Thread by @thrasherxy

Finally saw HBO's WATCHMEN last night, and I am now more obsessed than ever with the complicated but undeniable rise of the Black cop as a trope in film & TV since the beginning of the Black Lives Matter era.

Broadly, I read the Black cop as rising as a sympathetic figure, embraced & dispatched in the US cultural zeitgeist to signal "not all cops," make audiences feel sympathy for cops & to encourage equivocation between the dangers Black civilians & cops (Black & non-Black) face

The Black Cop is rising as a trope in comedy (Brooklyn 99) & drama, I think, as a bulwark meant to ease tension between ideas that cops (individually) and policing (as a practice) are inherently racist. I mean, Denzel Washington's son has been dispatched as one in 2 MOVIES.

Regina King was a Black police detective on SOUTHLAND (pre-BLM) & now plays a very different, I think, police character on WATCHMEN. Both are significant. WATCHMEN frames cops as fighting white supremacy, which could be subversive or VERY conservative. We'll see & read closely.

For those asking, I’m well aware there have long been Black cops in film/TV. But like Delueze, I read films/TV w the belief that their meaning is co-constitutive, that viewers make their meaning w makers as we see them. Thus, the rise of the Black cop post-BLM (why they are in...

...so many shows), why makers of projects w anti-policing messages are making pro-police projects w Black cops (Spike Lee), why Denzel’s (Malcolm x himself!) son played 2 Black cops in a single year, why Watchmen (based on a source material NOT about the Tulsa massacre) has...

...Black cops, and why we as a people are being given Black cops in the BLM era based on some Hollywood belief we want and/or should have them, and what a Black cop means as consciousness rises re prison abolition....well, how this all sits in the zeitgeist is of great interest.

A general reminder about how I approach reading culture, which I learned from my sister (who introduced me to bell hooks): I rarely explore ideas meaning “THIS PROVES A POINT!” I much more explore ideas thinking, “Huh. This is an interesting way to think about what’s happening.”

There are exceptions, of course, and times to read culture via direct consequences and quantifiable data. But generally, the pleasure (& it IS a pleasure) of critical thinking is to consider why and how certain tropes appear, trends emerge & intended/unattended narratives exist.

And here, I think we have a LOT to consider (in terms of news, politics, history, law & culture) to think about WHY we are getting the Black cop, how they exist, and how this figure is rising in our collective consciousness.

This tweet thread extends to Basquait’s BLACK COP, which I saw earlier this year at the Brandt Foundation & which a friend saw today at the Guggenheim. As a reader reminded me, it was also Myles Morales dad in Into the Spiderverse which made me think about this trope.

Reading y’all’s (many) responses, some new things I am thinking about that are significant re the Black Cop trope post Black Live Matter

— There are 2 different Black cop films in movie trailers RIGHT NOW

AND

— 3 comics (Luke Cage, Watchmen & Spider-Man) employ this trope

In the realm of comics, why did Luke Cage & his whole Black world, including Black cops, emerge when it did?

Why was Mylee Morales conjured into being with a Black cop father when he was?

Why was Watchmen reimagined w Black cops w a white commander? Why are we sympathetic

in the early scene to a Black cop being unable to get his gun! & why is our heroine (for now) drawing sympathy as a Black cop fighting white supremacy? Comics are SO affectively powerful in the US imaginary (across age, race & class lines). Why are they being dreamed so, NOW?