December Update and Scripts

Hi, patrons! 2020 is (thankfully) almost over. Although this year has been an absolute mess, I hope that my videos have provided some solace to you during this difficult time. In 2021, I have a lot of big projects planned. In a couple days, right before the new year, there will be a fun, light video about movies, and after that in January, there will be some heavier, more serious material.

With that out of the way, here are some scripts from some 2020 videos:

KRULL

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Adults who were children in the 1980's and in the United States often have a common story about their favorite movies. They had a VCR and only a handful of VHS tapes, and whichever tapes they had, they watched those tapes over and over again. Blockbuster Video began in the mid-80's, but it did not take off until the early 90's. Due to the price of VHS tapes and how slowly popular films came to VHS, these handful of pre-Blockbuster movies were either the few that low-to-middle class families opted to buy or they were recordings of movies played on network television. For me, my handful of pre-Blockbuster VHS tapes were a recordings of Big Trouble in Little China and the first two Indiana Jones movies, as well as proper copies of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre and Krull. Why did he have Krull? Who bought Krull? I do not remember. It was just...always there. And so, Krull became one of my earliest favorite movies out of convenience. Our favorite movies and franchises were simply available when our minds were too young to tell good from bad, and because of this, these movies have informed us and continue to inform us about what is good and bad based on how much it complies with  and is similar to these movies. They become holy in our minds, and deviation from them thereby becomes sacrilegious. It's why thirty-something chuds can tap into that nostalgia and convince others that deviations from the pre-established norm are wrong in and of themselves rather than judging something on its own merits and how much it might mean to new young people experiencing it.

Unlike the other movies I had like Raiders of the Lost Ark, Krull never became a classic; well-respected in cinephile circles or mainstream audiences. It's a high fantasy movie with some light sci-fi elements made during a time when nearly all fantasy movies were critical and/or commercial failures. Hollywood fantasy movies were still crawling, not yet walking. It's important to recognize that childhood favorites are not sacred and that attaching our sense of self to media from our formative years can have some disastrous results. In service of this, I decided to watch Krull again, now with the perspective of an adult and former literature teacher who can more keenly judge the narrative. The central theme of Krull is that of love vs. power. This is set up in the beginning of the film, reinforced in the middle of the film, and then paid off at the end. Colwynn and Lyssa are engaged to be married. The marriage will unite two feuding kingdoms so that they can more easily join forces to defend both kingdoms from the Beast and his army, the Slayers. During the marriage ceremony, Lyssa performs a ritual in which Colwynn must take the fire from her hand, an act of trust between them and the conclusion of their vows. As this happens, the Slayers storm the castle and kidnap Lyssa.

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The Beast demands that Lyssa marry him instead, offering her riches and dominion over planet Krull. She rejects the Beast, choosing love over power. The Beast says that love is fleeting and power is eternal. To prove this, the Beast sends one of his minions to seduce Colwynn, but the hero rejects her because he is promised to Lyssa. Proving the Beast wrong, Lyssa states that power is fleeting and that love is eternal. At the end of the film, Colwynn strikes the Beast with the Glaive, said to be the strongest weapon in the world, but the Beast survives. Colwynn suddenly realizes that his love for Lyssa is the strongest weapon in the world, takes the fire from Lyssa's hand, and uses this manifestation of their love to defeat the Beast. There are other instances of love – either romantic or familial love – turning the tide or allowing characters to grow. In order to find the Beast's castle, Ynyr asks his ex-wife, the Widow of the Web, for directions. Her continued love for Ynyr emboldens her to stop the spider, allowing him to escape and rescue Lyssa while she is destroyed. Ergo, the cowardly magician, becomes braver when he begins to take care of a small boy who has lost his only family. In the beginning of the film, he can barely transform into a goose, and by the end, he becomes a dangerous tiger to protect the boy. Rell's familial bonds with his comrades are what makes him choose to save them even though he knows doing so while make him suffer.

Criticism of Krull often comes down to how it too closely resembles other better movies. Star Wars, for one. Colwynn's journey to rescue the princess, guided by a wise old man who shows the hero a powerful weapon and eventually dies in service to the quest, meeting a scoundrel along the way, meeting a comic relief goofball, lasers blasting all over the place, troopers in white armor, invading the enemy lair and annihilating it, and fair bit more. However, this ignores that Star Wars itself is only following a formula, an ancient old formula, and Krull is not only following Star Wars but also that very formula. This criticism is a little narrow, and the charge of “derivative” never holds much weight with me, not only with this film but in general. Movies, so long as they have a traditional narrative and are not experimental art films, are never wholly “original” and a lifetime of nitpicking and spotting “tropes” should inform everyone from film students to casual observers. Charges of “derivative” are no longer the gotcha that they once were. What's more, Krull is not given enough credit for its aesthetic. The special effects were put together at least in part by Derek Meddings, who famously worked on the 1978 Superman film, designing the Krypton aesthetic and making us believe a man can fly. For 1983, the transformation scenes and battles and artistry are all impressive.

