White Collar Thesis

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Television has become a wonderful place for terrible people. Serial killers, drug dealers, thieves, con-men, psychopaths have taken over television, and they have created the downright evil protagonist that the audience doesn’t seem to have enough of: the anti-hero. Shows like White Collar prove the development also occurring in police shows. The audience was used to watch the good police character who has always been an official hero morally upright and with notion of absolute authority fighting corruption by himself. However in White Collar, the official hero and the anti-hero gather together to fight crime, yet both have different motives. The reasons behind the enjoyment of the anti-hero narratives creates arguments of a more uncontrollable…show more content…
In White Collar, the narratives is given to the viewer as an interrelation of both, the traditional hero (Peter Burke) and the reformed hero or anti-hero (Neal Caffrey). Here is some background information about the show: Peter Burke, an honorable FBI agent accepts the offer of Neal Caffrey, a charming and intelligent con-artist who uses his abilities to forge and steal several art paintings, to allow Neal to serve the rest of his jail time as an aid for the FBI in exchange of his freedom. The success of these character persists in this interrelation; together they work terrific, but by themselves the audience will lose interest. It’s like they enjoy seeing the protagonists struggling to develop trust, affection, and mutual respect. Bill Keveney and Carol Memmott called this phenomenon the T.V’s buddy system, which has been well-established and is more successful than ever. As they explain in their article this phenomenon is about “two people, very different and often starting at cross purposes, join for a purpose, fighting crime, solving problems, trying cases, accompanied for their everyday struggles” (02). Neal’s constant struggle with doing the right and Peter’s hard time trusting Neal reflect something that the audience have to deal with on a daily

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