The fifth film in my
continued analysis of the films of Karyn Kusama is the neo-noir crime thriller Destroyer.
Coming off the critical success of The Invitation, Kusama changed
directions again to tackle another film category. This, like other films in Kusama’s
filmography, is both a genre picture and plays with genre: confirming and
subverting tropes, themes, and audience expectations. This paper is an
examination of the crime thriller through the lens of 2018’s Destroyer and
the implications that these films have on the perceptions of the police by the
public, and the expectations that police officers have when cinema is used as a
soft power recruitment tool.
PLOT
When Det. Erin Bell
(Kidman) gets called in to an unnamed gunshot victim, this sends her on an
intersecting path with a Bank Robber (Toby Kebbell) that she attempted to
expose by going undercover in his organization 16 years prior. As she gets
violently reacquainted with the rest of her former “crew”, truths are revealed
and Bell begins to unravel, all the frayed edges of her life: work, family and romance
disintegrate in her hands. As she closes in on her quarry, Bell realizes that he
is not the malevolence that she’s been seeking to exorcise, but her, who has become
the architect of her own destruction.
HISTORICAL CONTEXT
Production
The relative
success of 2015’s The
Invitation, and the social capital Kusama acquired
through critical praise and admiration of her peers, did not translate into
more money, or a more secure production. Part of this could be the (reasonable)
demand Kusama has to get final cut of her films from studios, something she
would not give up after Aeon
Flux .
The combination of these factors may have had the unfortunate consequence of never
giving Kusama unwavering studio support. Instead, she financed and wrote the script for
the film along with Phil Hay and Paul Manfredi, in addition to directing,
hoping that a distribution company would come through. On The Invitation,
it was Netflix. On Destroyer, Annapurna was the savior.
Additionally, like most
of her other films, Destroyer had both limited time and a limited
budget. With only 9 million dollars in the coffers and a tight, location based
heavy 33 day shooting schedule, Kusama had to employ some “Guerrilla style” “run
and gun” quick filmmaking made popular by 70’s white male auteurs. Yet, unlike
those self-obsessed narcissistic douche bags that were so revered that they
eventually became Hollywood by establishing their own movie studios,
Kusama was not even given the same clout. Kusama didn’t even get the clout Michael
Mann had with Heat, nor Kathryn Bigalow’s Point Break, both films
being a direct influence on the way that Kusama Shoots LA in this film. It was
not until Nicole Kidman signed on after searching
for a nuanced script that Destroyer got the clout necessary
to be made.
Nicole Kidman is
unrecognizable in this role. Taking a page from Charlize Theron in Monster, Kidman
transforms herself into a physically and emotionally broken husk of a person.
The Flashbacks then become increasingly pointed as the audience attempts to follow
the trajectory of Bell’s decline from the person we see in 2002, going
undercover, to the self-medicating, addled, but still relentlessly driven Det.
Erin Bell in 2018. It was a role that was elevated by Kidman having the flu
throughout most of the filming, and according to Kidman, was hard to shake emotionally
for weeks after the shoot was over.
This relentless and lingering nature of the
film is felt by the audience through its cinematography. Shot by Julie Kirkwood,
the film is one of the few to accurately convey the sheer punishment of the Sun
on the “Asphalt Jungle” that is Los Angeles. Kirkwood uses harsh over-exposure lighting
(mainly from redirected natural light) to capture the feeling of our blindingly
aggressive star gently cooking you from millions of miles away. Every time that
Kidman opens her eyes after a memory, we are reminded of that aggression,
witnessing the sun sap the strength from the characters with each passing
minute. Outside of the use of the Sun to express character disorientation, the
rest of the film is leeched of color. While I am unaware if they shot digitally
or on film, it seems like they provided a granular effect through “seeing” the
film grain. This all establishes a mood
and tone of the film that is attempting to capture the grittiness of films like
Serpico, Dog Day Afternoon, and The French Connection, giving
Bell’s pursuit of the bank robbers a layer of gravitas.
