Analysis / Hollywood Provincialism

Common examples of Hollywood Provincialism include:

• The death penalty. Until 2019, often sought in California, but rare in practice due to the drawn-out process of appeals. In other states, it can range from illegal (Massachusetts, Michigan), to on the books but unused (Pennsylvania, Kansas), to used so often it's no big deal at all (Texas, Virginia).
  • Stacy Keach's Mike Hammer made repeated references to the gas chamber, a means of execution used by California, but inconsistent with the series New York setting. The latter state relied on the electric chair for most of the 20th Century. Later law provided for lethal injection.
  • Law & Order plays with this, with suspects pointing out that no one had been executed in New York since the federal moratorium a few episodes after seeing someone executed. And then in other episodes, they like to threaten criminals who've murdered in Texas with extradition, as they're a lot faster to pull the switch.
  • Discussed in a stand up routine by Ron White, that while California was (at the time) seeking to abolish the death penalty, in Texas "we have the death penalty and we USE it!"
• California cops have 48 hours to charge a suspect with a crime before they have to release them. The standard under federal law is actually 72 hours.
• "To protect and to serve" isn't a general police slogan, just the slogan of the Los Angeles Police Department.
• The LAPD vehicle livery (black hood, white cabin, black trunk) has also become popular all over the US. Even in places where the nearest major city does something different. Newark◊, Hoboken◊, and Jersey City Police vehicles◊ copy the style of LAPD cars◊ rather than neighboring New York◊ (This is most likely because of the national ubiquitousness of the black-and-white paint scheme and the fact that New Jerseyans often go out of their way to distinguish themselves as separate from New York. It's a complicated relationship).
• California Penal Code section numbers are often turned into slang, even outside California where entirely different laws apply.
  • 187: Murder is defined in the California Penal Code section 187.
    • In 2010, ABC offered Detroit 1-8-7, a show with a title referencing the California penal code (murder) in a city not in California. In the Michigan legal code, 187 is a long-repealed section on assisting prison breakouts. 750.316 is the actual Michigan penal code for murder.
    • On Will & Grace, set in New York, Will's policeman boyfriend Vince receives a page to participate in a "187" investigation. He is pleased to be called in to investigate one of these, which is odd given that he's not investigating residential mortgage fraud.
    • While on temporary duty with the NYPD, Marshal Sam McCloud responded to another "187" in Manhattan.
    • "187" was popularized in hardcore rap by the song "Deep Cover" by Dr. Dre and Snoop Dogg. It becomes a little silly when used by rappers not from California.
  • 5150: has recently entered urban vernacular for "crazy". Section 5150 of California Penal Code allows for a person to be involuntarily committed for up to 72 hours for psychiatric evaluation if it's believed that a person presents a danger to himself or others.
  • 211: Armed Robbery. Often heard on police dispatch channels ("Two-eleven in progress at...")
    • Seen in Hawaii Five-O [the original] and Miami Vice, even though neither show takes place in California. That would be a failure to guarantee a commercial loan and an attempt to subvert taxes on oil or mineral extraction, respectively.
    • This one seems to have percolated into real life. COLORADO white supremacist prison gang The 211 Crew is a reference to the out-of-state penal code. They also practice "187s." The Colorado Revised Statutes use a different numbering format from the California codes; the Colorado laws on homicide are codified at §§ 18-3-101 through 18-3-107; while those on robbery are codified at §§ 18-4-301 through 18-4-305.
• California is one of nine "community property" states. This has led many people in TV and movies (and real-life) to use the term when they mean "marital property".
• While California is far from the only state to use the term "District Attorney" for their prosecutors, many states and the Federal government use different terms. Despite this, no matter where a work is set, a prosecutor is going to be called the District Attorney. You'll rarely hear US Attorney (the federal title), Commonwealth's Attorney, County Attorney, State's Attorney, or any of the other titles. It doesn't help that Law & Order, the one major police/courtroom franchise that is actually filmed in the jurisdiction it depicts, is also set in a state where each county's prosecution is led by a District Attorney (though they correctly depict that the Assistant District Attorneys are the ones often in the courtroom prosecuting.)
• Parole is nearly always an option in fiction, unless the crime is especially heinous, in which case it can be taken off the table, like a "life without parole" sentence, just like in California. In reality, sixteen states have no parole system, and neither does the Federal government (for crimes committed after 1984).
• Carbonated soft drinks are always "soda" – never "pop", "cola", or "coke" – because that's what the generic name for a fizzy drink is in California and on the East Coast. "Pop" is dominant across most of the Midwest and through the Pacific Northwest, while "coke" is dominant in most of the South. Compare. In this case, pop culture is actually shifting due to the influence of media.