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They might not hold a handle to morphing effects made only a few short years later in the fantasy movie Willow, and BluRay exposes some of the animation, but that's a somewhat retroactive criticism. The score may not be as memorable as some of the more famous work by James Horner, Academy Award winning composer of the scores from Titanic and Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan, but it's rousing and hits the right notes. The performances by David Battley and Alun Armstrong shine, particularly the latter. Krull has Thenardier, and that's great. Also, who doesn't love the Glaive, right? So cool. So, the movie kind of...works? Except in all the ways that it doesn't. Scenes don't feel as if they have a progression, and the only character who goes through a proper arc and changes is Ergo. Ynyr, the wise old wizard archetype, is joined by The Emerald Seer, another wise old wizard archetype, and the redundancy is hard not to notice. Also, Colwynn and Lyssa have known each other for less than a day before she is kidnapped, which makes the central theme of love vs. power a little...rickety?

How much do either of them love each other? They have almost no dialogue together before the Slayers kidnap Lyssa, and what little they had was stilted and with no real chemistry. This would not matter if love were not the core of the film and the thing that allows Colwynn to defeat the Beast...but it is. These flaws in the themes and narrative make Krull feel a little hollow. Krull does not entirely work, but that's OK. If I can impart some wisdom from this experience, it is this: too many people have fallen into the trap of believing that criticism of something someone enjoys is criticism of the person enjoying it. See every superhero movie argument from the past ten years. It's an understandable mistake. After some thought, I must confess that I like Krull because of how familiar it is to me, and because it's so personal, criticism of it mistakenly feels personal. But it's not. It's important to recognize that it's not, toacknowledge flaws in media from your childhood instead of digging in your heels, attaching your ego to said media, and entrenching yourself in indefensible positions in lieu of changing. I recognize that Krull, a movie that has a lot of personal connection to me, is actually not so great. Childhood favorites are not sacred, and criticism of them is not blasphemy or personal. Digging our claws in and entrenching ourselves in our original position when confronted ensures nothing new is learned. It sounds so obvious, doesn't it? And yet, if it were, I wouldn't have had to create a video making that point.

AD ASTRA

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In the film Ad Astra, astronaut Roy McBride is sent on a covert mission into space to find and neutralize his lost father, Clifford McBride. Clifford, lost for years, was originally sent to the edge of the solar system to search for extraterrestrial life. Clifford's experiments may be the cause of recent anti-matter power surges that threaten life on Earth. Roy, cold, outwardly unemotional, and introspective, struggles with his dangerous and personal mission, discovers his father, destroys the vessel responsible for the surges, and returns to Earth. Many who experience Ad Astra feel the subtext of the narrative is that Roy's mission mirrors the search for God. Roy searching the stars for the father. Clifford searching for life that is not human to determine whether or not we are alone. Characters need not fit neatly into one-to-one designations in order to experience the narrative this way. The pursuit of God is also the pursuit of humankind's relationship with God. Does God love us? Does God not love us but expects us to love Him? Is God is afraid of us? Is God disappointed in us? When Roy reaches Clifford, he finds that his father is not elated to see him. Clifford is unconcerned with Earth, unconcerned with Roy, and completely opposed to leaving the vessel – leaving the Lima Project. “To find what science claims does not exist.”

Clifford's activities are causing anti-matter surges that threaten all life. If God loved us, would we be subject to threats? Are we significant to God? Roy makes his transmission to Clifford from a Mars base called Ersa. In Greek mythology, Ersa is a daughter of Zeus but has no other role to play in mythology. She is insignificant except that she is Zeus' daughter. If we are all God's children, at some point, does this uniformity and this lack of uniqueness make this quality insignificant? Clifford has been orbiting Neptune for decades. Neptune is the god of the sea in Roman mythology. In Greek mythology, he is Poseiden. Roy's shuttle is called Cepheus. In Greek mythology, Poseiden sent a monster across the sea to attack Cepheus' home. Poseiden had been angered by Cepheus. Have we angered our God? Is that why the anti-matter surges are happening? Roy tells his father that he loves him. Clifford does not respond. He is consumed by his work. Wouldn't God also be similarly consumed? “I have infinite work to do.” Maybe God expects our admiration, our worship, but is under no obligation to return those feelings – that love. But if that's true, isn't our relationship one-sided? Abusive? Worthless? Scripture in varying faiths have God appearing from time to time and making covenants and telling us what to do, but these scriptures don't add new books, new chapters. From their perspective, God stopped engaging with us so directly a long time ago.

