Mass Media Representations of Crime and Deviance a Content Analysis

Deviance in a Police Drama

"White Collar" is a television drama involving the adventures of FBI agents who investigate white collar crimes. The team of investigators includes a former con-artist/thief, Neil, who assists a regular FBI agent, Peter, and uses his special knowledge to solve cases. The episode being discussed was called "The Original" and dealt with an art forger who was selling forged art pieces. At first the FBI did not want to investigate a possible forgery, however, the perseverance of the team was finally supported by the bureau. The team believed that the forger was the former assistant of the artist who's works were being forged and an elaborate plan was set into motion to catch him.

The crime may have gone unnoticed except that the team was sent to an art gallery to inspect a different artwork, but while there, Neil noticed a piece that was not what it appeared to be. He observed a piece by a recently deceased artist that was supposedly never revealed to the public. Neil believed the piece to be a forgery, what sociologist Edwin Sutherland referred to as a "white-collar crime;" or a "crime that people of respectable and high social status commit in the course of their occupations." (Henslin, p. 202) If so, the person forging it wanted to sell a never-before-seen piece of art for several million dollars, and since it was never released to the public, no one would know. But in order to actually make the forgery, the forger would need great skill and intimate knowledge of the artists. This brought the pair to the artist's gallery and his former assistant, J.B. Bellmiere, a young white artist who studied under the old master for a decade. Bellmiere was a typical upper middle calls white artist, in his thirties, who dreamed of the success gained by only a few artists and lacking in his career. By tricking Bellmiere into thinking that Neil was also a forger and could make a deal together, the forgery was uncovered and Bellmiere arrested.

This episode is a perfect example of what functionalist sociologists refer to as deviance produced by social or cultural strain. This theory involves the idea that crime, or deviance, is a natural part of society, not an aberration, and is really an unorthodox, and socially discouraged means of attaining social success. According to functionalists, there are a set of cultural goals that each society constructs and individuals in that society are encouraged to strive for. These cultural goals, and in this case it was financial and occupational success, were the cultural goals that the forger wanted to receive. He may have realized that he would never be as popular or successful as his former teacher so he found a way to reach those goals nonetheless. But instead of following the institutionalized means of producing his own artwork, the forger decided to use means that were outside societal norms: he faked his master's work. Functionalists see this as a means of obtaining those things that society strives for while not following the prescribed path to obtaining them.