Quick hypothetical:
say you were like, a marketing man
and it was your job to pitch a new rebrand campaign to the public
say you're working on energy drinks
And most people, they love the old brand, they built a lot of trust in that brand
So, whatever you do
they want something that still reminds them of the old energy drink they used to guzzle down with glee
Here's the problem:
it turns out one of the key ingredients of your drink
dissolves some people's lungs
Not a majority of people
In fact, it's a minor enough problem that most people don't even know that this side effect existed
but obviously, for the people affected and anyone familiar with this issue, let's say trust in the brand is
low
So now you have two chunks of the population
with radically different experiences with your brand and you need to appeal to both of them
So
What do you do?
"Mom, I know your intentions are good, but
aren't the police a protective force that maintains the status quo for the wealthy elites
Don't you think we ought to attack the roots of
social problems instead of jamming people into overcrowded prisons?"
"Look, Lisa, it's McGriff, the Crime Dog!
Hello Lisa, help me bite crime!
Ruff ruff!"
(intro music)
(record scratch)
So a few months back, I started writing a series about cops in movies
My goal initially was to track how the representation of police in media has changed across the last few decades
starting first with the prototype loose cannon cop Dirty Harry
Harry was an incredibly popular and highly influential character, and it was pretty fascinating
looking at both him and the underlying philosophy he represented
To my mind, it wasn't exactly a coincidence that a character like Dirty Harry would see such popularity
right around the time-
(American national anthem)
was declaring massive reforms to the war on crime
putting in place harsh and brutal policies
that pretty much set the stage for the high levels of police violence and incarceration
now seen in the U.S.
After that, I took a look at later characters, like Judge Dredd and Robocop
"Stay out of trouble."
Written explicitly as mockeries of those philosophies
who nonetheless wound up distorted by Hollywood into something else entirely
Judge Dredd became an unironic heroic figure of the establishment
and Robocop became
"The ultimate super-cop:
Robocop."
What these videos wound up highlighting were that, in large parts
popular portrayals of cops in media are usually the result
of wider movements in society and often serve to reinforce those ideologies
even if that means completely malforming the original intentions of those characters
Just putting out new stories that subvert these ideas isn't enough
One way or another, society finds a way
I knew I wanted to do a third entry in this series
but there wound up being a lot of different routes for me to take
Initially, it was gonna be a video focused on police propaganda in kids' media
But that then led to me re-watching Disney's Zootopia
and getting the idea for a different video
And then the actual police started educating themselves with Disney's Zootopia-
More recently, I've started watching HBO's Watchmen
that has quite a lot of hot spicy takes about law enforcement in the modern day
But there's already a bunch of great videos saying a lot of what I had to say in mind already out
So, more recently
I was streaming L.A. Noire
So there's this thing about L.A. Noire
if you haven't played it, essentially you play as a detective in the late 1940s
Cole Phelps, this very hard-nosed no-nonsense police investigator quickly rising through the ranks of the force
with his inquisitive outside-of-the-box mindset
Cole isn't interested in lazy answers to complicated questions
and just beating some minorities into an easy confession
and this is really what sets him apart from the more outdated police stereotypes he's surrounded by
Now, with all this in mind
this game was published by Rockstar Games
Yep, that Rockstar Games
"Now, would- do you want to be my friend?
Ahh...
Boom
Catch!
Wasted, but all I ever wanted was a friend."
Just to be clear, it wasn't the same development team nor the same engine
but for specific elements of the game
you can definitely see some of that GTA DNA
and that gives us-
"Woah!"
L.A. Noire is a game that a lot of thought and care clearly did go into
It's surprisingly narratively complex
and each case feels like the team really wanted to give you
some luscious full-bodied mystery to wrap your head around
I liked it when it came out, I liked replaying it with my spouse a few years ago, and I like it now
But I can't deny that my favorite thing about playing L.A. Noire
is acting out the role of a sensible matter-of-fact investigator
slowly uncovering a deep-seated conspiracy
while doing this
Having Phelps rifle off some scripted monologue about his personal philosophy or argue politics with his partner
while barreling down the sidewalk in a truck we just stole
and watching NPCs go flying over the dashboard
is always
always
great
"Let's go."