• Pink boxes for donuts or cakes are specific to doughnut shops and bakeries in Southern California. However, the ubiquity of the pink box in movies and TV shows led to bakeries outside of Southern California adopting the pink box.
• Stories set ostensibly in places such as Ohio or Connecticut have characters wearing tee-shirts and other spring appropriate clothes in the middle of January.
• In Southern California, highway numbers take the definite article: Interstate 5, for instance, is "the 5"; state highway 22 is "the 22", and so on. Despite this tic being pretty much unique to Southern California among Americans ^note British people add articles before numbered routes (i.e. "The A5 was really busy."), just like Southern Californians., due to the numbered highways having earlier names (the Santa Monica and San Diego Freeways becoming Interstate 10/"the 10" and Interstate 405/"the 405" respectively), it is often carried over into shows and films even when people in the setting would say "Route 22", "State 22", "I-5", "Highway 5", just plain "5", and so forth (example: Cameron Diaz's Bostonian character in Knight and Day saying "the I-93" rather than "I-93" or "93").
• In one episode of QI it is pointed out that only a particular subspecies of frogs, found in California, go "ribbit", while frogs can actually produce a wide variety of different sounds.
• The state government office that deals with motor vehicle registration, driver's licenses, and personal identification is invariably called the Department of Motor Vehicles, or "the DMV." Most states have this department, but only 18 call it the DMV. The other 32 might change the name slightly, such as Arizona's Motor Vehicle Department (MVD), Massachusetts' Registry of Motor Vehicles (RMV or "the Registry") or Ohio's Bureau of Motor Vehicles (BMV). Others have a name completely different like the Pennsylvania Department of Transportation (PennDOT). Still, others give this task to government offices not normally associated with vehicles or ID. For example, Illinois and Michigan handle these tasks via local offices of the Secretary of State. Nonetheless, "the DMV" has become shorthand for this office all across the country.
• The placement of license places on cars. In California along with 30 other states and 3 Canadian provinces (as well the 86 countries that subscribe to the Vienna Convention on Road Traffic, which includes Britain and almost all of the European Union), vehicles are required to have license plates on both the front and rear of the vehicle. So when a work is filmed in Cali, cars will always have front plates even if the story is set someplace that doesn't require them, like Florida or Pennsylvania.
• A teenager will always be "legal" at the age of 18, as if this is the age of consent for the entire country. In reality, that's not even close to the truth. Each state◊ has its own age of consent, and only twelve of them have it at 18, California being one of them. It's 16 in most of them (thirty) and 17 in the others. Also, most states have exceptions if both are younger than the age of consent, or one is at it but the other is slightly below; California, however, has no close-in-age exemptions at all. Also, it is a federal offense in the United States to take a minor across state lines for the purpose of engaging in sexual intercourse.^note The federal statute is ambiguous on its face, but the US Department of Justice apparently interprets it to apply only if the sexual act would be illegal in the place where it occurs.
• In-N-Out Burger has the vast majority of its stores in California, with a scant handful in surrounding states plus a few more locations peppered throughout north/central Texas. But they are sometimes mentioned in shows that take place elsewhere. Other franchises, such as Sonic and Jack in the Box, are also commonly seen on TV despite the fact that they aren't prevalent in some areas. Conversely, chains that are common in other parts of the U.S., such as Hardee's (see below) and White Castle, are almost never seen or mentioned, even in stories set where they are ubiquitous. Roy Rogers would've qualified for this too back in the 70s and 80s, but they've since been far reduced in scope and locations, as a result of Hardee's (who bought them from Marriott^note yes, the hotel chain) attempting to use them as a plan for expansion, only for the restaurant to flop so badly that they had to close most of their locations.
• California-specific namings of stores with different names across the country: Ralph's (supermarket chain owned by Kroger—which doesn't operate in some areas of the country), Checkers (known in some places as Rally's; they were originally separate chains, but merged), Carl's Jr. (known as Hardee's in some places, mostly the South and Midwest; also a merger of two separate chains), and Souplantation (the now-defunct chain known as Sweet Tomatoes outside of Southern California).
• An hilariously odd sort of Hollywood Provincialism appears in the Star Trek novel Spock's World by Diane Duane, in a description of Vulcan: "Jim tended to think of it as southern California, but with less rain." ^note For those who have no idea why this is so funny, Capt. James T. Kirk hails from Iowa. Starfleet HQ is in California, but Northern California, not at all the same thing... Southern California averages about 35 rainy days per year near the coast in the winter and spring (less in the inland desert areas), with summer and autumn typically being rain-free or nearly so. This may have also been a reference to the fact that the vast majority of Star Trek episodes being filmed in and around So Cal.
