The Detective

Hey Mr. Dean this is Noah again coming at you from the O-Dog's account!

In the books The Big Sleep, Lush Life, and the movie Blade Runner, the very existence of the private detective poses an argument about the city and what it does to justice systems. Each of them express the idea that there is an undercurrent of corruption in the city that police, which exist in a system, can not deal with. The bureaucratic nature of the police department allows for corruption to exist in a "red light district" or a "chinatown" in order to promote the "common good" in other places. One could argue that the we have these districts of degradation at the choosing of the police. Which calls into question whether race is a factor in decision making process. Are chinatowns or red light districts neglected because the police can not handle how much crime goes on in them, or can police not handle the crime because they choose not to? This is where the private detective stems from. The private represents justice for the disenfranchised. Those who have been forgotten by the system can find their retribution in the private detective. In The Big Sleep Chandler creates of the image of the knight who lazily attempts to free the damsel in distress. Chandler's character Marlowe is the antithesis of the lazy knight. He quickly brings justice to not just the pretty damsels in distress but to all those who ask. Similarly in Lush Life Matty makes it his obsession to figure out a murder in the still bad part of New York. He craves justice for a part of the city that is often overlooked. Matty's quest turns him against the system he works in, he takes on the mentality "You know what man? I'm so sick of this bullshit. What, I'm supposed to APOLOGIZE for my family leaving me money? All I EVER wanted to be was a cop. I go out there and take it to the max everyday. I'm the first guy through the door and I'm always the last one to leave the crime scene. So you know what? Fuck you, and fuck them, and fuck EVERYBODY that's got a problem with Mike Lowrey." (Will Smith, Bad Boys)

  Richard Price does a fantastic job of exposing the hypocrisy inside the bureaucracy of the police system. He depicts the confrontations that occur between the boots on the ground and the big cats in the office chairs, now essentially politicians. Those officers on the ground sign up to make a difference in their communities but find it continually harder as they must work through the police system set up by the big wigs to make cases look orderly to the public. The paraffin test Matty orders is a prime example of how bureaucracy slows down the true quest for justice and highlights why police officers overlook certain districts within a city.  Harrison Ford in Blade Runner is another prime example of the cop who has become fed up with the system and disassociated himself with it. He however is brought back into the fold forcefully and finds that the corruption within it is just as he remembers. He finds himself disgusted with the idea of killing intelligent life even if they are not truly "human". The detective is a physical representation of justice. He is similar to Batman in that he will go beyond the confinements of law to achieve what he considers to be "true justice". A detective is not bogged down with the restraints of bureaucracy that limit a city cop. This allows a detective to go into the parts of a city that have been purposefully overlooked by the police department and attempt to make his mark on a cycle that his been going on for a long time. The private eye is in fact a white knight because his mission is to distribute justice to the forgotten.