UC Irvine

This dissertation explores the process of playing detective—how and when police surveillance and police procedures become leisure culture in the twentieth century. I examine when police departments began to work as media producers, and average citizens became amateur detectives—not only working on behalf of the law but as an extension of the police. At the core of this investigation is procedural play, the process by which policing procedures become sources of entertainment through reenactment. Framing such play as a reception practice, I explore the mediated conditions of possibility that simultaneously work to normalize police surveillance and create spaces for procedural play. Through a historical excavation of primary archival materials, popular press ephemera, and audiovisual media, I argue that procedural play is a consequence of police labor reform in the early twentieth century towards standardized, replicable codes of conduct and the mass reproduction and circulation of photographed criminal images and fingerprints, which brought modern detective methods into the home. The dissertation is organized around four case studies: home detective education at The Institute of Applied Science (1916), the radio and television broadcast form of Dragnet (1949-1957; 1951-1959), the digital gamification of police procedure in Police Quest (1987-1994), and the procedural shift towards crime resistance with citizen activist John Walsh and reality TV crime show America’s Most Wanted (1988-2012). In each, I focus on one crucial facet of procedural play: its instructive nature, its formulaic structure, its rule-based foundation, and its safety-driven emotional turn. These case studies illustrate a crucial bridging of public and private—public policing institutions making their way into the private space of the home through print, radio, television, toys, and games. Here, the industrial, creative involvement of law enforcement—individual police officers, departments, and state and national governments—legitimize police procedures and define what is or is not evidence and truth for the American public. In the process, this research uncovers how our relationship with police procedure reinforces perceptions of criminality and citizenship—that is, who is hailed to play detective and who is criminalized?