• Radio and TV stations sometimes have call letters beginning with "K" even when the setting is in the east, where they usually use "W".^note  There are the rare exceptions on both sides of the Mississippi, WOI in Iowa and KDKA in Pittsburgh for example, but these tend to be legacy stations that go back to the earliest days of radio. Additionally, stations in Louisiana and Minnesota, the two states with significant territory on both sides of the Mississippi, are allowed to start with either "K" or "W", regardless of their location with respect to the river.
• For years, the opening credits of Matlock showed a Georgia license plate on a car's front bumper. Georgia, like most Southern states, has never used front plates.^note  The only Southern states to regularly use front-end license plates are Texas and Virginia.
• The cities and terrain in SimCity have a distinct SoCal feel to them, with no seasonality, palm trees, and brown ground. Made especially odd by Maxis, the company behind Sim City, being from Northern California.
• Five-card draw poker as the gambling game of choice (at least until Rounders was released and Texas hold 'em started airing on ESPN). California for a long time had an esoteric law prohibiting any form of stud poker, and Gardena (a Los Angeles suburb) was fairly well known for its draw poker cardrooms. From 1900 until the 1970's, five and seven-card stud games were far more popular in the rest of the country than TV and movies would indicate.
• In many 80's/90's teen movies that don't take place in California, the "popular girls" have stereotypical Valley Girl lingo and fashion, despite the fact that this culture is mostly relegated to the Southern California area. Heathers, which takes place in suburban Ohio, is a notable example of this, as the three main Heathers look and act more like they belong in Beverly Hills than the Midwest.
• Suburbia featuring sprawling one-story houses and wide streets. Outside the Southwest, suburbs tend to be far more compact with dozens of towns surrounding a city; the roads are narrower if the town predates automobiles, and the houses tend to be 2-story to accommodate the lack of space (this varies the further out you go).
• An inversion: While Los Angeles and New York dominate in entertainment, the South and the Midwest will be more discussed in politics. This is due to small rural states having disproportionate power in Congress.^note  Part of this is written into the U.S. Constitution: In the House of Representatives, seats are apportioned according to population. Each state gets 1 representative to start, and then the remaining seats (currently 385) are allocated based on the most recent federal census. In the Senate, however, each state gets 2 Senators regardless of its population. This means that Wyoming (the least populous state with just over half a million people) has as much voice in the Senate as California, despite California having 66 times as many people. Since there are more rural states than urban states, urban issues tend to be ignored in the Senate. In the House, the situation isn't much better; Southerners have held the balance of power in that chamber almost continuously since 1933 due to their tendency to vote as a bloc (with the exception of CBC/CHC reps), as well as the area's famous lack of political competitiveness resulting in congressmen sometimes staying in office for literally decades (granted this happens in Northern urban areas as well); Texas, in particular, has produced a curiously high number of House Speakers and Caucus Leaders.
• Public school architecture. Instead of a single large school building, most California schools use a "campus" design with several structures (often single story) surrounding a courtyard, to take advantage of the generally good weather during the autumn and winter months.^note Obviously, schools located at higher altitudes don't. The courtyard is usually where lockers and lunch tables are located. Unless it's explicitly set in the warmer parts of California (or another area with a mild climate), a movie or TV show about high school will look really odd to most people if it shows the characters congregating outdoors in a courtyard or walking to class through a covered walkway.
• The stickiness of the term Junior High. This is, of course, partly because Most Writers Are Adults — but it's partly because L.A.'s school district didn't reconfigure and rebrand them to middle schools until the mid-90s, some 20 years after most of the rest of the country.
• If a quail shows up in a cartoon, no matter where it's supposed to be set, it's almost guaranteed to be a California quail. That and Gambel's quail (another West Coast species) are the only 2 species (out of over 50) with the head plume that animated quail are required to have so that audiences know they're quail.
• People of Latin American descent in other states are as likely as not - and sometimes more likely - to be from the Caribbean or even South America as they are to be from Mexico or Central America. But expect tacos, burritos, piñatas, Dia de los Muertos, northwestern Mexican slang, etc., no matter where you are.
  • It's noteworthy that Latinos in American media became noticeably darker and began to be treated as a distinct race in the 1980s, precisely when Los Angeles replaced New York City as the hip place to be (NYC's Latin American community has historically been dominated by white Cubans and Puerto Ricans).
• As Tom Scott explains, this is one reason that there's a dial tone in movies after someone hangs up: during the celluloid film era, Southern California was one of the few areas in America with independent telephone companies outside of the contemporary Bell monopoly. (The other reason being Rule of Perception combined with The Coconut Effect.)
• Public transit—or rather, the lack thereof. Although public transit isn't common in many cities of the United States, it's still odd to see a show set in a city like New York or Washington, D.C., cities where public transit is robust and owning a car is a luxury, if not an outright hindrance, and no one in some shows or movies even considers taking the subway or bus.

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