The cinematic universe of copaganda: world-building and the enchantments of policing

Abstract

ABSTRACTWhat happens if we interpret representations of policing as a shared cinematic universe. What continuities emerge between stories of the formal institution of the police, vigilantism, and settler and imperial force? What contradictions become evident within logics of policing, and how are these contradictions resolved, cementing the role of police in political order? A cinematic universe suggests a different aesthetic relation than the idea of a genre. The aim is not to establish a common narrative structure, but to detail a condition of order that holds together despite its tangents and tensions. Police films hold together in much the same way, attempting to reconcile the production of racial capitalism with liberal imaginaries. By framing police films as a cinematic universe, I demonstrate how attachments to policing work not only through ideology but also through enchantment. Appeals to police as guarantors of safety, despite mounting evidence to the contrary, rely on immersion in a world in which force and pacification are subsumed by police stories of dramatic tension, humor, and moral triumph. The ideology that sustains policing today works through a process of world-building, whereby sprawling elements of a cinematic universe reveal new details and intrigues of enforcing imperial, capitalist order.KEYWORDS: Policecopagandamediaabolitionaffect AcknowledgmentsThanks to Miloš Jovanović and Andrew Poe for discussing the initial idea for this article and to Maria Adelmann, Kellan Anfinson, and Stephanie Erev, who provided detailed comments. Thanks to the Danish Society for Marxist Studies, the University of Copenhagen Political Theory Research Group, and the Western Political Science Association for the chance to present earlier versions of this work. I am appreciative of the thoughtful comments and editorial guidance provided by Alex Adams, Amy Gaeta, and two anonymous reviewers.Disclosure statementNo potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).Notes1 Following Travis Linnemann (Citation2022, 25), I use the term ‘police stories’ to refer to the set of narratives conveying a cultural ‘common sense’ (in the Gramscian sense), connecting police to notions of law, order, safety and justice.2 Social media has also become fertile ground for copaganda. As part of Operation Safety Net, a program designed to contain protests during the trial of Derek Chauvin for the murder of George Floyd, Minneapolis planned to spend $1.2 million to have social media influencers share city-approved content (MPD150 and MediaJustice Citation2021). The plan was met with intense criticism and subsequently abandoned (Vigdor Citation2021).3 Kraska (Citation1996, 425) reflects on the enjoyment that may arise in the critical researcher of the police, and turns this moment of enjoyment into a way of understanding the 'vitality of militarism'.4 Sorel sees myths as sources of mobilization for revolutionary political action. For Heilbrun, myth denotes stories driving oppression, contrasted with fictions, which envision other ways of being.5 ‘Ideology is a policing operation at its core, producing the interiority of the subject as self-policing’ (Bargu Citation2019, 301).6 By ‘police’, Foucault refers to more than the uniformed agents of the State. His understanding of a broader administrative apparatus nonetheless provides insight into the historical emergence of police institutions.7 Andrew Poe’s forthcoming book Democracy without Police explores this splendor-preserving role of the police and its relation to the production of order.8 Expanding upon Foucault’s insights to describe the specific institution of police, Neocleous (Citation2000, 19) chronicles how the 'nurturing of capitalism occurred via the intensified policing of the poor'.