In the opening scene of Destroyer,
Bell is called to the scene of a murder. After she is given the details by
another detective on the scene, Bell cryptically muses “What if I know who did
this?” as she leaves the scene of the crime. It takes us nearly the entire run
time of the film to get back to this scene where it is revealed that Bell
killed the victim…the bank Robbing mastermind, Silas. One of the mantras of film editing is “If it
is done correctly, you won’t even notice.” This is especially true for films
with dual and intersecting timelines. Aside from the first scene that bookends
the film, most of the film is linearly focused with the use of flashbacks to
give context. Yet, the revelation that the beginning scene was actually the end
causes the audience, upon rewatch, to question the order of scenes, and whether
or not one scene precedes the other, or if it is more convoluted, which adds to
the craft of the picture as a whole.
The Racism of the Second Amendment and
Policing
To understand the implications of Destroyer
as a crime film in the way that it portrays police, corruption, crime, and
violence; there needs to be a foundational examination of the subject itself: police
and policing. Historian Roxanne Dunbar Ortiz (2018) first makes the claim that policing
and the Second amendment are intimately intertwined, not only with each other,
but with American Racism as both its weapon and origin. The establishment of
the Second Amendment to right and bear arms was, before
the NRA reinterpreted it, only supposed to be applied to those
that were a part of “a well-regulated
militia” in their function of maintaining a “free State.” For generations,
scholars have debated the vague language of the second amendment trying to decipher
the meaning and intent of its ambiguity. However, according to Dunbar-Ortiz
(2018) and Anderson (2020) there is a direct causal relationship between weapon
access, racism, and police violence.
The
relationship between the Second Amendment policing and racism is constructed
out of what those “well-regulated” militia were ordered to do. They were
regularly ordered to use their arms to “discover, pursue, fight, surprise,
destroy and subdue the enemy.” (Dunbar-Ortiz 2018:45). The vagueness of the
term “enemy” is specifically planted to eventually and continuously supersede
it with whatever new target is decided upon. Throughout history “enemy” in this
context has meant near anything from Indigenous people, the poor and indigent,
to Black people and immigrants. The armed militia became the precursor to
modern policing specifically when they were formed into slave patrols after Emancipation
(Dunbar- Ortiz, 2018).
Slave
Patrols was the name given to Militia’s when they were used between 1700-1865
to hunt down Black people who escaped slavery to prevent labor loss from white
slavers. Many of these patrols were populated by impoverished white men in an
effort to “draw a color line” between people of similar social class standing
(Zinn, 2000).[1]
Not only were these slave patrols given enormous amounts of discretion as to
the methods by which they captured and returned these people into bondage, but
many of these methods also became the structural foundation of modern policing,
such as: formal questioning, stakeouts, raids, detention, and apprehension.
Additionally, the language of the police was directly pulled from these groups:
patrol being the most obvious but also the term “beat”, and tonfa “Night Sticks”
originally called “N*** Knockers”. Eventually, there would be an
institutionalization of slave patrols into modern policing through deputization
and the eventual Policing mechanism of the Criminal Justice System. This meant that from a Black person’s
perspective, “there was no distinction between patrollers, the Klan or White
policemen” (Dunbar-Ortiz 2018:69).
Through
the lived historical antagonism of white men with guns free to enact domestic
terrorism upon the Black population caused Black People to understand and exercise
their 2nd amendment rights when they were eventually applied to them
in the late 1960’s. Ironically, when organizations like the Black Panthers
started to lawfully exercise their 2nd amendment rights, Gun
activists like the
NRA began to support Gun control legislation. According to
Carol Anderson (2021) this points to the reality that the second amendment, and
its interpretation, is ultimately antiblack
in its creation and enforcement to the point that the ability for black
Americans to
rightfully access, hold on to, and lawfully discharge a
firearm became increasingly difficult as these gun laws disproportionally negatively
affect Black people. Anderson (2021) points to a variety of
different related gun laws: Conceal and carry, “Stand your Ground” laws, no
knock raids, the castle doctrine being adjudicated differently based upon race.
Anderson (2021) specifically points to the acquittal of Kyle Rittenhouse and the
murder of Ahmaud Arbery whose killers only were arrested after video was
released, followed by a strong public outcry on social media. This ultimately supports Anderson’s (2021)
overall premise: That the Second Amendment is in place and enforced as protection
for white people against Black people; because “Blackness is the weapon that
[white people] fear.” Thereby keeping black people in a constant state of
rightlessness (Anderson 2021: 158).
