When did white people start fetishizing police?

[Adam Lambert]

I watched First Blood this past weekend, one of those random 80's movies I somehow never got around to seeing. (First off, it doesn't hold up. It's not a good movie.)

The thing that struck me was how, in a film obviously targeting men and with an overtly pro-military message, the town police force was portrayed as cartoonishly evil. I get that it's symbolic of the supposed poor welcome Vietnam vets received after the war, but it's still striking and I can't imagine the narrative of "small town police force harassing war vet" playing in a film today.

It got me to thinking about the unflattering portrayal of cops in film around that time and in a lot of mainstream 70's / early 80's pop culture. Aside from First Blood, you had Dukes of Hazzard, Smokey and the Bandit, Cannonball Run... plenty of other examples. I'm not even talking about films like Serpico which were based on actual police corruption. I'm talking about common, even low brow entertainment, generally consumed (and still beloved) by rural southern types. , there was an entire genre of music devoted to "outlaws" in the 70's. "Convoy" became one of the dumbest songs ever to top the Billboard Hot 100.

The image of police officers from that period seems to range from fat, incompetent fool to psychopathic piece of . In some ways, they represented the control of the state and were the an hesis of freedom. They were the foil to our protagonists' good time. We cheer for our white, southern heroes or military vets to escape those bad cops.

We still have ty cops portrayed in entertainment today but it's usually found more in your urban or liberal-skewing TV and film (inb4 "everything Hollywood makes is liberal"). There are no country songs about running from the law anymore. Network TV is littered with dozens of cop shows about heroic officers who occasionally have a bad apple in the force. COPS was on the air for 30 years so the rubes could watch regular cops ramble about their jobs and beat up a few alleged criminals.

At some point, the view of rural white Americans towards police seems to have gone from "They're anti-freedom tools of the state" to "They're here to protect us and we shouldn't question them." Today, cops are heroes who put themselves at great risk to protect us from the criminal element that would obviously overrun society if not for them.

So when did this change happen? Was it a result of Reagan-era law & order policy? Did the more nuanced portrayal of cops in shows like Hillstreet Blues and LA Law swing the pendulum the other way? Would a "White male on the run from the law who's out to get him for no good reason" film still play in a southern Back the Blue household?

[vy65]

Interesting post (we'll put aside the Rambo shade for now). I think there was a shift that began with the 80s war on drugs and early 90s race riots. I think the more pronounced the police vs. minorities trope became, the more people began choosing sides -- with poor whites siding with the cops. You can probably trace a line from the late 80s/early 90s to the early 2010s with woke culture, privilege, etc... becoming more and more a part zeitgeist. As that ideology become more popular, people became even more divided. Then, you can start layering in things like a) the OJ Simpson episode b) George Zimmerman c) George Floyd etc... and you get more nodal points for drawing lines. That's how you get people like Karrin, who'll turn a blind eye to police brutality but will a brick about your local university's trans seminar.

It is interesting that from about 2003-2013, things did seemingly cool down with the focus being on the war on terror and then the economic collapse.

[Joseph Kony]

probably right around the time rap music became popular, the police was a slogan, and white people thought that the blacks needed to be reigned in. Once they saw the riots in 1992 they probably started getting hard ons for cops which then carried over into the 2000s when 9/11 happened and the country was fellating any sort of public servant (cops, firefighters, ems, etc). then you have the media constantly stoking the fears tied to muslims, illegal immigrants, the cartels, etc, and white people are convinced they need to be protected by cops from all the evil minorities. having a black president im sure also played into white people thinking more law and order was needed. i don't recall ever seeing one of those blue line flags until like 2012.


social media being ubiquitous in every day life also probably played a big role as now news travels so much faster and farther and people are convinced the world is constantly trying to rob or shoot them

[Adam Lambert]

Interesting post (we'll put aside the Rambo shade for now). I think there was a shift that began with the 80s war on drugs and early 90s race riots. I think the more pronounced the police vs. minorities trope became, the more people began choosing sides -- with poor whites siding with the cops. You can probably trace a line from the late 80s/early 90s to the early 2010s with woke culture, privilege, etc... becoming more and more a part zeitgeist. As that ideology become more popular, people became even more divided. Then, you can start layering in things like a) the OJ Simpson episode b) George Zimmerman c) George Floyd etc... and you get more nodal points for drawing lines. That's how you get people like Karrin, who'll turn a blind eye to police brutality but will a brick about your local university's trans seminar.

It is interesting that from about 2003-2013, things did seemingly cool down with the focus being on the war on terror and then the economic collapse.

Great points. Definitely agree there was a tribal shift of loyalties at play... Poor whites and the whole "the enemy of my enemy is my friend" dynamic.

For the record, Rambo II kicks ass. And interesting to see the franchise pivot to full-on propaganda by the third installment.