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For the non-believer, the answer to “Why?” is obvious, because these stories were all written long after the fact, never contemporaneously, and never happened. For the believer, the question must be answered differently. Isn't the present just as significant a time period? Isn't this dispensation just as meaningful? Maybe God has become afraid of us, afraid of what we have become, afraid we might remove or replace him. “I hope to find Him or finally be free of Him.” The insistence that God is all-powerful and that his power can never wane is either a guess or something told to us by God himself, and wouldn't God tell us that whether or not it were true? To keep us from challenging him? “I will deal with my father.” Could God ever be disappointed in us? How could God be disappointed if he already knows how everything would turn out? But again, that is only what we think about God. If that were true, God would also never be pleased with us. Haven't we done enough to ourselves that God would be disappointed? This can't be what he wanted. Is that why we feel so abandoned? Roy's father left his wife and child for space. Roy's laments his father's absence, how it affected his life. He is alone, but he is also afraid to see his father.

“I'm terrified to confront him now.” Space is emptiness. Nothingness. The fear that God has abandoned us can make us feel similarly empty. Roy watches an old video log of his father describing his mission to find extraterrestrial life, and Clifford remarks that he knows that he will. He has faith. “Of course, I thank God. I'm overwhelmed by seeing and feeling his presence.” When Clifford recognizes that his mission was a failure, that his search for extraterrestrial life had no results, he agrees to come back with Roy, only to let go and allow himself to be lost forever in the emptiness of space. God's abandonment is enough to make us abandon our own lives. “Most of us spend our whole lives in hiding.” The fear that God never existed might be more maddening. If he never did, then what are we? Only animals? Driven by a half-conscious desire for food? And when we are gone...nothingness? Emptiness? The search for God can be so...disappointing...but it doesn't have to be. When Clifford finally comes to accept that he will never find extraterrestrial life and remarks that his mission was a failure, Roy says this is not true, and that discovering that the answer is “No.” is still an answer. Now they know that they are alone, and with this knowledge, they can orient their lives around taking care of each other and taking care of the Earth. We no longer have to wonder, and this knowledge will force us to see each other differently.

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“We're all we've got.” What's more, the search for God need not be the search for the literal God, a literal being that created the universe and watches over us – just as Clifford's search is not for the literal God but for extraterrestrial and Roy's search is not for the literal God but for his father, lost in the heavens. The search for “God” can instead be one's search for the self and for one's place in the world. A search for meaning, even if that meaning is given to oneself instead of granted by a creator. Several times, Roy must go through psychological evaluations – test of his self. The closer he comes to his father, the more erratic his evaluations become. Because he's still searching. After he finds his father and returns to Earth, his last evaluations shows him to be content. No longer cold and no longer conflicted. Ready to be a more complete person. Ready to love and to be loved.

GHOSTBUSTERS

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Ghostbusters is good, actually. All the Ghostbusters movies, in fact. The 1984 classic, of course, the underrated sequel, don't @ me, but specifically the 2016 Ghostbusters. Even more specifically, the extended cut of the 2016 Ghostbusters. Not the chopped-to-bits theatrical cut. Paul Feig made a movie that ran over two hours, and Sony found that unacceptable. Studios and exhibitors prefer movies to be short so that they can squeeze in as many showings per day as possible and maximize profits. Speaking as someone who goes to the movies all the time, I have a hard time understanding this logic. It presumes that tickets to screenings sell out all the time and if there is no other screening, moviegoers will turn around and go home. I go to movies on opening night, and the theater is almost never sold out unless it's for Star Wars or a Marvel movie. Any other movie should probably just be edited to be the best possible version of the movie and not the shortest possible version of the movie. The theatrical cut of Ghostbusters is...fine. It's fine. But it's clearly missing pieces that the writers and director wanted in. The extended cut, released on BluRay and some streaming services, completes the film. Erin and Abbey get more character beats and chemistry, particularly the end of the film that concludes their shared arc about becoming friends again. Kevin gets more screen time, and he's one of the best parts of either cut, so that's a good thing.

The strangely missing dance sequence from the theatrical cut is restored in the extended cut. Basically, the extended cut is the complete and finished version of the movie in the same way that the ultimate cut of Batman v. Superman is the complete and finished version of that movie or how the Blade Runner theatrical cut is not even considered the “real” version of the movie anymore. Certainly not the version that's available. If you have only seen the theatrical version, and you're basing your opinion of Ghostbusters on that, or you haven't seen either version, and you're basing your opinion of Ghostbusters on “takedown” videos, I urge you to watch the extended cut before continuing. I think it's on Amazon Prime. It's the one the runs 2 hours and 13 minutes, not the short one. I'll wait. OK, glad we're all caught up. Ghostbusters is good, actually. [What's This Movie About?] Ghostbusters (2016) begins with Dr. Erin Gilbert being given the big hall to make a big presentation. She's up for tenure, everything in her whole life has been leading up to this moment when – uh-oh. She is outed as the co-author of a book about ghosts that she wrote when she was young. She finds the co-author, her former best friend Dr. Abigail Yates, who has never given up on the prospect of busting a ghost, presumably under the hypothesis that bustin' will make her feel good. Abby works with Dr. Jillian Holtzmann, the best character.