The motivations behind Rittenhouse’s
and the Murderers of Ahmaud Arbery are heavily tied to popular culture
consumption and the representation/glorification of the “lone wolf” hero
protecting their home and family (or in the case of Rittenhouse, random
property in another state) from the evil
dregs of society (often coded as Black and Brown people) is an image that is
romanticized as idyllically masculine, and has been played out on screen for
the last 40+ years. The one-man army style action film that dominated the
1980’s and 90’s with names like Stallone, Schwarzenegger, Lungren, Segal, Van
Damme, Norris, and Willis all reinforced this sense of masculinity that was
tied to gun violence. This masculinity has also been influenced by the typical
“movie cop” trope of which Destroyer supports and subverts in a variety
of ways.
SOCIAL ANALYSIS
Kusama’s
Destroyer is a social and cultural product of a film industry that
regularly depicts the drama of police officers without a clear understanding of
the occupation. While this is true of any occupation depicted in Hollywood
movies, the way so many productions flagrantly gloss over ethical responsibilities,
and systemic oversight of actual police work, is irresponsible. This becomes more
dangerous and a much larger issue when the ability for cinema to motivate and
shape decision making is factored in.
The Movie Cop Trope [2]
Every police procedural film
and television show has the character that is “the wild card” who disregards
the rules and does anything to get their criminal. Sometimes referred to as “The
Cowboy Cop Trope” these characteristics have dominated the
artform for almost two generations.
The Common criteria for a “Cowboy Cop” trope:
·
Openly disobeys orders.
·
Flaunts their disrespect for the rules.
·
Has a maverick-like style.
·
Abuses power
·
Has unsubstantiated theories based upon
conspiracy and conjecture (which are then proven correct)
·
Passionate about breaking the system of
corruption.
·
Has a tragic backstory and a moral
foundation/ possible heart of gold.
While the number of examples of this trope have waned
in recent years, even to the point of parody for this cliché, much of the current
“cop drama” content stand on the foundation of these films that project the problematic
behaviors into the psyche of those watching it today.
Destroyer’s Gender subversion of the
typical trope
Most
of the examples that are given to the cowboy/heroic/hero cop (Yes, I combined
them all) are usually white men. This is no surprise, not only because the history
of Hollywood only giving these roles to such men, but the ability to hold such
characteristics and be alive, let alone revered, is a positive consequence of
being white men. It is their whiteness and cis/het gender and sexual
performance that shields them from criticism and allows such behavior to go
unchecked.
Kidman’s Erin Bell is one of the few times we get to see this grizzled strung-out “Cowboy cop” be embodied by a woman. Unlike her masculinely male counterparts, she is not revered. She is constantly being hounded by her Commander and her Partner (hoping to be brought in on whatever they think she is working on) and the little interactions that we see between Bell and other officers, she is rebuffed and dismissed almost immediately upon arriving. Kusama, Hay and Manfredi gave Bell all the trappings of a “cowboy hero cop” without the propagandic fantasy of money, glory, and the adulation of the public. Instead, they brought it down to reality with Bell experiencing distrust, scorn, and ambivalence. Unfortunately, this more reality-based take on the trope adds to the criticism of the character. Yet, given that the same criticism is rarely applied to men exhibiting these tropes, when applied to Bell, it comes off as nothing more than thinly veiled misogyny.
The Movie Cop as Propaganda
and Police Recruitment
In
1956, Sociologist C.
Wright Mills in his book The Power Elite discussed
the collusion of the three powerful social institutions in the United States,
that of the Military, the Economy and The Government. The name for this
collusion, the Military Industrial Complex, was attributed to Dwight D.
Eisenhower during his farewell presidential address in 1961. What was
considerably absent from this analysis, that was later filled in by other
scholars in the interim, was the overall role of the media in this enterprise.