[Trill Clinton]

Recent memory for me had to be 9/11. Seems like Cops got more of the glory while firefighters and other first responders were an afterthought.

[vy65]

Great points. Definitely agree there was a tribal shift of loyalties at play... Poor whites and the whole "the enemy of my enemy is my friend" dynamic.

For the record, Rambo II kicks ass. And interesting to see the franchise pivot to full-on propaganda by the third installment.

I also think it's important to consider the socio-economic strata of white people that we're talking about. Weirdly enough, it's poorer, less educated, and more prone to crime whites that inhabit the socio-economic space that fetishizes LAW AND ORDER. Purely anecdotal, but richer, more urban whites either don't care or actively dislike the police. The poorer/less powerful whites probably gravitate towards police as a way to make themselves feel like they have a modi of control over their lives -- which society, for the most part, don't give a about.

[spurraider21]

Interesting post (we'll put aside the Rambo shade for now). I think there was a shift that began with the 80s war on drugs and early 90s race riots. I think the more pronounced the police vs. minorities trope became, the more people began choosing sides -- with poor whites siding with the cops. You can probably trace a line from the late 80s/early 90s to the early 2010s with woke culture, privilege, etc... becoming more and more a part zeitgeist. As that ideology become more popular, people became even more divided. Then, you can start layering in things like a) the OJ Simpson episode b) George Zimmerman c) George Floyd etc... and you get more nodal points for drawing lines. That's how you get people like Karrin, who'll turn a blind eye to police brutality but will a brick about your local university's trans seminar.

It is interesting that from about 2003-2013, things did seemingly cool down with the focus being on the war on terror and then the economic collapse.

that was my impression at the time as well, hence my now infamous comments of race relations being worse at the end of obama's second term, as popularized by ElNono

[Adam Lambert]

This is the dude that always comes to mind when I think of 70's cops.

[RandomGuy]

I watched First Blood this past weekend, one of those random 80's movies I somehow never got around to seeing. (First off, it doesn't hold up. It's not a good movie.)

The thing that struck me was how, in a film obviously targeting men and with an overtly pro-military message, the town police force was portrayed as cartoonishly evil. I get that it's symbolic of the supposed poor welcome Vietnam vets received after the war, but it's still striking and I can't imagine the narrative of "small town police force harassing war vet" playing in a film today.

It got me to thinking about the unflattering portrayal of cops in film around that time and in a lot of mainstream 70's / early 80's pop culture. Aside from First Blood, you had Dukes of Hazzard, Smokey and the Bandit, Cannonball Run... plenty of other examples. I'm not even talking about films like Serpico which were based on actual police corruption. I'm talking about common, even low brow entertainment, generally consumed (and still beloved) by rural southern types. , there was an entire genre of music devoted to "outlaws" in the 70's. "Convoy" became one of the dumbest songs ever to top the Billboard Hot 100.

The image of police officers from that period seems to range from fat, incompetent fool to psychopathic piece of . In some ways, they represented the control of the state and were the an hesis of freedom. They were the foil to our protagonists' good time. We cheer for our white, southern heroes or military vets to escape those bad cops.

We still have ty cops portrayed in entertainment today but it's usually found more in your urban or liberal-skewing TV and film (inb4 "everything Hollywood makes is liberal"). There are no country songs about running from the law anymore. Network TV is littered with dozens of cop shows about heroic officers who occasionally have a bad apple in the force. COPS was on the air for 30 years so the rubes could watch regular cops ramble about their jobs and beat up a few alleged criminals.

At some point, the view of rural white Americans towards police seems to have gone from "They're anti-freedom tools of the state" to "They're here to protect us and we shouldn't question them." Today, cops are heroes who put themselves at great risk to protect us from the criminal element that would obviously overrun society if not for them.

So when did this change happen? Was it a result of Reagan-era law & order policy? Did the more nuanced portrayal of cops in shows like Hillstreet Blues and LA Law swing the pendulum the other way? Would a "White male on the run from the law who's out to get him for no good reason" film still play in a southern Back the Blue household?

Roughly the time the police were miiltarized after 9-11.

The fact that black people started having al loud enough voice, and that voice said "policing itself is a problem", drew out the generally racist undercurrent of conservatism. (edit)-- the videos of obviously over the top cops kiling black people didn't help. the prevalence of cell phone cameras means that that has always happened... was now on video.

[DarrinS]

Echo chamber

[vy65]

Echo chamber

What an extraordinarily ty (non) take

[Adam Lambert]

Echo chamber

The floor is yours if you'd like to participate with your own well-informed take on the topic, but my guess is you're going to stick to the usual dumb one-liners.