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Erin tries to get Abby to stop selling the book and agrees to investigate a haunted house as part of this deal, and then a ghost throws up real good all over Erin, ghosts are real. [Ghosts are real!] The ghostbusters meet Patricia Tolan, an expert on the city, hire a secretary named Kevin, the second best character, and discover that some nerd named Rowan is trying to destroy the barrier between our world and the ghost world because he's a weirdo and everyone picks on him and girls don't like him. He's basically spends all his time on Reddit. The ghostbusters have a series of encounters with him and the ghosts that he's letting through the barrier, the ghostbusters win, who you gonna call? Erin and Abbey have great chemistry throughout the film. They are initially antagonistic, slowly becoming closer and renewing their childhood bond, occasionally squabbling, but eventually Erin jumps into a pit to the ghost world to save Abbey, and it is just beautiful. The humor is where this movie either makes or breaks for audiences. If you love rapid-fire jokes-on-jokes-on-jokes mixed with intentional cringe awkwardness stirred around with some old school physical comedy, all of which is safe for the consumption of children, then this is the movie for you. And if not, you probably hated this. To those people, I will say this. I can't convince you that something that did not make you laugh is actually funny because humor doesn't work that way.

Explaining something doesn't make you start laughing at it, but I will try to explain why so many people did enjoy Ghostbusters and also why you and me – the adults in the room – were not really the target audience anyway. [AESTHETIC] The aesthetic of Ghostbusters is this combination of ethereal and otherworldly mixed with bright, almost neon colors. Many of the ghosts are not fully CG but instead are actors with visual effects added to them, much like the librarian ghost from the original Ghostbusters played by Ruth Hale Oliver. The scene with Gertrude Aldrich, played by Bess Rous, has a great misdirect where she glides in peacefully, Abbey says she's beautiful, and then she suddenly spews ectoplasm all over Erin. A Ghostbusters tradition. The subway ghost is similarly a real actor, enhanced by visual effects artists to give him that healthy blue glow. The further along into the film, the more we see inhuman ghosts, giant monsters and slimers and various other class-five vapors. The neon glow of the film exists even outside scenes with the ghosts, as the movie contains a consistent aesthetic. When the Ghostbusters take on the biggest and baddest ghosts in New York, the transition from real city to CG green screen feels seamless. Maybe the illusion of real and computer generated and the difficulty differentiating between the two explains why some fans remarked that they hated the ghost design in the trailer, dubbing it only CG, not realizing that actual actors were used for the ghosts.

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But much like in the original, humanizing the main antagonist makes for a more personal battle as opposed to slaying a giant. [ANTAGONIST] The primary antagonist of Ghostbusters is Rowan, a basement-dwelling shut-in who believes he speaks for the downtrodden. [It's mostly dudes.] To that end, he plans to rip a hole in reality, and it's up to the Ghostbusters to stop him. Rowan is the most 2016 antagonist imaginable. He is perfect. He is exactly the right foil for the modern world. Someone who mistakenly believes he is part of a marginalized group and has an inverted understanding of why he is a loser. Rowan thinks that people, appropos of nothing, treat him like a creep, and that makes him a victim whereas Rowan simply isa creep and wishes to victimize others. Rowan is played by Neil Casey throughout much of the film, but then he is played by Melissa McCarthy once she is possessed and then by Chris Hemsworth when Kevin is possessed. Hemsworth gets to play two roles in the movie, and he shines in both of them. Once Rowan possesses Kevin, the real fun begins, the dance-off, the overconfidence. Rowan mocking the Ghostbusters by transforming into their logo was a nice touch. It's a shame there is no sequel forthcoming because the movie sequel-baiting an encounter with Zuul was a great “To be continued...” that will, unfortunately, never be continued. [HOLTZMANN]

If there is one aspect of Ghostbusters that is almost universally agree-upon, it's that Holtzmann is the best character. A mad scientist who makes the proton packs, ghost traps and various other new toys for the Ghostbusters to play with. She eats Pringles while a ghost attacks Erin, she's a ball of energy, and she has, by far, the best action scene in the film as she annihilates the ghosts with her proton pistols and whips, and...she's just great, right? Oh, speaking of great characters... [KEVIN] As much as the Ghostbusters are the stars of the movie, it's hard to imagine this film without Kevin. He is given a lot of the best lines and gags, like Kevin's asking to choose between two headshots of him with a saxophone, the ghost hotdog, Michael Hat. [Mike Hat]. Ghostbusters fans liken him to Jeanine, the secretary from the original film, but Kevin far more resembles Lewis Tully: a bumbling but good-natured man who wants to be a Ghostbuster and ends up controlled by the antagonist.