The role of the media, and more specifically
Hollywood, in the overall interconnection between these powerful systems is as
a propaganda machine and recruitment tool. Since World War II, the media has
been used to not only
shape the public opinion about war, but to also provide the Military with large
numbers of young, able-bodied recruits. Many of these tactics
include but are not limited to: fear mongering (through news media), a sense of
cultural pride (through an appeal to nationalism), to expressions of gender (combining
militarization with masculinity) and economic stability (GI Bill and the Poor).
This has led to the entire entertainment industry, from books and films, to
television and video games, to be linked with the military and the broader
department of defense. This Hollywood connection has been disparagingly referred
to as “The Military-Entertainment Industrial complex” or more succinctly, “Militainment”.
According
to Rebecca Keegan (2011):
Filmmakers
gain access to equipment, locations, personnel and information that lend their
productions authenticity, while the armed forces get some measure of control
over how they’re depicted. That’s important not just for recruiting but also
for guiding the behavior of current troops and appealing to the U.S. taxpayers
who foot the bills.
Thereby many films, TV show episodes or Video Games
that are about, or feature, any aspect of the military (regardless
of genre) will have a military consultant assigned to them if
the filmmakers want to keep their overall costs down.
The
development of this relationship between entertainment and the military began
in early Hollywood with film directors making legitimate Propaganda films in
the 1940’s (look at Frank Capra’s film: “Why We Fight.”). This continued
through the 1950’s and 60’s with the films of John Wayne, members of the Rat
Pack and Elvis. Yet, this collusion wasn’t solidified until the Reaganite 80’s
with the release of Top Gun in 1986. The
Navy was heavily involved with the film as a consultant ultimately
increasing Navy recruitment by a staggering, but yet unsubstantiated, 500%.
Thirty-five years later, that link is still strong with its sequel Top Gun:
Maverick not only being nominated
for best picture, but praised as being the film that saved
theaters after the COVID-19 lockdown. Any film that is contentious, or critical
of the military and its mission, will not get support. Oliver Stone had a very
difficult time getting his films Platoon and Born on the Fourth of
July funded because the
military rejected his funding requests given the depiction of
the Military in those films.
In a previous
essay, I discussed the way in which the Military Industrial
Complex, through its operation, and motivated by profit ultimately results in
the Militarization of the Police force and the inherent dangers that come with
that (Balko 2021). The same parallel can be found in the use of the
entertainment industry by the police. Just as the military uses film, Tv, and
Video games to shape their public image and increase recruitment, so too does state
and local police rely on the heroic image of cops to secure increased levels of
funding, shape the public perception, and increase recruitment.
Dubbed
“Copaganda” by Academic Stephen Thrasher, this is the collusion between the
institutions of police and the media that “describes
the perceived capacity of screen representations to promote law enforcement.”
The movie cop tropes are a part of this. Most of the depictions of law
enforcement in popular culture are favorable in their attitudes of cops
overall. Sure, in addition to the “Hero” cop trope, there might also be a dirty
cop, or one that goes outside of the law, but usually by stories end, bad cops
are punished, cowboy cops are vindicated, and hero cops are praised; always
seeing the Institution through an individual lens; promoting the false
narrative that the Institution is strong, unbiased, and just. It is only a “few
bad apples” that need to be thrown away.
It is this form of manipulation
that shapes the white public perception of police officers to believe their sense
of justice and righteousness is above reproach. This is predominately because,
on average, white people have fewer direct interactions with the police, and
when they do, they are far less antagonistic. White culture teaches its
children to see the police as saviors, as those you run to for help and
assistance. This racialized cultural norm, coupled with a lack of interaction
with actual police officers in the exercising of their duties, result in white
people using film and tv as the greatest single reference for their
understanding of policing. Add to this the way that a lot of these police
procedural shows and films stereotypically depict black and brown people as criminally
dangerous, white people not only support the Propaganda infused structure of
“Law and Order” (Title of a popular police Procedural now manifesting as a
political dog whistle for “antiblackness”) but they then also maintain the
racist stereotypes that are perpetuated by these media representations.
