{"id":142737397,"date":"2024-03-20T12:28:55","date_gmt":"2024-03-20T12:28:55","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.lazyandentitled.org\/?p=142737397"},"modified":"2026-01-12T14:28:56","modified_gmt":"2026-01-12T19:28:56","slug":"unwriting-copaganda","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lazyandentitled.org\/?p=142737397","title":{"rendered":"Unwriting Copaganda"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
“Down these mean streets a man must go who is not himself mean, who is neither tarnished nor afraid. He is the hero…” – Raymond Chandler, “The Simple Art of Murder”<\/h6>\n\n\n\n

Nazis unwelcome: here\u2019s my post about moving this blog off of Substack soon<\/a>. I might put this stinger on every post until then to try to irritate Nazi Sympathizer Hamish McKenzie<\/a>. I might forget\/get bored and stop. Not today though!<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Cotton Xenomorph\u2019s \u201cCryptids and Climate Change\u201d issue continues, with Grace Arenas\u2019s \u201cThe monster of the week is a clunky metaphor for climate change\u201d<\/a> bending genres all over our literary <\/em>Nostromo.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Much like a good plate of tacos, all the media I like is full of pig. Al pastor, carnitas, spare ribs, hot links, chicharr\u00f3n, bacon, center-cut chops: GrubHub or Netflix history? So many of my favorite movies and TV shows and hell even books<\/em> (who reads?) are chalk-full of cops. And if it\u2019s not clear how I feel about those spouse-abusing alcoholics who can\u2019t even witness a self-immolation without drawing their guns<\/a>? I\u2019ve never let my son watch a second of Paw Patrol<\/em>. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Yet I myself just foie gras-ed (shoutout Kaveh Akbar for that<\/em> metaphor) all five seasons of Fargo<\/em> plus True Detective: Night Country<\/em> plus the novel I\u2019m reading this week plus The Batman<\/em> plus most of Columbo<\/em> plus the month of \u201cNoirvember\u201d<\/a> implies the presence of polic\u00eda plus whatever else I\u2019ve been watching recently probably has cops or detectives somewhere\u2014The Great Hypocrite am I, forever trying to stop myself from suggesting to my wife that we watch Seven <\/em>or The Departed<\/em> again. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Se7en<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Obvious thing to get out of the way: I enjoy the aesthetics<\/em> of horror and noir, these black-and-gray shadowy alleys, or sunlight that feels wrong for being bright. I enjoy books and movies that pull me into someplace thrilling and grimily lived-in. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Do these less-sanitized areas of the human experience necessitate a high presence of cops, though? <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Columbo<\/em> fans will tell you that Peter Falk\u2019s character is a lower-class child of immigrants<\/a>, that the LAPD\u2019s greatest detective is immune to copaganda claims. This is a show about the rich behaving above the law and the one man both capable and willing to hold them accountable. Copaganda has many definitions\u2014it \u201ccreat[es] a gap between what police actually do and what people think they do,<\/a>\u201d it is cops doing viral dance videos<\/a> for your most idiot acquaintances to breathlessly plaster all over your Facebook feed, it is police departments helping to create the modern police procedural<\/a>. Columbo certainly doesn\u2019t act like a real cop. Personally, I think Columbo<\/em> isn\u2019t copaganda because I know enough about real police to know that Columbo<\/em> is Lord of the Rings<\/em> for Marxists: a pretty fantasy where a funny guy wins the battle against evil, puffing blue smoke the whole time. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"File:Columbo<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

So let\u2019s say you want to write something like Columbo<\/em>, have some unassumingly-right-about-everything-in-a-world-that-doesn\u2019t-value-that speak truth to wealth? Rian Johnson went the private detective route with Benoit Blanc, then went a more surprising direction in Poker Face<\/em> with Charlie, a card dealer-turned-drifter with magical powers. Fletch\u2014you know, from the Fletch<\/em> movies\u2014is an investigative reporter. That\u2019s not a bad move. It\u2019s his job to find something out, and while you\u2019d have to have him working at ProPublica <\/em>or Bellingcat<\/em> instead of a local paper today, I trust this is a man who has no problem asking hard questions and making rich people uncomfortable and living with knowledge he maybe wishes he hadn\u2019t sought. Problem is, writers writing writers always risks developing a bad case of hairy palms<\/a>. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"File:Jon<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Fargo<\/em> hewed close to its movie inspiration\u2014lone good cop with grounded, family-based morals working in a department too stupid and indifferent to understand the near-supernatural evil it faces\u2014for three excellent seasons. Season four, though, puts the moral\/emotional core in the hands of Ethelrida Pearl Smutny, the chaotic good teenage daughter of humble funeral home owners. The main cop is a cowardly, indecisive loser who can only speak without a stammer when he\u2019s saying something racist (side note: as someone with a stammer and social anxiety, I absolutely do <\/em>wish those things on racist cops. Wish things you suffer from on your worst enemies, homies). Season five goes out of its way to show how useless cops are in just about any remotely important situation\u2014a season very deliberately set in 2019, I believe. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Jon<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