[Joseph Kony]

Karrin clearly hitting the bottle early today since he cant even read the discussion going on in this thread

[boutons_deux]

Go back to 19th century and current myths around it of the Macho Man, Rugged Individual, all alone the frontier, injun fighter, hunter.

RI don't want nobody messing with him, no gubmint, no G-men, no cops, no sheriff, no revenooers coming after him and his (untaxed) moonshine.

RI needs, wants nothing from nobody.

He takes what he wants and nobody, and nobody better not try to stop him

RI is a law unto himself (like the ing Oath Keeper sheriffs who believe they are supreme, unchallenged interpreters, enforcers of the Cons ution)

John Galt is a current myth, greedy, sociopathic, Macho Man.

A major component of America's Toxic Masculinity complex.

But there are 10Ms, 100Ms? of (white) Americans who are blindly, defensively pro-cop, pro-law-enforcement since LE is the official governmental expression of unchallenged, legal racist violence and America's Euro-White Male Supremacy, to keep the non-whites oppressed in their places, harassed, brutalized, incarcerated, killed.

The War on Drugs has been a huge success and also permanent job creator of all of law enforcement.

Police corruption has long and current history. I think one etymology of "cop" is from copper ( 19th century Britain?), as in a copper penny being "bent", crooked, on the take, esp in big cities, like the police sergeant corrupted with the italian drug mob and who busted up Michael Corleone's sinuses.

Poor Al. As Serpico, he also got shot in the face also by other cops.

( btw, SA has a referendum this autumn to bust the police union established in 1974. SA PD and FD eat about 1/3 of SA's budget. )

Apart from popcorn/commercial trash like Rambo, etc, I don't see a widespread opposition (by white people) against law enforcement. In fact, TV is a huge promoter of law enforcement with 100s of cop shows where the cops are the good guys.

[ElNono]

Even the Zorro TV series from the 50's also had that useless, dumb police portrayal as well. I do think the shift has a lot to do with the polarization and rhetoric. When you continually bang the head of the poor and uneducated with 'socialism! communism! terror!' it's only a matter of time until they stock up with guns, the bible and hide behind a LEO.

[boutons_deux]

Trash is endorsed by the national police unions.

Guess who went to, and who didn't, the cop's funeral?

Blue Lives Matter as propaganda and until Trash was inconvenienced, his ty ego too small to pay tribute the cop murdered by Trash's very own cult mob.

[Blake]

This is the dude that always comes to mind when I think of 70's cops.

I think things about small town cops and corruption must have really started surfacing in the 70s.

Because Whitey sure loved him some awwshucks Andy Griffith in the 60s

[johnsmith]

Starsky & Hutch
Miami Vice
Columbo
Hawaii 5-0
Chips
SWAT
Lethal Weapon
48 hours
Hill street Blues
Etc


These and many more were running during the 70’s and 80’s alone and all portrayed the cops as the heroes and “white knights”. There was never a shift as the mindset has existed the entire time.

[johnsmith]

Still plenty of shows/movies today that show cops as bumbling idiots too....

Chief Wiggum
Brooklyn 99
The other guys
Paul Blart
Farva
Etc

[Adam Lambert]

Still plenty of shows/movies today that show cops as bumbling idiots too....

Chief Wiggum
Brooklyn 99
The other guys
Paul Blart
Farva
Etc

Don't really think any of those has an audience of conservative or rural white types.

Maybe Paul Blart, but he strikes me as more of a lovable average joe and the "mall cop" thing makes it clear he's not a real officer.

[johnsmith]

Don't really think any of those has an audience of conservative or rural white types.

Maybe Paul Blart, but he strikes me as more of a lovable average joe and the "mall cop" thing makes it clear he's not a real officer.

You don’t think any of these have a conservative audience?

[johnsmith]

I’m white and conservative and I thought of all those off the top of my head as I’ve seen all of them. So the broad brush you’re painting with is immediately incorrect.

[Joseph Kony]

Lol Wiggum, Farva, and Paul Blart? it's not 2004 dude

[johnsmith]

Lol Wiggum, Farva, and Paul Blart? it's not 2004 dude

Ok... 21 and 22 Jumpstreet.

The OP discusses the change in rural Americans thinking Inregards to police. He believes it’s tied to entertainment. Folks that speak about these things both in person and online are genuinely over the age of 5 or 6, so what’s out currently is kind of irrelevant and I would argue what was out in 2004 is even more important for the sake of this conversation. Further, what’s “working” in entertainment these days, I believe, has nothing to do (or very little) with societal norms and more with a “flavor of the month” mentality. Right now, superheroes are extremely popular, does that mean there are groups of hidden billionaires currently out there building super suits? Of course not, it just means that’s what’s making money today.

Just my opinion

[Blake]

I think it's mainly small town cop that gets viewed as white fat slob that likes to be in control. The big city cops were the cool ones.