established but not prominent author to ask the questions: • Might development of this subgenre be associated with greater loneliness, particularly among males, or even contribute to it? • Might we see a loss of the empathy that fiction is sometimes thought to develop (Kidd & Castano, 2017; Oatley, 2016; Rezende & Shigaeff, 2023), especially among men? • Might that loss be made greater if complex characterization takes a back seat to plot-driven stories (Nordberg, 2021)?

Source: Manual