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Kevin tries so far, except all the times when he doesn't try at all. [Answer the phone.] He's hard not to love and is the one of the highlights of the film. Also, he has strong pocket square game. Sighs. And now the common complaints about this movie. [COMMON COMPLAINTS] Alright, let's get this part over with.

“I don't like the editing.” Once again, this is a reasonable complaint but only for the theatrical version that does not exist anymore – except on Hulu, I think. “Why didn't they call it something else besides Ghostbusters?” Because in 2016 and even more today, almost every movie with a big budget is from a pre-existing intellectual property. Studios make fewer movies with bigger budgets, which makes they are even more adverse to risk than before. Studios aren't going to make a big budget action-comedy about ghosts and not have it be Ghostbusters. “Everyone hated it!” No, it was critically well-received, and audience reaction was split down the middle. One might be led to believe everyone hated it because the complaints are always louder than praise, and the Internet can form a social bubble, an echo chamber of opinions among like-minded people.

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“Womenz!” I won't dignify this with a response. “It bombed at the box office!” That's true. And? Is that how we're judging movies now? Whether or not they made back their money at the theaters? Because if so, that means that any film that was not successful in theaters is also “bad” – Children of Men, The Iron Giant, Mulholland Drive, The Shawshank Redemption, Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory, and Citizen Kane, to name a few. Unless we're prepared to start judging movies based on their receipts, this is probably an argument we should abandon. Thirty-something fans declare “These aren't my Ghostbusters!” with the same righteous indignation that someone uses when saying “He's not my President!” To those fans, let this be clear. You are, indeed, correct, though not for the reason you believe. This isn't your Ghostbusters movie. It's theirs. The children and adolescents growing up now. In the 1980's, the Ghostbusters were formative for you. They were your heroes. Their humor and sensibilities were relative to the time period. This is also true of the 2016 Ghostbusters. That may be part of why you don't like it. It's not humor for people who grew up in the 80's, it's humor for the children of people who grew up in the 80's. It's not for children living under Ronald Reagan, it's for children who were living under Barack Obama.

If you grew up in the 80's and 90's watching Ghostbusters movies and cartoons, those were your Ghostbusters, but Ghostbusters is not just for you anymore. It's for them. It's why this movie won Best Picture at the Nickelodeon Kids Choice Awards. Because it's a movie...for kids. Not only for kids, I like it too, but definitely with them in mind more than myself. The original Ghostbusters was crude and adult, but it was also rated PG. It was a hit with children, even if a handful of scenes were not appropriate for them. Proton packs lined the shelves at Toys R Us, cartoons were made. Children bought the toys, wore the costumes on Halloween, memorized the lines from the movie and played make-believe with their friends, and argued over who got to be Venkman. And now it's their turn. Sure, the studio undoubtedly wanted everyone's dollar at the box office, including older fans curious about their childhood franchise, but this was clearly made and rated for families to take their children and buy the toys and other merchandise. Nowadays, PG-13 is as safe as any Marvel movie, all of which are designed to make a lot of their bank from children and toys. Part of growing up is passing what you had to the next generation and recognizing that the world is not marketing some things to you anymore. That does not mean you can't enjoy media for youngsters. That does not mean you can't collect the toys. That does not mean watching media for children is itself childish. But there is a difference between watching media for youngsters and claiming it as your own. Holding on to Ghostbusters as if it were still mostly yours is insisting on not passing down your toys to your children – either literally if you have your own children or figuratively if you do not.

BLACK SITCOMS

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In the wake of the most recent occurrences of police brutality in the United States and the subsequent outrage against these actions, a common refrain has been repeated in the discourse. Police brutality is not getting worse. Police brutality is just getting filmed. An argument could be made that police brutality is getting filmed and getting worse, as the more recent militarized police have an even greater arsenal at their disposal, but the greater point remains salient. Police brutality, oppression and profiling, particularly in black communities, is now an irrefutable fact, though, many apologists for the police still desperately attempt to refute it nonetheless. It has become more challenging for the United States, particularly white people in the United States, to ignore the problem when it is captured on video with such regularity. Feigning ignorance requires a greater effort – quite literally closing their eyes. Watching more and more people wake up to the reality that black communities face every day is heartening, but at the same time, it is disappointing how long it took for this revelation – this acknowledgment in white communities in the United States. Many people, having entirely different experiences with the people, could not simply take victims of police brutality, oppression and profiling at their word. Unable to reconcile this with their experiences, many people dismissed these incidents as the work of “bad apples” rather than a consistent pattern.