Shoving to the ground random innocent bystanders as I sprint my way over to a crime scene
only to immediately flip into "Cole Phelps, observant rational detective man"
(chef kiss)
The dissonance of embodying the role of this otherwise typical level-headed trustworthy investigator
who also engages in wild acts of needless rampant brutality
never stops being funny
...until it did
Fair warning, this is where things get serious
May 25th was the last time I decided to stream myself playing some L.A. Noire
It was also the evening 46 year old ex-security guard George Floyd would be brutally murdered by Minneapolis police
an act captured in heartbreaking detail by a bystander to the event
Alongside Eric Garner, Philando Castile, Michael Brown, Tamir Rice, Freddie Gray, Alton Sterling
and thousands, thousands more
Floyd would be yet another casualty in the epidemic of police violence against the black community in the U.S.
His crime was being accused of possessing a counterfeit $20 bill
this event would spark a series of protests across the U.S.
with many voicing how sick and tired they were of this never-ending cycle of discrimination and brutality
particularly towards marginalized communities
I went to some of those protests and was met with riot police
firing tear gas and rubber bullets indiscriminately
into crowds of unarmed peaceful protesters
I had saw mace sprayed into the faces of people doing nothing
but chanting slogans arm in arm with other protesters
and gas canisters shot into medical areas set up to help treat people who had been assaulted by the police
It turns out this was by no means the worst of it
and in the days since, we've seen cop cars rammed into crowds of protesters
journalists fired at and arrested for trying to report on what's happening
and a president gleefully boasting about all of this
and his plans to further ramp up the severity of police response
Obviously, there is no real parallel between the cartoonish video game violence of L.A. Noire
and the real-world brutality we've seen over the last few weeks
Clearly, I do not think acting like this in a video game
somehow encouraged violence towards innocent bystanders
If I thought that was the case
I wouldn't have been streaming this game in the first place
considering police brutality like we've seen recently is hardly a new thing
This isn't like, "you play as a Nazi in a video game and now you're a Nazi"
I don't think the game is even trying to encourage
emulating the kind of violence seen by real world law enforcement
While L.A. Noire does tackle ideas of racial discrimination and predjudice
it almost feels like you have to actively fight the game's mechanics to
successfully pull off the violent acts you can pull off in the game
and even then you get docked points at the end of each case for doing so
"Yeah, yeah, conduct, whatever. Yep- that's- yeah, yeah, yeah. Every case has its own-"
Total tangent
but anyone who's tried to do what I do in the game
is probably well aware of the weird mechanical dance you have to do to actually push and run people over
since NPCs are programmed to unnaturally jolt out of your way
unless you get them in a very specific spot
(splat noise)
The weird finesse of actually being able to do that consistently is really part of the-
See, even when I tell myself all of these things
about the clear difference between what I'm doing in the game and what's going on out there
I can't deny it kind of
killed the joke
I know everything about the context of
this
and this
are completely different
But seeing that in the real world just
immediately made doing it not fun anymore
The absurdity of it was gone
despite everything
the simulation now felt too real
"Dovahkiin!
Dragonborn!"
"Fus ro dah!"
There's a lot of ways popular media fulfills certain desires by audiences
one obvious example is wish fulfillment
Imagining yourself in this grand important role in society
even when it's unlikely or outright impossible for you yourself to ever be in that position
This particular desire is seen a lot in movies and A LOT in video games
primarily since the meat and potatoes of game design
usually involves embodying a single character capable of
a wide array of impossible physical feats
I know when I was a small child
there's nothing I wanted to be more than a small green crocodile who jumps real high and goes
"Yazoo!"
Second to this kind of escapism is, unexpectedly
something that feels like it's appealing to the complete opposite desire within our inner psyches
rather than experiencing power we don't get to feel in the real world
experiencing the powerlessness we'd rather not
the catharsis of experiencing
pain, sorrow, and fear in an artificial setting often seen in drama, tragedy, and most explicitly
horror
(squeak)
Fear of death and loss are near-universal
and there is a kind of emotional release in experiencing these feelings in a controlled environment
where you personally are in no real danger
In the case of media
you realize that no matter how much you feel connected with the protagonist of a work of fiction
you'll be fine
The Krampus will never get you
What does any of this have to do with police brutality?