I get why Fargo<\/em> has that trajectory. As it exists in fiction, the \u201ccop\u201d or \u201cdetective\u201d is not meant to resemble anything real. In fiction, a cop or detective is the same as a knight (rooted in, say, Herakles\/Beowulf\/Gilgamesh), an intellectual wizard (rooted in, say, Socrates\/Sherlock Holmes\/Marlowe) or both (Jesus H. Christ\/Jedi Knights of the Old Republic). It\u2019s someone with the courage and smarts to face down evil when confronted. Someone with the juice\u2014whether that\u2019s societal permission (gun and badge) or internal motivation (their dad got shot the day before retirement). They may or may not be able to change things\u2014Philip Marlowe is the quintessential \u201cguy who isn\u2019t able to affect much, but sure learns something the hard way\u201d\u2014but they\u2019re someone who makes you think, as Raymond Chandler says, \u201cthe story is this man\u2019s adventure in search of a hidden truth, and it would be no adventure if it did not happen to a man fit for adventure. If there were enough like him, the world would be a very safe place to live in, without becoming too dull to be worth living in.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"The<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

I do look to books and movies for adventure, is something I\u2019ve learned about myself. \u201cAdventure\u201d and \u201cescapism\u201d are somewhat loaded terms\u2014I do prefer my fiction to honestly reflect the real world somehow<\/em>, I\u2019m just also looking for the occasional werewolf, you know? The occasional elder god reminding me we\u2019re all but specks floating in an indifferent and meaningless universe. The bone-chilling reminder that unstoppable evil lurks outside my door, but the light of my family can keep me safe and warm through the night. Plus a little adventure. Is that so much to ask for? <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Let\u2019s talk about True Detective<\/em>. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Rust<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Not everyone knows this, but there are three seasons of that show very <\/em>worth watching (sorry, Colin Farrell and Rachel McAdams, I wanted better for you and the city of Los Angeles, too). One way I like to think about it is breaking apart the title: what does it mean to be \u201ctrue,\u201d a \u201cdetective,\u201d or a \u201ctrue detective?\u201d Each season (worth watching) is about detectives who want to pursue cases that the bosses (and higher higher-ups, like CEOs and state senators) want to go away. What does it mean to have characters who want to really get to the truth of something, especially something they\u2019re \u201cnot supposed\u201d to learn? The advantage of those characters being cops is that badge and gun gives them state-sponsored carte blanche to go anywhere\/do whatever. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Of course, this is the problem with cops in real life. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

For all their many flaws, though, what compelled me about Rust Cohle\/Marty Hart, Wayne Hays\/Roland West, and Liz Danvers\/Evangeline Navarro is part of that Chandler quote. These are people fit for adventure and in search of a hidden truth. That\u2019s a strong<\/em> way to conceive of a character. One of my favorite recent protagonists, Kris from <\/a>I Keep My Exoskeletons To Myself<\/a><\/em>, I don\u2019t know if she thought she in search of a deeper truth or if she thought she was fit for adventure. But parenting a child in a cruel world is absolutely an adventure, and \u201cwhy are these people so cruel\u201d or \u201chow do we live around these cruel people\u201d are some pretty quintessential questions. That\u2019s one example of a main character who isn\u2019t a cop but swaggers around the page as someone who knows how to move through a hard world, even if they\u2019re figuring it out second by second. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

But I\u2019m getting sidetracked, and I can feel Jodie Foster looking at me with a withering wrap it up<\/em> gaze like I\u2019m little Petey Prior.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"True<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

My point is that cops, as they are depicted in fiction, are great adventurers. You send them into the ice caves of the night country or horror house that is John Doe\/Riddler\u2019s apartment? Yeah, that\u2019s compelling. That\u2019s not remotely<\/em> how cops are in real life, though, and it\u2019s irresponsible to depict them that way in fiction. Benson and Stabler and Ice Cube are how we got militarized police and QAnon. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

So I\u2019ll be thinking a lot about characters who aren\u2019t cops who can make for good adventurers. Also who aren\u2019t journalists, though, maybe I\u2019m softening my stance on journalists as main characters. If you have any good books about regular dudes getting swept up into adventures? Remember that \u201cdudes\u201d applies to men, women, and non-binary homies, The Big Lebowski <\/em>is my favorite movie, and hit me up in the comments. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Aight. If you made it this far, here\u2019s some Propagandhi:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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