Redlining and segregation have divided predominantly white communities from minority communities, granting white people growing up in the United States only one option for insight into the black experience: popular media. The 1990's was the Golden Era of black sitcoms. The Fresh Prince of Bel Air, A Different World, Martin, Roc, Living Single, Hangin' with Mr. Cooper, The Wayans Brothers, The Hughleys, and a host of others. The premises of the series varied. Martin is a series about a radio show host, and his relationship with his girlfriend and eventual wife. A Different World is a series about a group of university students. Roc is a series about a working class garbage man in Baltimore and his family. The Fresh Prince of Bel Air is a series about a well-to-do black family and the titular relative from Philadelphia who disrupts their lives. Nearly all these disparate series have a commonality, though, and that is the characters' relationship to the police. These sitcoms often comment on the police's antagonistic behavior toward them, sometimes humorously and casually when it is not the main focus of the episode, and sometimes more pointedly when it is. Examples of the former are often divided into ignorance or hostility. This commentary is relatable, even comical for black audiences all too familiar with police ignorance and hostility.

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Here are two examples of casual references to the police as either ignorant about black communities, families and individuals or hostile to black communities, families and individuals. They are both from the very same episode of The Fresh Prince of Bel Air. For white audiences, this commentary is instructive, illuminating, or at least, it should have been. 90's sitcoms are not mirror images of reality, but they display situations and relationships meant to the relatable and therefore appealing to its target audience. Because of this, the relationship between the police and characters on predominantly black sitcoms is remarkably different than the relationship between the police and characters on predominantly white sitcoms. This should have been a tip-off to white audiences in the 90's who watched both. In an episode of Home Improvement, Brad is caught vandalizing a building, throwing rocks through windows. The police officer tells his parents that no charges will be pressed against Brad. He is brought home safe and sound and suffers no real legal consequences. He is not arrested, only escorted home. This is an experience that might be relatable to the predominantly white target audience of the series, but it would not necessarily be a relatable experience to a black audience. Police are far more likely to engage, harass, arrest and become physical with black men than any other demographic in the United States.

Even today, in the midst of greater understanding about in indisputable facts surrounding this behavior, apologists for the police as well as outright racists try to fight back against what white Americans are only now starting to accept. They will claim racial profiling, police harassment, over-policing and brutality only occur more in black communities because “that's where the crime is” without actually looking at how the data is skewed. Bogus statistics without context like “blacks do half the violent crime” and such. The context is this: black people are incarcerated at a rate 7x higher than white people. Same crime, significantly higher probability of being convicted. Furthermore, black communities are over-policed, meaning there are far more arrests, and if the response to this is to repeat “that's where the crime is” then you already know what the answer to that is and the context that de-skews the data, and argument becomes circular. White sitcoms frequently portray their encounters with the police as either helpful or, at worst, inconvenient. That's not to say that the police are not dangerous to white people. They are simply more likely to be dangerous to black people. Apologists for the police and outright racists will claim that more white people in the United States are killed by the police than black people, but this is also skewed data without context. In the US, there are approximately 191 million white people and 42 million black people.

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That means there are 4.55x more white people than black people. In 2019, there were 370 white people killed by the police. If all things were equal, relative and proportionate to the amount of white people to black people, 82 black people would have killed by the police. However, 235 black people were killed by the police in 2019. That means that a black person is almost 3x as likely to be killed by a police officer than a white person. It is not proportional. Ignoring “per capita” in statistical analysis to find the result you want is intellectual dishonest. Credit to Jolly Good Ginger for doing the mathematics. This rate of over-policing and greater likelihood of a confrontation with the police becoming physical or even lethal is why the relationship between the police and white people and the relationship between the police and black people feels so different in their communities: because they are. There is always some deflection from police apologists and racists. Usually bringing up “black on black” crime to distract from the topic. It's not a compelling argument. The truth is that anyone is more likely to be killed to someone who lives near them, and since black communities and white communities are segregated, the most likely perpetrator of a black victim is also black, but the most likely perpetrator of a white victim is also white. Nobody ever shouts “white on white crime” even though it is just as true.