What does any of this have to do with L.A. Noire?
And what does this have to do with the depiction of cops in media?
I'll let you know... right after I mention this video's sponsor, Skillshare
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"You won't hurt me."
"Yeah? Why not?"
"Because you're a policeman.
There are rules for policemen."
"Yeah...
So my captain keeps telling me."
(laugh track)
(sitcom intro music)
So, there's something you'll find in most media depictions of law enforcement at any point in the last few decades:
the wink and nod
"Is that legal?"
"No."
(laugh track)
We saw this in the Dirty Harry movies, in Judge Dredd and Robocop
and we see it in pretty much every popular media franchise starring cops
You know what I mean when I say this
Like, you know that moment where something happens
that would obviously be way over the line in the real world
Like, some moment
where the main character blatantly violates their code of conduct or takes part in an act of horrific violence
But then the media kind of lampshades it in that, "yeah, that'd be pretty messed up in the real world, right?" way
"Schmidt, we got one!"
"We got one! I got him!"
"Yes!"
"Woooo!"
"Drop my nuts on your motherfucking forehead!"
...That.
There is just an endless supply of examples I could use here
but none stick out to me so well as the Kurt Russell/Sylvester Stalone banger, Tango & Cash
"What is this?"
"English 101."
"Oh."
Released in 1989
Tango & Cash was actually going to be
a bit of a subversion from the kind of representation I'm talking about
bucking the trend of the increasingly self-aware parody of the genre
with a more dark and serious buddy-cop film
Obviously as a result of this, the original director was fired three months into filming
and what we ended up with is just
so overflowing with cheesy knowing references to the ridiculous direction these kinds of movies were taking
(suspenseful music)
"Jesus!"
"Jesus!"
This happens in the first two minutes of the film
In fact, the entire plot centers around the fact that the titular duo, Tango and Cash
are just so wildly overboard in their rule-breaking, violence, and collateral damage
that the bad guys get them out of the picture simply by
setting up an obvious slam-dunk civil case against them
what follows is incitement of a prison riot, a break out, some break ins
brutal interrogations, more gratuitous violence, and then in the end they gun down the big bad
and get welcomed back in the force with open arms and new celebrity reputation
(mario death noise)
It's this heightened satirical mode of police representation that quickly overtook
remotely grounded depictions over the last few decades
Lethal Weapon, Police Academy, Naked Gun, Beverly Hills Cop, Cop Out
"Stop! Please!"
(laughter)
Bad Boys, Bad Boys 2, Bad Boys for Life
the Fast and Furious franchise, Rush Hour franchise
"Can't you just, like, give us a warning or something?"
"That depends. You girls like Chinese?"
(screaming)
Super Troopers, The Other Guys, The Heat, Ride-Along
(yelling)
"Oh, shit."
"You shot me!"
And about four different John Woo movies
In the world of self-aware spoofs of police corruption, incompetence, and trigger-happy brutality
business has been consistently booming for pretty much the last five decades
movies like Starsky & Hutch and 21 Jump Street
themselves adaptations of works that were pretty out-there depictions of the police for their times
deliberately dial up the absurdity and terrible police behavior significantly
with varying degrees of critical and commercial success
"A pony!"
(crowd screaming)
(tragic music)
On the flip-side, you get movies like Dragnet and Chips, which take the source material
and strip out any attempt at a remotely grounded depiction of law enforcement in favor of
"Oh! I'm shot."
"Ohhh shit! Oh shit!"
"What's wrong with you?! You shot your partner!"
Go far enough, you even start getting stuff like John McTiernan's Last Action Hero
a story of a beloved franchise movie cop being transported into the real world
The film is essentially a parody of a parody
not just reproducing this new default of wildly exaggerated law enforcement
but taking things to a meta level
underlining how what's ultimately become the dominant form of movie cop
really has less in common with actual police as it does with a cartoon
"Whiskers! Where the hell have you been?"
