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A Certain Genre of Fiction

There is a certain genre or perhaps subgenre of fiction of which I have been thinking a lot lately, mostly because it doesn't have a name, and I think it needs one.

The kind of thing I have in mind is a combination of the police procedural with the caper plot. A caper or heist goes back and ends up as a stand off, with police outside of a building of some sort, a criminal gang on the inside. An early example might have been the movie DOG DAY AFTERNOON. I typically think of these things as movies, although there are novels and for all I know epic poems that fit the model I have in mind as well.

The structure is police procedural. We're introduced to detectives, hostage negotiators, whomever -- we're told they have their personal stories and we get some glimpse of them, and we may be regaled with minutiae of their protocol. They may sometimes remind each other to "do this by the book."

But the heart of the genre I have in mind isn't with them, it is with the criminals. The hoods, the gang, whomever. They may spend most of the movie holed up in a small place, in intense interaction with the authorities outside and with each other inside.

What distinguishes the genre I have i mind, though, beyond even this doubleness in focus, is the fact that the drama within the gang generally turn out to be more consequential than the standoff between the gang and the authorities. The whole thing has the air of a magician's sleight of hand to me. Watch my left hand closely (while the right hand puts the bunny in the hat.)

Thus, in Dog Day, the course of events is sealed before the authorities even show up, when Stevie (Gary Springer) loses his nerve.

To give it a name, call it SOPP, which can stand for "shadows of police procedural," because the substance of the movie/book always lies elsewhere, but the police do provide that vital aesthetic shadowing.

 

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