We are what we watch

So how did we get here?

It’s been a long and turbulent weekend in America, and I hope you’re all safe.

It’s hard not to feel like the country is pulling itself into an even more polarized shape than before, and it’s even harder to find some kind of motivation to write about movies and television shows when I can literally hear civil unrest out the window of my house every night. You’ve seen my neighborhood on the news this weekend. More than once. That’s quite a feeling, and it’s complicated by the fact that I feel like the news is telling me to be afraid of the wrong things based on my own experience. I think this is a moment where we need people in authority to behave even better than normal, and they have failed completely on every front.

There’s nothing going on in entertainment that’s worth discussing. I can’t imagine giving a shit about casting news or Playstation game demos this week. It just doesn’t seem important. I’m willing to admit that I am self-medicating with movies at this point, doing everything I can to manage my own anxiety about these times. What feels right on one day might feel totally wrong the next day, and part of the problem is that we soak ourselves in this pop culture that reinforces some very damaging ideas. Superheroes and police dramas occupy a massive part of our pop culture landscape, and we would do well to really take apart the idea of how many hours a week of network television are spent reinforcing the idea of the police as the heroes, even if they’re presented as flawed. David Simon, for example, has created entertainment that I think digs further into the institutional roots of how systems work than anyone else working in cop fiction, and I see him as the anti-Dick Wolf. I think Wolf is more akin to a Jack Webb, happily serving up an ongoing diet of barely-fictionalized police-centric programming that centers the cops as an absolute good. I was pleasantly surprised to see Wolf react so quickly when the showrunner for the new Chris Meloni Law & Order-verse show started posing on social media with his AR-15 talking about shooting looters, and I think the writers and producers on his shows are smart, decent folks who are genuinely trying to make what they see as socially conscious TV. I have watched enough of the various incarnations of Law & Order to ask why there’s so much of it, and what purpose does it really serve. I think it’s a way of reinforcing cops as a moral center in our society. This programming never seems to challenge the way power works or ask hard questions about why. It puts any of the faults on the individual or on “the system,” without really holding anyone responsible for the myriad real-world ways we are clearly failing our populace. Dick Wolf’s cops may bend the rules, but they’re always doing it for the right reasons, always chasing justice. That’s fine, I guess, but it’s a fantasy world as complete as any Star Wars or Star Trek spin-off. Someone’s watching all of it. The truth is, network TV feels like an increasingly conservative space. Even the idea of network television and the Nielsen-driven ad model feels conservative now, small and outdated in so many ways, no matter how much money is involved.

We are shaped by the times in which we are raised, and I have no doubt that I was shaped deeply by coming into focus as a human being just as Watergate happened. I remember the non-stop parade of Watergate coverage on television. I don’t remember what my parents said about it, or if they even talked about it in front of me, but I was a media sponge at that point, curious and soaking up everything I could in the world around me, and Watergate was everywhere. I couldn’t help but grow up with a healthy mistrust of government and authority after that. Then again, I also remember the Bicentennial and the way American went “Yay, America!” crazy during the build-up to the July 4th celebration, so I feel like those opposing impulses were both programmed into me, setting up some real cognitive dissonance over the years. My dad loved action movies and certain action movie stars, and I grew up watching Clint Eastwood and Steve McQueen and James Bond and Charles Bronson, and he showed them to me as movies, not as political texts. My dad didn’t show me Dirty Harry because he was trying to foster an anti-establishment attitude in me or to teach me to question the police and their use of force. He showed it to me because he loves Clint Eastwood and he liked the film.

I’m actually impressed by the way my father handled raising me because I think he’s much more culturally conservative than I am in many ways, and I challenged him often. Not on purpose, but simply because of the difference in what interests us. I noticed that stuff like National Lampoon and Mad magazine made him uncomfortable, and I do think it’s because of how savage they could be as satirical weapons. He likes to laugh as much as anyone, but there’s a certain kind of satirical irreverence that does not work for him. And I don’t think there’s anything wrong with my dad wanting to process the world the way he does. I remember how upset he got when he found my copy of Richard Pryor’s Greatest Hits, which I had tucked away inside my Empire Strikes Back album sleeve, right next to a George Carlin album that equally distressed him. At first, I thought it was the language or the nudity in the case of Lampoon, but the more we talked about it, the more clear it became that it was the content itself. My dad saw this anti-establishment voice in media and it clearly rubbed him wrong. I think he was worried I would turn out to be the same way, and by the time I was 15 and sneaking off to the Cuban Club in Ybor City to see Black Flag and Circle Jerks because I loved the Repo Man soundtrack so much, it was clear that I had wholeheartedly gone down that road.

What’s amazing to me is how much common ground we retain, and I think it’s because my father’s always discussed these things with me instead of just imposing his will. He made his own position clear, but he left room for me to explore and decide for myself, and that respect made all the difference. I didn’t rebel so much as I simply grew in my own direction. When we talk about privilege, I have to acknowledge how lucky I was to be a white suburban teenager making my mistakes. They could have cost me dearly if I’d been born a different color in a different part of the country, and I am lucky I made those mistakes where I did and when I did, before the Internet, before everyone started writing their mistakes in permanent neon. I am who I am now because I was allowed room to digest all of the post-Watergate movies with their baked-in skepticism about government and media and culture. I learned it from All The President’s Men and Nashville and Network and The Parallax View and The Dead Zone and They Live and Soap and Mary Tyler Moore and All In The Family and a thousand other films and TV shows that were created in an atmosphere that was clearly turbulent and chaotic, and the filmmakers and the showrunners whose work spoke loudest to me from those times were the ones who believed that the common humanity that unites us is the same thing that will get us through when things get hardest.

