ABSTRACT
Crimes and Crimes I want to write about what might be called the criminal elements in respectable entertainment. I don't intend, though, to get diverted into violence on television, as that problem is usually formulated. Violence offered as entertainment preceded television by so long that I suspect the formula as one of the usual covert attacks on any active popular culture. Especially when the formula appears as sexand-violence on television, by which time it is clear that the campaigners, if they were serious, would be having a go at something rather bigger than the box. What mainly interests me is the reservation that is made for respectable violence. And I don't only mean wars, which seem somehow not to bring many angry letters: mutilation and debauchery have often had those proportions for one particular kind of conscience. I mean the sort that is described in conversation as a good crime; the sort of thing that turned Penguins green; that appears in the papers as "Crimeshelf" or "Crimes of the
Month"; that comes through in television as Detective-a crime series.
