Some Thoughts on Police and Superhero Media

Lately, there’s been talk about how policing is portrayed in Hollywood, with a lot of focus being given to cop shows and movies. Understandably so – in both film and television, cop stories comprise their own genre, with a particular emphasis on protagonists who “don’t play by the rules,” nobly nabbing the bad guys by “coloring outside the lines” of what they’re allowed to do. In shows like this, we’re shown cops who rough up suspects in interrogation and scoff at warrants, and we’re taught to see them as heroes. Any suspect who asks for a lawyer is obviously guilty, and these justice-minded officers could really clean up the streets were it not for all the “departmental red tape” trying to tie their hands behind their backs. Excessive force and “bending the rules” = good, respecting civil liberties = bad. If we see anything about racial profiling or police killings of unarmed Black people, 1) it’s usually a one-off Very Special Episode and 2) it’s about a “racist bad apple” who has nothing to do with the main characers.

It’s easy to see why these narratives provoke consternation among people advocating for reform and/or defunding, and I get why shows and movies like this have been dubbed “copaganda.” However, there have been a lot of articles on that subject that are more informed than any post I could write, in no small part because I don’t consume a ton of media in that genre. I do watch a lot of superhero media, though, and this recent discussion has got me thinking about the police’s role in those stories.

For starters, police presence in superhero stories isn’t uniform across in the board. A number of superhero stories pit the titular hero against the cops, often because costumed, usually-powered vigilantes operate extralegally. Daredevil, Batman, and Spider-Man (especially the Tobey Maguire films) have had run-ins with police departments trying to bring them in because they’re deemed a danger to the city. Additionally, Batman is necessary in part due to widespread corruption in the GCPD, and Luke Cage steps up as the hero of Harlem when the cops leave the neighborhood to the mercy of gang violence. Plenty of superheroes have uneasy relationships with law enforcement at best.

That said, even though pretty much all superheroes work outside the system and many have at least quasi-antagonistic interactions with the police, many of them still buy into the system on the whole. Almost any hero who operates in part on the street level is shown at various times leaving “gift-wrapped” criminals for the cops to book. We see Spider-Man doing this, along with Supergirl, the Flash, Jessica Jones, Daredevil, Batwoman, Batman, and others. It’s a cliché at this point – Supergirl rolling her eyes as bank robbers’ bullets bounce off of her, Spider-Man stringing muggers up by his webbing, and so forth. The bad guys go to jail, and the heroes move on to the real threat, usually of a powered nature. (Side note: most superheroes also have zero qualms about using excessive force against non-powered crooks.)

But particularly when we talk about defunding or abolishment, it becomes less innocuous to see this recurring minor plot point. The criminals are always dangerous, their motive – if any is presented – is rarely anything deeper than greed, and tossing them over to the criminal justice system is always a good thing. It makes me wonder what superhero stories would look like without police and what better alternatives might be.

To start with examples that we sometimes do see, usually in TV shows which have time to switch things up now and again, we occasionally see a superhero talking someone down instead of a more physical intervention. I can think of instances where both Supergirl and the Flash have down this, connecting with the perpetrator instead of just punching them. Of course, this is a lot less cinematic, and I can already hear people complaining about SJWs, but really, the carjackers and jewel thieves are often minor features in a given story anyway, a means of establishing the day-to-day business of superheroing before a powered threat comes in to pose a greater challenge. Will it really hurt the proceedings to see superheroes more regularly try to defuse situations or figure out why this person is committing that crime?

From there, what other possibilities could we see? If you view things from a defunding or abolishment perspective, we could see the superhero dropping off the perpetrator, not on the doorstep of the police department, but at a rehab or mental health facility (not Arkham Asylum, just to clarify.) We could see heroes using both their powers and platform to fight crime on the proactive side of things instead of the reactive side – imagine the Flash helping to renovate new affordable housing with his super speed, or Spider-Man promoting a kick-off event for a new job-placement program. Hell, we see actors who play superheroes visiting children’s hospitals in real life; a hero in a show or a movie could do that once in a while as a filler scene.

I get that these shows and movies aren’t going to lose the action, and I wouldn’t want them to – I love a good superpowered fight scene. But even when it comes to the hero vs. villain stuff, we could see some changes. Right now, a superhero’s chief moral stand when it comes to a villain’s rights is not killing them, and that’s partly what fuels the device of villains instead being brought in and sent to jail. As we’ve seen, though, “incarceration for people with powers” and “civil liberties” do not go hand in hand. The Flash got in trouble for locking up metahumans at Star Labs without trials or any oversight, and in Captain America: Civil War, some of our own heroes get sent to The Raft, a black site prison in the middle of ocean that’s the equivalent of throwing them into a high-security hole in the ground. In that same movie, it’s disturbing when Everett Ross laughs at the idea of Bucky being granted access to a lawyer, because we know and care about Bucky, but when Zemo is given the same treatment at the end of the film, it’s framed as a victory. If we want to rethink the way justice is carried out in superhero stories, even for powered villains, we need to begin with the idea of the superhero as judge and jury.