"Law & Order" & Juggalos: So Unhappy Together

The NBC workhorse “Law & Order” has a history with the music business, having lightly fictionalized such pop phenomena as Diddy, Kevin Federline, and crappy East Village punk bands during its storied tenure. Last night, inspired by a grisly crime last year that was dubbed “the horrocore murders,” the Juggalo subculture finally came under Dick Wolf’s microscope.

Last night’s episode, “Steel-Eyed Death,” was serious business from the beginning, with a victim who had a knife sticking out of his neck getting some screen time within the episode’s first two minutes. There were also apparently amnesia claims, shout-outs to post-9/11 PTSD, partner-to-partner confessions, and jokes about Jeremy Sisto’s character having to shave off his scruff. (That last part is the saddest part!)

But the Internet is going to know this episode as “the Juggalo episode” because of its foray into the online and offline worlds of horrorcore, a genre with a fanbase that tends to be treated like zoo animals by the type of people who feel that they’re above wearing clown makeup as a way of paying tribute to their favorite muscians. (OK, so, the music isn’t very good either. But could you imagine the sort of automatic disdain Juggalos receive being placed on, say, Animal Collective fans?)

As anyone who’s ever watched even half a rerun of “L&O;” might expect, the Juggalo subculture was painted with something of a broad brush. It would seem that they don’t get reruns of the show in Australia, though, because the Aussie horrorcorist KidCrusher, whose music was featured on the show, was pretty excited about the exposure for his music, which includes the chestnuts “Killin’ Shit” and “A Dirty Fuckin’ Murder”! Until he got wind of what actually transpired on NBC last night. “LAW & ORDER SPIT ON JUGGALOS, he said in all-caps on MySpace, continuing:

I am pretty pissed off to hear they based the episode on Juggalos and try to make us all look like criminals and real serial killers (and think we would kill kids?!). They never told me the full details on the episode before I signed the contract for the release of my music video, all they told me was it was going to be based upon a Horrorcore Festival and they needed my music and a video for it. I do not support the fact that people that don’t know who we really are, can be quick to say “ ITS A FACT “

This just in: Television might be a bit sensational! Also, the whole “Law & Order” “twist” thing is still really important to the NBC promo department.

Meanwhile, the Michigan horrorcore duo Twiztid took to Twitter to express their dismay:

Im super disappointed that the episode of Law & Order yesterday dealing with Horrorcore portrayed US (the Juggalos) in such a bad light… I understand that the show deals with criminal matters but to take our whole musical genre and following and peg us as unstable shit bags with steak knives to little kids necks is taking it WAY toooooo far! That just simply NOT what we (the Family) represent…. and NBC is way out of line for that shit. Very very tacky NBC….. we BOOOOO you and your half hearted half assed 1sided views.

Sure, the Juggalo faithful might be overly sensitive. But those people who are feeling a bit burned by the whole “Tonight Show” fiasco must be giggling a bit at the idea that NBC had even lower depths to plumb when it came to being “tacky”!

[Pic via]