This series of pieces from 2016 is a terrific starting point if you want to really look at the way we shape our relationship with the police via media, and the ways the police have pushed to shape the way they’re portrayed. The entire industry is on pause right now, and it feels like as good a time as any to ask real questions about why we watch what we watch and what it says about us and to us. I don’t imagine anyone’s going to burn the current moneymaking structure to the ground, and why would they? But we can ask ourselves if entertainment is meant to be a mirror of the way things are or if it’s a way of showing the world the face we wish it wore or if it’s supposed to be a way to vent our darker natures in a safe way or if it’s a combination of all those things. We can always dig deeper into our own media diets than we do. I think it’s an easy cop-out to say that I am ruled by whim, but the truth is I have a restless brain and I am constantly provoking it or prodding it or dropping in some new bit of stimulus. I wish I didn’t have such a relentless appetite for media, honestly, but I’ve been doing this for so long that I feel like I’d short circuit completely if I went cold-turkey. The best thing about taking in so much is that none of it becomes my primary wiring. When you talk to someone who only watches one or two things, those one or two things take on so much more importance to them, and those things become a fundamental part of how they process the world. Have you ever seen those people who can only digest political events by describing them in terms of Harry Potter? Or Star Wars? Or superheroes? There are plenty of people out there who are that way with the CSI franchise or with Dick Wolf shows or with the Chicago Fire/P.D./Med series, and when you look at the world outside, you have to realize that there are people whose pop culture is based on the idea that our institutions are run by decent, hard-working people who are trying to do good in the world. They want to believe that and need to believe that. And I think the people making those shows are, for the most part, the same way. They make these shows because this is the world they want to believe in. And, yes, I’ve met hard-working decent police officers who actually do the job well. None of what I’m saying here is meant to be a cynical easy “fuck the police” pose, because I don’t feel that way, either.

But I do think I grew up in an America that didn’t teach me about the Tulsa, Oklahoma race murders when they burned down Black Wall Street. I grew up in an America that didn’t teach me how modern-day police forces evolved from slave-hunting patrols, literally building an antagonistic relationship towards black people into the DNA of the institution. I grew up in an America that knew full well how shameful its racial history was, and instead of educating us about it in a way that would foster growth and change, spent a lot of time and energy during my youth selling the notion that we were past all that, that everything was fixed, and there was nothing to worry about. I may have been born in the shadow of Watergate, but I came of age during the Reagan years, sold the idea that we were fat and happy and prosperous and we were done with civil unrest. It was a lie built on the ongoing marginalization of black Americans, and it was only toward the end of that decade that I finally found a social group that started to open my eyes. Even as an avowed punk rock fan, race was a conversation that wasn’t really centered in the things we were angry about. While Prince and Michael Jackson managed to break into the mainstream of MTV, a lot of black culture did not break through. It was up to me to track it down if I was interested. I was a huge jazz freak, and Miles Davis in particular was an obsession of mine. I listened to old soul music as much as I listened to new stuff coming out. I credit the guys I worked with for turning me on to things I might not have found otherwise. Reggie and Al pushed me to listen to N.W.A., to take rap as seriously as I took punk, to tune in to what was going on with Public Enemy. I absolutely credit Spike Lee for being part of my own awakening because I was so fascinated by him as an indie filmmaker, getting his stuff made and then publishing books about how he did it. He was my Kevin Smith or Quentin Tarantino years before they existed because he was out there doing it by himself and getting it done his way. I was onboard with She’s Gotta Have It, and I think Spike’s incredible sense of voice demanded that I adapt to him. He didn’t make movies hoping for a crossover audience. He made movies that demanded that the mainstream make room for them.

It is up to each of us to decide not only what we consume, but what we’ll take from it. I’ve seen plenty of films and TV shows over the years that underline the message that “might makes right,” and while it certainly feels like that’s true in the immediate short term as we look at footage of peaceful protesters being beaten and gassed and even run over by the people who are supposed to protect and serve us, I think in the long arc of things, we do move towards peace and justice. Slowly. With plenty of steps back for all of the steps forward. And right now, it feels like reason and decency are in retreat. It is both deceptive and dangerous to pretend like this is a momentary thing or a new thing or just the result of one particular set of circumstances. As long as I’ve been in Los Angeles, these tensions have been simmering. My first produced piece of work was a play about police responsibility and race language, and when we staged that play at the Met in Los Angeles, the best conversations I had were with black audiences who showed up. I learned more about my own bubble of privilege just from hearing how that play did or didn’t work for people than I could have in almost any other situation. I would write a very different version of that work today, which is not to say I think I did it wrong back then… but I was certainly writing from a very specific perspective, that of a 23-year-old white kid, and it’s amazing how far sheer arrogance and a constantly reinforced belief that Your Words Are Important will carry you even when you don’t have any actual real-world experience to back up your Very Important Words.

My ideas about police and crime and the streets and any number of other issues at that point were shaped more by media about those things than by the things themselves, and that’s my larger point here today. Hollywood will always make their choices based on money and based on ease, and there are certain dramatic forms that aren’t going anywhere any time soon. People take comfort from certain kinds of media. They’re not going anywhere. It’s up to you to decide how comfortable you are centering certain ideas in your media diet. Think critically about who the heroes are in the work you’re consuming. Who are the villains. How is conflict resolved? What are the stakes? And even if you’re just watching something for escapism, can we ever really escape the idea that everything we digest has an impact on not only how we see the world, but how we treat one another?

I will get back to movies and TV and general distractions in the days ahead, and I hope you’re all safe and healthy tonight.

Black lives matter.

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Image courtesy of 40 Acres & A Mule Filmworks