This is because police apologists and racists don't care about the context of statistics – they care about deflecting from irrefutable statistics that they find inconvenient. To summarize, the police are a danger to everyone, but they are consistently more likely to be a danger to black people, and that is why they are portrayed differently in sitcoms with white casts and sitcoms with black casts. 90's white sitcoms not only portray a different relationship between the police, they also have police officer characters as part of the main cast. On 3rdRock from the Sun, Don the police officer is one of the Solomon family's closest friends and has an ongoing romantic relationship with Sally. On Everybody Loves Raymond, Robert, the brother of the titular character, is a veteran police officer. On Frasier, Martin is a retired police officer and arguably the audience's “everyman” character. Black sitcoms from the 90's generally did not have police officers as part of the main cast, with one notable exception. In this episode of Friends, Rachel is pulled over and has an expired driver's license. The situation ends up being a mild inconvenience for her, a common occurrence for a white driver. For a black driver, this interaction often goes differently. In this early episode of The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air, Will and Carlton are doing a favor for a family friend by driving his car to Palm Springs. A police officer pulls over their car and eventually arrests them under the groundless suspicion that they were driving a stolen vehicle.

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The situation is eventually resolved, but Carlton comes out of the experience learning nothing. He believes that the police were entirely in the right to pull him over. Carlton has, up to that point, lived a sheltered life. Will, previously living in west Philadelphia, tries to inform Carlton that they were pulled over for “driving while black” and not because, as Carlton suggests, because they were driving too slowly. Carlton's father, Phil, is reminded of the first time he was stopped and leaves Carlton to contemplate what really happened. Carlton, without realizing it, is repeating police apologia – that the police were only doing their job and that they had every right to pull them over. The fact that Will and Carlton were not car thieves is not the point. Instead, the point is that the police pulled them over in the first place without cause. They identified Will and Carlton as black, saw an expensive car, and on those facts alone concluded that there was cause enough to pull them over and question them. Racial profiling is the use of race to determine which drivers to stop for minor traffic violations, and the use of race to determine which pedestrians to search for illegal contraband and question about their presence, particularly their presence in neighborhoods in predominantly white neighborhoods like the suburbs.According to the American Civil Liberties Union: “Defining racial profiling as relying 'solely' on the basis of race, ethnicity, national origin or religion can be problematic.

This definition found in some state racial profiling laws is unacceptable, because it fails to include when police act on the basis of race, ethnicity, national origin or religion in combination with an alleged violation of all law.” In other words, even though the officer may have clearly targeted Will and Carlton due to their race, due to the “solely” definition of racial profiling, if the officer claims they were pulled over for driving suspiciously, any accusation of racial profiling will be dismissed. If a police officer sees cars mildly speeding all the time but is far more likely to pull over black drivers, the “solely” definition of racial profiling protects him. Laws and regulations against racial profiling often do not include discriminatory omissions. This is another example of over-policing, how black people in the United States are stopped, harassed and arrested more frequently than white people for committing the same actions. Over-policing, meaning focusing law enforcement far more on black communities than necessary, creates the aforementioned inflated statistics. These inflated statistics are then used as evidence in support of continued over-policing. Over-policing is a cycle that creates the skewed evidence it needs to perpetuate itself. The episode of Fresh Prince makes no excuses for the police whatsoever and frames Carlton's defense of the police as naive, even dangerous to himself.

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White audiences who say “Well, they must have been doing something wrong” or “Well, they shouldn't have been speeding” or any other knee-jerk, unexamined defense of profiling and harassment can have their naivete thrown back at them through Carlton, who is clearly framed as wrong. He is not, however, framed as unsympathetic, as he is still the victim or racial profiling and police harassment whether he initially realized it or not. The episode ends with Carlton contemplating what just happened to him, something he may have to reconcile with his previous rock-solid belief that the system works. In an episode of Martin, the titular character calls a plumber to fix his toilet. Martin needs to go to work and leaves his friend Cole to watch over his apartment during the day. When Martin returns, he discovers that the plumber has collapsed. Cole and Martin are concerned because they are two black men in an apartment with a dead white man and no idea how he died. Research into overturned wrongful convictions has proven that black Americans are far more likely to be falsely convicted of murder than white Americans. According to research by Michigan State University, black prisoners who were convicted of murder are about 50 percent more likely to be innocent than other convicted murderers and spend longer in prison before exoneration. Furthermore, data shows that convictions that led to murder exonerations with black defendants were more likely to involve misconduct by police officers than those with white defendants.

Cole is right to be concerned about the plumber and the fact that only he was alone in the apartment with the plumber when he collapsed. Eventually, Martin's friend Tommy, Martin's girlfriend Gina, and Gina's friend Pam come over and learn about what happened. The mood shifts from concern about what the authorities will think to concern about getting this wrapped up so they can attend a basketball game. It's still a comedy, after all. Martin is unable to get the police to respond to his emergency. After waiting for hours, he calls the police again and pretends to be white in hopes they will treat him better. The police are dubious and ask him a series of questions to prove his whiteness, and it's actually very funny. 90's black sitcoms engaged in this kind of gallows humor about their own oppression all the time...with one notable exception...but we'll get to that later. On the criminally underrated sitcom Roc, we see perhaps the most unflinching and confrontational take on the police's relationship with the community from 90's sitcoms. Roc is garbage man living in Baltimore. To make extra money, Roc accepts an offer from his brother Joey to paint an apartment. While Roc is out buying a tool for the job, he is stopped on the sidewalk by police who suspect him of being a burglar. Roc was caught “walking while black.”

