Black Masculinity and the Cinema of Policing
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The Ruse of Engagement: Black Masculinity and the Cinema of Policing Jared Sexton American Quarterly, Volume 61, Number 1, March 2009, pp. 39-63 (Article) Published by The Johns Hopkins University Press DOI: 10.1353/aq.0.0057 For additional information about this article http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/aq/summary/v061/61.1.sexton.html Access Provided by University of Manitoba at 03/23/11 6:51PM GMT Black Masculinity and the Cinema of Policing | 39 The Ruse of Engagement: Black Masculinity and the Cinema of Policing Jared Sexton I’m your worst nightmare. I’m a nigga with a badge. —Reggie Hammond, 48 Hours Blacks know something about black cops. They know that their presence on the force doesn’t change the force or the judges or the lawyers or the bondsmen or the jails. They know how much the black cop has to prove, and how limited are his means of proving it: where I grew up, black cops were yet more terrifying than white ones. —James Baldwin, The Devil Finds Work You can shoot me, but you can’t kill me. —Alonzo Harris, Training Day his article seeks to contribute to a discussion of the peculiar place of commercial black filmmaking in the cultural politics of the post–civil Trights era United States. It begins by situating what some consider a defining moment in black film history—the 2002 Academy Awards—with respect to widely-circulated images of black participation in projections of a “New American Century,” with all of its intensified policing and militarism. I argue that a certain recrudescence of antiblackness in popular culture has accompanied the growing clamor about “blacks in officialdom” that both lib- eral and conservative variants of multiculturalism have amplified over the last several decades, a clamor that reached fever pitch with the recent presidential election cycle. In this light, we might consider whether setting this contradic- tory logic of representation alongside the continuing conditions of segregation that characterize black existence in the United States over the same period does not undermine too easy assertions about contemporary black inroads in state and civil society. More to the point, I want to suggest that such convergence complicates current thinking about an institutionalized black complicity with the structures of white supremacy, especially in the immediate aftermath of 9/11. These various guises of black empowerment, particularly images of black masculinity as state authority, should not be simply contrasted with the ©2009 The American Studies Association 40 | American Quarterly associations of illegitimacy, dispossession, and violence that seem to otherwise monopolize the signification of racial blackness. Rather, the former should be understood as an extension of the latter. Director Antoine Fuqua’s collabora- tion with Denzel Washington in Training Day (2001) provides a case study for our discussion, and Fuqua’s professional ascent more generally articulates some of the political, economic, and cultural conditions for a popular and lucrative antiblack black visibility on a global scale.1 The Black Culture Industry It is a matter of the most disastrous sentimentality to attempt to bring black men into the white American nightmare, and on the same terms, moreover, which make life for white men all but intolerable. —James Baldwin, The Devil Finds Work In the corporate media, the seventy-fourth annual Academy Awards event was unofficially dubbed “The Black Oscars.” The selection of comedian Whoopi Goldberg as master of ceremonies and the collective honoring of Sidney Poitier, Halle Berry, and Denzel Washington prompted some commentators to wonder whether Hollywood had turned the proverbial corner with regard to its politics of racial exclusion and marginalization. The gala began its run by giving Sidney Poitier the Academy’s Lifetime Achievement Award, thereby canonizing the premier black actor of the postwar, or civil rights, era. Halle Berry’s wholly unprecedented Oscar for Performance by an Actress in a Lead- ing Role—the first black woman to take home the trophy—for her lead as Leticia Musgrove in Marc Forster’s Monster’s Ball (2001) seemed to confirm the mood of the moment. Director Antoine Fuqua’s otherwise unexceptional police action film, Training Day (2001), was touted by the critical establish- ment as a vehicle for one of Denzel Washington’s most controversial and gripping roles since his eponymous lead in Spike Lee’s Malcolm X (1992), and Washington’s Oscar for Performance by an Actor in a Leading Role was termed a crowning achievement of an already stellar on-screen career. In fact, several critics suggested that the historic top prize, only the second to go to a black actor (the first went to Poitier nearly forty years earlier), provided a sort of belated vindication for a long-recognized talent whose efforts—most especially in Lee’s biopic—were sorely unrewarded for no other apparent reason than that the business of filmmaking remains unrelentingly hostile to any “legitimate” or “respectable” black presence. As such, the