You’re Not Gonna Like This: Bad Heroes

2000s:

Superhero Movies

At this point, you may be questioning where I’m going with this. The list of examples I gave were mostly cop movies, but then, all of a sudden, I switched to Batman and superheroes? Yes, Batman is the ultimate vigilante and superheroes in general are vigilante fantasies. 

We don’t think about them as such because a lot of the time, the threats they face off against are made out to be too big for a simple police officer to handle. Of course we need someone working outside of the law with a ton of technology or some superpower to save us. That idea and the fantastical element of the movies distracts from the fact that these are heroes who are unaccountable to the law. 

Superheroes routinely cause the type of destruction to cities that would cause the government to issue a state of emergency like they do with hurricanes or tornadoes. The Marvel movies actually tried to tackle this idea with Civil War, but they really made it more about watching superheroes fight other superheroes rather than delving into the idea that Iron Man and Captain America are at odds with each other about whether or not they should still be allowed to act as vigilantes or register with the government.

But, I’m not going to get really deep into the superhero stuff because ultimately, I think those movies are less harmful to the national psyche than the more realistic cop movies. The fantastical nature of the threats, the bright costumes, and the completely unrealistic nature of how they jump around dimensions makes those movies much less likely to sway people’s ideas of how to properly enforce the law. 

Batman, though, is the ultimate manifestation of this extralegal, ultra violent, vigilante meme that people love to believe in because technically, he’s just a regular guy with lots of money. That honestly makes it worse because now we have people who believe that billionaires will actually work in the best interest of the world. 

They don’t even pay attention to the idea that this particular billionaire believes it is the best interest of Gotham to violently attack generally poor people in Gotham committing crimes. It’s  kind of the same way that billionaires tend to want to “fix the world” off of the lowest paid labor possible and have the regular police to protect their businesses when the poor people start to speak out. But I digress…sort of…so let’s get back to the vigilante cop thing. 

In all those movies we grew up watching, and were increasingly available through cable tv, DVDs, and now streaming, the rogue cop was the hero. The other cops, who were actually following the laws were not the heroes. In many cases, they were shown to be part of the problem. 

That has affected our lives in the present moment in a couple of different ways. The first way it affects us is that the people who want to be cops don’t actually want to be cops; they want to be Harry Callahan or Axel Foley. They don’t want to follow the rules like all those “bad cops” from  those movies. They want to be the badass action hero who does not respect the rights of the regular citizens in those movies. 

Second, and this is probably the worst aspect, is that it conditions the public to not find it crazy when a police officer kills someone. It’s just accepted as part of their job, when the reality is killing someone in the line of duty should be very rare. But you put the “hero cop” mentality out there and then you don’t hold them accountable because they are “doing their job” and you get the abuse of power that we see everywhere today. 

It’s not that cops have ever been angels, but now, even when we see it on video, we don’t really register how bad it really is that they have unlimited power over citizens. When regular people are in juries, they have already been conditioned to think that even if the officer went too far, it was probably because the suspect had done something to deserve it because in the movies, that’s what happens. 

Now we have random losers out there across the country dressing up like Army men with their faces covered carrying extremely dangerous weapons kidnapping people and there is a big part of the country that doesn’t even see why that is bad. Even if you think that non-citizens should be deported, it should not be anywhere near acceptable to see unidentified rogue vigilantes out there on the street. 

Unfortunately, they are dressed just like some of the “heroes” we have been watching on film and tv for decades. You may be able to understand the difference between fiction and reality, but even if there’s a slight moment of hesitation, it’s because our “heroes” have been doing this while we cheer for it in our entertainment.  

I know this all sounds very reductive, and it is, but when we are bombarded constantly with certain things throughout our lives, we may not agree, but we do get used to them. I think it’s very possible that we are just sort of comfortable with the police brutalizing citizens because we have been watching that very thing happen most of our lives. So, the next time you are watching something where the cop is breaking all sorts of laws, maybe just question whether that is the sort of thing we should be good with or not.