"Sorry, Jack. Furball problem."
Turn on the TV nowadays, there's shows like Brooklyn Nine-Nine
where these wink/nod absurdities are like 1 in every 10 jokes
or Paradise PD where wink/nods are just
just- just every single joke
Now, to be clear
I only
recently started watching Brooklyn Nine-Nine
and it's very cute and funny and I like it, just as I like many of the things I've listed here
I am NOT condemning doing the thing
where you comedically reframe a serious thing to make it more palatable and less depressing
"This man is behaving well. His reward is the canoe.
This time, he can sit in the canoe for up to an hour."
I am specifically condemning Paradise PD and Cop Out, though
only for being Paradise PD and Cop Out
The point would be that in the track from movies like Dirty Harry to Robocop
Tango & Cash, and The Last Action Hero
right up to now
these overtly satirical takes on cops and media are no longer subversions
they are the standard
In the modern day alongside waves of increased awareness
around issues of police corruption, prejudice, and violence
we are inundated with these detached, cartoonish representations of law enforcement
A series of extreme caricatures constantly reminding us that, "haha, these things sure are messed up!
It's a good thing this isn't real, right?"
It would be easy to call a lot of cop based media
wish-fulfillment
After all, law enforcement has so regularly been the role of the archetypal action hero
And there's a reason they're called heroes
Enigmatic, highly proficient figures who stand out from the crowd
and save the day with cunning wit and bravery no one else had in them
And the fact is, a lot of the time, they're just cool
Bruce Willis, Will Smith, Channing Tatum
The Rock, Ice Cube, and of course
Will Ferrell
But this alone would not explain this particular trend of cop depiction in media
the knowingly incompetent, vicious, brutal
often bordering on sociopathic behaviors I've mentioned above
"You're pulling a gun on me?! You guys are cops!"
(laugh track)
So, what does that sound like to you?
What does it remind you of to imagine a certain source of anxiety in society
an anxiety growing increasingly over the decades
being embodied through these caricatures whose negative traits have been
so exaggerated that, while it reminds you of your concerns about their real-world equivalents
allows you to have a kind of emotional distance
that helps keep the media enjoyable
Yep, the modern media cop is the unholy combination of the wish-fulfillment action hero, and-
(horror music)
Horror fiction trends reflect cultural anxieties
this isn't really a new or novel observation
Increased fears around industrialization and loss of religious faith?
You get Frankenstein
Rampant colonialism and the rise of social Darwinists theory?
Alien takeovers
Throw in a cold war and fears about Soviet spies
"They're here already!
You're next!"
The thing about trends is, pretty much inevitably
they become stale
with the changing palates of audiences, signalled sometimes by offense
usually just disinterest
In a 2014 book on the evolution of modern horror movies
Alexandra Heller-Nicholas would observe the rise of brutal torture porn and found-footage horror in U.S. domestic cinema
in the years directly following September the 11th
Brutal and gory horror fiction had obviously existed before the turn of the millennium
but often still less framed in such a grounded reality and even then rarely seen as viable for a general public
more interested in farce, fantasy, and parody
"Oh, look at me, I'm all dead! I'm a gross scary severed head."
One national tragedy later, suddenly here were mega hit franchises like Hostel and Saw
Movies which were, to put it plainly
just about human beings doing horrible things to other human beings
It might not look like it but this is catharsis
a means to process terror and anxiety
that were left to sit quietly in the back of the public consciousness
following a massive source of national trauma
While comparatively light-hearted and satirical franchises
like Scary Movie and Scream
would continue to exist into the 2000s, the days where those types of movies dominated the horror genre
quickly died out
Oh, also, I'm not gonna get a chance to talk about this again
Was anyone else pretty fucked off as a kid that the King Kong that was in this poster
wasn't actually in the movie?
Yeah...
The thing is, if I were to try and draw a parallel between this and the trajectory of the cop movie
into greater and greater caricature
Wouldn't that just be a total contradiction?