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According to The New York Times, “In Baltimore, a city that is 63 percent black, the Justice Department found that 91 percent of those arrested on discretionary offenses like 'failure to obey' or 'trespassing' were African-American. Blacks make up 60 percent of Baltimore’s drivers but account for 82 percent of traffic stops. Of the 410 pedestrians who were stopped at least 10 times in the five and a half years of data reviewed, 95 percent were black.” The police officers, unconvinced by Roc's story, arrest him with little if any cause. The sitcom makes it abundantly clear what is happening. Once locked up, Roc turns to the black police officer. What makes this interaction so important is that this sitcom recognizes the tension between black civilians and black police officers who assist in the oppression of black communities. Roc, infuriated that he has been arrested on trumped up charges, says this. Roc's story eventually checks out, and he is freed, a highly optimistic ending to what could have been a life-changing event had it happened in real life. When he is let go, even after it is clear he has done nothing wrong, a white police officer tells Roc that he will be keeping an eye on him. When Roc returns home, it's still not over. It's only the end of his story, not the end of the story of the police's relationship with black communities. Roc hears a siren in the distance and says nothing. Black sitcoms don't portray white police officers as helpful and may portray black police officers as, at best, complicit.

All except for one notable exception. An outlier to this pattern, Family Matters stars Reginald Vel Johnson as a black police officer, and the series consistently portrays both Sgt. Carl Winslow and the police in general as altruistic. Unlike some other black sitcoms, Family Matters was immensely popular among white Americans as well, owing to its ABC TGIF lineup placement as much as its milquetoast, non-confrontational humor. Urkel-Mania swept the suburbs for years. It's hard to describe to someone who wasn't there just how ubiquitous and ever-present Steve Urkel was in the 90's. The only time Family Matters confronts racism within the police is a season five episode in which Carl's son Eddie is racially profiled. However, the episode takes the “bad apples” position, suggesting that this is an uncommon occurrence and that the police are ultimately a force for good in the black community. When Eddie tells Carl that police have quotas to fill, his father strongly denies this, despite the fact that police departments routinely set “productivity goals” which is merely euphemistic and a means in which to subvert laws prohibiting quotas. When Carl confronts the officer who profiled his son, he says that he will file a report on him, presenting this to the audience as a solution. In the real world, the culture of police “brotherhood” will almost certainly protect such an officer.

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Police officers who receive frequent complaints and hold records proving consistent offenses against civilians are generally permitted to continue as officers. When the confrontation is over, Carl even tells his son how proud he is to be a police officer. When Eddie speaks of quotas, Carl defends the police. When Carl confronts the veteran racist cop, Carl defends the police to the rookie cop. And when Carl wraps everything up, he defends the police once more. If the episode's “bad apples” politics are not transparent enough, the title is literally “Good Cop, Bad Cop.” At a time when black sitcoms were referencing Rodney King, calling out black police officers for their complicity in the institution that oppresses black communities, and bluntly saying, in no uncertain terms, that police harassment is a vulnerability to every black American, Family Matters' take on the subject is noticeably weak, perhaps even to the point of being detrimental, and inarguably the least confrontational of them all. One could argue that at least the series broached the subject even if they did not stick the landing, but it's galling watching this episode right after the Roc episode. 90's black sitcoms warned us about the police's antagonistic relationship toward black communities a long time ago – repeatedly – and it's a shame that decades of tragedy and recordings are what it took for more people to take this seriously.

It would have been nice if everyone had just watched that episode of Fresh Prince and got their hearts right, but that's not a realistic expectation. There is so much societal pushback against accusations of police misconduct and so much police fetishization in the United States that most people watching “very special episodes” of their favorite sitcoms from the 90's are not going to suddenly change their minds. Maybe they helped a little, art can be very powerful, but clearly more needs to be done besides that. I have a lot more to say about the police and specifically police abolition, but I said it all back in April in a video essay uploaded shortly before the killing of George Floyd. Even now as all this misconduct is irrefutable, people still try to refute it. They tell us that someone being knocked over and having his head cracked open did not happen and that he only tripped. They tell us that when protesters tossed tear gas back as the police it's “assault with a deadly weapon” but when the police shot that weapon at protesters it was not a deadly weapon. I don't know how this all ends, but going back to status quo is now unacceptable, and if we're really being honest, it has been unacceptable for a very long time.