First aired in September 1984 on NBC-TV, ôMiami Viceö is one of the most innovative TV series of network television, and perhaps the best example of what media critic John Thornton Caldwell calls ôtelevisuality.ö According to Caldwell (1995), the way to view television is as a self-conscious, stylistic medium, and the police drama ôMiami Viceö is a prime example of a televisuality-based program. Media sociologist Jeremy Butler (1985) cites ôMiami Viceö as one of the most visually stylized programs of the 1980s, and Andrew Sargent (2002) contends that ôMiami Viceö represents the style and dominant cultural aesthetic of the 1980s more fully and indelibly than any other TV series.
The popular series aired from 1984 through 1989, with 114 episodes, and is still in syndication 15 years later. The ground-breaking police show is set in the Vice Department of the Miami Metro-Dade police force. It is not, however, the pair of interracial undercover detectivesÆ battle against illicit drugs, firearms and prostitution that give power to the show, but its stylistic attributes. The ambience is as crucial as plots or characters. The show is best known for its visual style, watercolor pastels, and fashions, but most notably for its use of music of the 1980s and technique of the quick-cut visual style of MTV videos. In fact, the original name for the show was MTV Cops. Music was the foremost ingredient of the show with at least four to five current songs featured per episode. Other music was supplied by composer Jan Hammer who created the showÆs synthesizer-driven score. ôMiami Viceö is also an excellent example of television in the postmodern age.
Postmodernist theorists contend that postmodernity produces cultural fragmentation and new modes of experience, subjectivity, and culture. Postmodernism represents a breakdown of traditional literary and cultural traditions, and ôMiami Vice,ö certainly broke the mold of standard, con...