If my whole conclusion here
is that as this brutality starts feeling more and more real
the appetite to see it shown in such a goofy farcical manner dissipates
why isn't that actually the case here?
Very early on in this video, I brought up incidents of rampant police violence that led to great national outcry
incidents that have only become more visible with the advent of online social media
So why is it that, even to this day, cop fiction has not made this change?
Why is this genre still not only dominated by the same throwaway goofball model it was 40 years ago
but if anything has only gotten more absurd
(screaming)
As is hopefully obvious at this point in the video
my analogy about rebranded energy drinks was pretty transparently supposed to refer to the situation
around modern-day cop media
Yes, plenty of extremely high-profile assaults and killings by police have taken place
bringing significant bad press for law enforcement in the U.S.
The same goes internationally such as the killings of Mark Duggan and Anthony Grainger in the U.K.
"Who do you hold responsible?"
"The police."
Yet, as with the analogy
these are not cases that affect everyone equally
and as it's become increasingly obvious
it's specific marginalized communities who almost always bear the brunt of this violence and injustice
Faith in law enforcement
especially in low-income black and latino communities
has obviously suffered, not only from these highly publicized cases
but simply the everyday experience of living within over-policed districts filled with overeager cops
A working-class black family's experience is not the same as a middle-class suburban white family's
and that's the point
I would argue that the reason we've been in this lasting trend of cop representation
increasingly dissonant with A: the real-world trauma regularly inflicted by police
and B: those police themselves
is a result of this divide
In a recent 2018 Chicago Gallup poll
results found 35 percent of the residents in marginalized communities felt their area
had an overall positive view of the police
with five percent being very positive
The remaining 60 percent had a negative view
15 percent of which was very negative
For the U.S. population in general, the total percentage of those with negative views were 19%
Over half had a highly positive view of law enforcement
The knowing wink/nods to the reality
of police violence and misconduct seen in modern cop media is a capitulation
an acknowledgement of the increasing public knowledge of these issues
Mostly though, this is media made to validate hegemony, the dominant ideology
Even if it wasn't the intention going into it, it is the result of what is popular
And what's popular is a depiction of the police that treats them as cartoonish, likable
and, yes, still fundamentally heroic power fantasies
perversely aspirational figures
How groups and movements are depicted in popular media
is often a good barometer for a society's general view of them
and what we see today tells us that the public understands law enforcement has its problems
but doesn't care that much
The trauma is distant, so the fun never has to end
The simulation never gets too real
Defund the police has surprisingly become a fairly popular rallying cry
in the wake of the George Floyd protests
which continue to gather crowds of many thousands in every state in the U.S.
Again, this isn't the first time we've seen movements like this
One of the most tragic parts of the common protest chant, "I can't breathe"
taken from Floyd's repeated begging to the police as they suffocated him
is that it had already become a popular slogan years prior with the killing of Eric Garner
But at least from the ground, it does look like this time we're seeing something more
Groups who were previously silent to these concerns are now taking notice
The crowds are too large to ignore and the message is resonating too clearly to try and shrug off by claiming
"We would listen to what they were saying, but they keep smashing windows"
As you can probably guess, I would be happy to see the meaningful structural change
that is being cried out for, to see more than just lip service
and shallow capitulations in the face of rampant brutality and corruption
Whether we'll get to see that
remains to be seen
I guess until then, I hope to see you in the protests
and I guess let's keep an eye out for how things change for the modern Hollywood cop
"You crazy guy!
What did you do with my car?!"
"Welcome to America!"
"Look, Lisa! It's McGriff, the crime dog!"
(singing)
"Hey, open up your eyes, you've got to see
alcohol fills your world with lies
listen to me
Don't be a dope!
It's no good when you're drinking
Tell your friends no!
It won't show you the way
Try using your head!
Hey, you better start thinking
You might end up dead!
Being straight is okay
It seems so very nice."
"The whole damn system is clogged up with dirty money, and the news doesn't say a word about it.
Cause, who owns them? The same corporations that own the government.
Courts and the law is all we have left."
(laugh track)
