Lauryn Scott has watched “South Side,” “The Chi” and “Power Book IV: Force” since these Chicago productions debuted. She particularly loves how they feature historic Black neighborhoods like hers — including cameos for hidden gems like Boxville, a retail market in Bronzeville constructed from shipping containers — and don’t simply fall back on skyline shots of the Loop.
“The Chi” and “Force” are also plenty violent. “The Chi’s” first episode includes a young boy discovering a body in an alley and then another witnessing a murder. Scott, 35, wishes that Chicago wasn’t routinely cast as such a deadly place. While in Switzerland recently on vacation, she told people where she was from and they quickly replied, “Hope you’re safe.”
She is, she assured them.
“Chicago isn’t really a war zone that people think it is,” says Scott, an associate marketing director who lives in Bronzeville.
Television shows long have been set in specific places. Frequently, they’re even called out in programs’ names. Think “NCIS” and its New Orleans, Los Angeles, Hawaii and Sydney spinoffs; “Chicago Fire” and its siblings; or “The Real Housewives” franchise with 27 versions around the globe.
These place-situated shows turn into points of pride. There’s a statue of sitcom psychiatrist Bob Newhart sitting next to his couch at the end of Navy Pier. In downtown Minneapolis, there’s one of Mary Tyler Moore tossing her tam into the air as she did in the open of her eponymous show.
Nobody knows better, however, than a local when these shows go astray, from incongruous exterior shots and botched accents to characters and story lines that are implausible in their settings. These false notes happen in comedies and dramas set all over the country, especially Chicago.
Asked by The Harris Poll whether TV and movies accurately depict Chicago, 71% of people who know the city from visiting or living here said yes. That’s fewer than for any of the other eight major metros we surveyed, though people who’ve spent time in Atlanta come close, with 72% saying popular media’s characterization of the city is true to life. At the other extreme, 83% of people who know Las Vegas said it’s portrayed validly.
The impression that viewers get of Chicago also was judged to be anything but positive by 25% of representative adults, making Chicago the outlier again. The city is trailed by Los Angeles (21%), New York (18%), Atlanta and Philadelphia (17%), and Boston (11% ) in the number of respondents who told our poll that the city is maligned by entertainment TV.
We also asked whether national media portrays each city as more violent than it really is. Roughly half of all respondents agreed that yes, the news media exaggerates the prevalence of crime for the entire set of cities in our poll, while roughly a third overall — and upward of 42% of Chicago visitors and residents — said the coverage was not overstated.
People outside Chicago, of course, also find fault with how their cities are shown.
Rebecca Foust, 28, lives in Atlanta, where she is an advertising specialist. Her TV preferences tilt away from anything with violence — she’s never seen “The Walking Dead,” which is shot in Atlanta — and toward reality shows, like “Real Housewives of Atlanta” and “Buckhead Shore.” Set in ostentatiously wealthy and largely white locations, these escapist dramas are entertaining, she says, but they’re obviously stereotypes and don’t truly represent metro Atlanta.
The way her city is shown on television and in national news, she adds, “probably detracts people from coming to Atlanta.”
Andrew Gelman of Philadelphia has been a fan of “It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia” since it began streaming in 2005. The show follows a group of hard-drinking losers who run a dive bar and say and do awful things without even a shred of shame. It’s definitely cringe comedy.
Gelman, a 30-year-old railroad construction worker, thinks “Sunny” is funny, but not an accurate portrayal of his hometown. Much of actual Philadelphia is so violent, he says, that to be true to life the gang at Paddy’s Pub would have to spend each episode “just watching over their backs and trying not to get mugged.”
Scott and Gelman are also into local documentaries. For Scott, a favorite is “A Most Beautiful Thing,” which is about an all-Black high school rowing team on Chicago’s West Side, the first in the U.S. For Gelman, it’s “Utter Nonsense,” which traces a family’s struggles with opioid addiction and mental illness in Philadelphia’s battered Kensington neighborhood.
Sometimes city life is hopeful. Other times it’s brutal. But these depictions at least are honest, say those who’d really know — the people who’ve chosen to live in each city. And that matters.
Will Johnson is the Chicago-based CEO of The Harris Poll, one of the world’s leading public-opinion research firms.
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