official praise was marked as an awkward sign of overdue popular cultural redress, a small Black Masculinity and the Cinema of Policing | 41 but richly symbolic instance of racial justice in the notoriously racist business of mass media entertainment.2 Interestingly, the hailing of Washington and Berry together on the same stage (as Washington cracked, “Two birds in one night, huh?”) suggested that both black men and black women would now enjoy a new day in Hollywood (as Berry claimed, “this door tonight has been opened”). Yet, the gendered specificity of this watershed racial affair would not be lost on even the casual observer. Whereas Berry, upon receiving the award, notably remarked that her nod from the Academy came in the wake of a long and glaring absence, Washington attempted to establish beneath his recognition a certain lineage or inheritance, however slim or fragile. In his acceptance speech, Washington paid homage to Poitier as the latter looked on approvingly from the audience, saying: “I’ll always be chasing you Sidney. I’ll always be following in your footsteps. There’s nothing I would rather do, sir. Nothing I would rather do.” Yet, we must ask: what footsteps are these to follow? Who, or, moreover, what is Sidney Poitier for Denzel Washington to chase? Of course, Poitier is a trailblazer: his Oscar for Best Actor as Homer Smith in Lilies of the Field (1963) interrupted the color bar on the position of Hollywood’s leading man, the foremost site of cultural production for the fictions of racial whiteness and normative masculinity (though this brief hiatus cannot be said to subvert or challenge the force or function of either). More important to the current discussion is Poitier’s role as Detective Virgil Tibbs in Norman Jewison’s award-winning In the Heat of the Night (1967). In this capacity, Poitier, at the height of his powers, introduced to the big screen a bizarre figure whose prominence grew steadily in the following years and whose appearance proliferated wildly in the closing decades of the twentieth century. Mr. Tibbs is, of course, the first significant black male cop in U.S. film history and, as such, predecessor to a considerable list of creatures whose careers can scarcely be labeled salutary. In this line, one thinks of William Roundtree’s Detective John Shaft (Shaft), Billie Dee Williams’s Detective Matthew Fox (Nighthawks), Eddie Murphy’s Detective Axel Foley (Beverly Hills Cop), Danny Glover’s Sergeant Roger Murtaugh (Lethal Weapon), Will Smith’s Detective Mike Lowrey and Martin Lawrence’s Detective Marcus Burnett (Bad Boys), Morgan Freeman’s Detective Dr. Alex Cross (Kiss the Girls, Along Came a Spider) and Detective William Somerset (Se7en), Wesley Snipes’s Detective Harlan Regis (Murder at 1600), Chris Tucker’s Detective James Carter (Rush Hour), Samuel L. Jackson’s Lieutenant Danny Roman (The Negotiator) and his 2000 reincar- 42 | American Quarterly nation of Detective John Shaft, Lawrence Fishburn’s Officer Russell Stevens (Deep Cover), and, last but not least, Denzel Washington’s Alonzo Harris. Or, before that, Washington’s Officer Xavier Quinn (The Mighty Quinn), Officer Nick Styles Ricochet( ), Lieutenant Parker Barnes (Virtuosity), Detec- tive John Hobbes (Fallen), Detective Lincoln Rhyme (The Bone Collector), Special Agent Anthony Hubbard (The Siege), Chief Matthias Whitlock (Out of Time), Agent John Creasy (Man on Fire), Detective Keith Frazier (Inside Man), Agent Doug Carlin (Deju Vu), Detective Zachary Garber (The Taking of Pelham 1-2-3) or, even, private investigator Easy Rawlins (Devil in a Blue Dress). As of this writing, Washington has been cast as an officer of the law thirteen times and, in related fashion, appeared as a current or former military officer another seven. To date, he has appeared in uniform in more than half of the nearly forty films he has completed since his 1981 debut in Michael Schultz’s Carbon Copy. As noted, nearly every noteworthy black male actor of the post–civil rights era has made this professional rite of passage as officer, detective, sergeant, lieutenant, or chief. All have played roles as either a cop or a soldier and the lion’s share have earned their reputations and their largest paydays in such roles, perhaps none more so than Washington. What does this trend indicate about the conditions of labor and the politics of representation for black male performers in mainstream cinema post–civil rights? What does it imply about the shifting terrains of film culture and its relations to coordinates of race, gender, sexuality, and the state? How is it in- volved in the image management of an emergent and uncertain black middle class or, rather, the profoundly convoluted focus on class stratification (i.e., distributions of employment, income, and formal education) among the black population? How is the black male cop installed within the broad category of crime films, the genre of police films, or even the subgenre of police action films; and how is this cultural politics related to the widespread vindication of policing black people in contemporary law and society?3 James Baldwin penned the seminal reading of Mr.