To Defund or Abolish…
The murders of George
Floyd and Breonna Taylor by police led to a massive protesting against police
brutality during the Summer of 2020. Out of that conflict came two popularized,
albeit misunderstood mantras “Defund” and “Abolish” the police. “Defund the
police” focuses on a reformation of the police and seeks a redistribution of
police funding into more community-based programs; ones that focus on outreach,
mental health services and alternative first responders that are trained
non-violent intervention specialists. From this perspective, it is not a
divestment in police so much as an investment in other programs and services,
designed to unburden Police Officers from being councilors, mental health
professionals, homeless shelters, and addiction experts. “Abolish
the Police” focuses on the Fragmentation and elimination of the police as they
have been perceived. This relates to an end to Police Militarization and a warrior-style
training model.
Derecka Purnell (2020),
in her article “How I became a Police Abolitionist”
articulates this beautifully:
Police couldn’t do what we really needed.
They could not heal relationships or provide jobs. We were afraid every time we
called. When the cops arrived, I was silenced, threatened with detention, or
removed from my home. Fifteen years later, my old neighborhood still lacks
quality food, employment, schools, health care, and air—all of which increases
the risk of violence and the reliance on police. Yet I feared letting go; I
thought we needed them. Until the Ferguson, Missouri, cop Darren Wilson killed
Michael Brown. Brown had a funeral. Wilson had a wedding. Most police officers
just continue to live their lives after filling the streets with blood and
bone.
Out of this backlash against the police resulted in a
mass exodus of Police officers from the profession (either by quitting or early
retirement) to the point that now the police are facing a drastic
recruitment shortage, because police are no longer lionized in
the ( majority white) public as being virtuous. While I expect that the
entertainment industry will be, once again, called upon to bolster their ranks,
and get police officers back in the (majority white) publics good graces[3], lets at least take solace
that there are depictions of police that are anathematic to public acceptance
and recruitment, like Erin Bell.
CONCLUSION
Destroyer
is
a masterpiece. It is a well-crafted neo-noir crime thriller that consciously
weaves together an emotionally dense character study with the drama of corrupt
police procedural. It is a representation of cinematic tropes in Hollywood
flipped by gender swapping the typical protagonist to these stories. It rejects
the cultural norm and history of the media being used as a propaganda machine
and recruitment tool. Instead, Erin Bell, like so many of her 70’s male
counterparts (on which she was based) is a cautionary tale of the dangers the
institution of police can become without extensive regulation, or outright
abolition.
REFERENCES
Anderson, Carol 2021. The Second: Race and Guns in
a Fatally Unequal America New York: Bloomsbury Publishing
Blako, Radley 2021 Rise of the Warrior Cop: The
Militarization of America's Police Forces: Revised and Updated New York:
Public Affairs
Dunbar-Ortiz, Roxanne 2018. Loaded: A Disarming
History of the Second Amendment San Francisco City of Lights Books.
Keegan, Rebecca 2011. “The US Military’s Hollywood
Connection” in The Los Angeles Times Retrieved at https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2011-aug-21-la-ca-military-movies-20110821-story.html Retrieved on: 4/9/23
Purnell, Derecka 2020. “How I became a Police Abolitionist.”
In The Atlantic Retrieved at: https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2020/07/how-i-became-police-abolitionist/613540/
Retrieved on 4/9/2023
Stahl,
Roger 2009. Militainment, Inc.: War,
Media, and Popular Culture New York: Routledge
Zinn
Howard 2000. A People’s History of the United States 1492- Present New
York: Harper Perennial
[1]
Many members of The Clan also organized their own illegal slave patrols, but
they like militias were not well regulated.
[2] To
be fair there are many cop tropes in film and TV. There is the Bad cop, The
Corrupt Cop, and The hero cop trope” among others.
[3] If
you want an example of a piece of police related media content that responds to
public perceptions rather than try to change it, I recommend Brooklyn 99.
The initial premise of the show is a comedic spoof on police procedurals, the
main protagonist, Jake Peralta, growing
up on 70’s and 80’s Cop shows and movies wants to be “The Hero cop” but as the
culture around the show shifted (especially in 2020) had Jake learn about the
seediness of 70’s Cop work and the institutional racism and corruption of
Police in its final Season (The show runners rewriting the back half or the
season to reflect the social unrest surrounding the police.)
