Copaganda, Lethality, and Revenge: Rebel Ridge, and I Am Your Beast
What is the place of retributive violence in media? What does it's inclusion, or lack thereof, actually mean?
This article specifically talks about police brutality, violent and non-violent resistance, and the Palestinian struggle under apartheid. There’s also images of gratuitous cartoon blood and violence. I promise at some point we do get to the video games, but this isn’t a typical review. If you want that: I Am Your Beast is good, go play it. Rebel Ridge was frustrating, maybe skip that one. I talk about both properties without any regard for spoilers, though I don’t cover many plot specifics.
I was extremely disappointed by Rebel Ridge, Netflix’s latest action thriller directed by Jeremy Saulnier. In it, Terry Richmond faces down small town police corruption after money he needs to post his cousin Mike’s bail is stolen by the police, legally, via civil forfeiture. It’s a typical revenge plot, with a corrupt legal system unable or unwilling to carry out justice, yet it depicts the police brutality we’re used to seeing every day, after years of cracking down on protesters, and high profile public executions like that of George Floyd.
The pitch for a movie about a black man taking revenge against corrupt, violent police officers is an enticing one, but it assumes a level of responsibility for a subject matter so real and pressing. Where justice has been co-opted by powerful, moneyed, interests intent on exploiting as many people for as much as possible with no regards for violence, its up to the people to take justice back into their own hands by any means necessary. The trailer even features Terry taking a grenade launcher to the police.
The movie using cops as the bad guys feels like a two steps forward and three steps back, though. The fact that police are little more than thugs here is an acknowledgment of the reality of policing everywhere; it exists to protect property and punish lower classes, using the state monopoly on violence to punish the “right” minorities, and yet the script pulls its punches. Terry is made to suffer in non-violent, “less lethal” resistance until a so called “good cop” decides to finally do the right thing and not execute unarmed civilians, even if its only after the cops start shooting each other.
In fact, every single good message the movie might have is kneecapped by that ending. Terry wrongly assumes that a black woman cop is on his side in her nearly entirely white precinct, who betrays him until she grows a conscience right at the last moment. The movie highlights that civil asset forfeiture is entirely legal and supported by a system that makes it more expensive to fight than just have your stuff stolen without cause. Rebel Ridge rightly criticizes the judge and government staff who are complicit in the abuse by refusing to go out of their way to help those suffering police violence, even if it’s entirely legal. The problem is, the day is saved by that same legal system, and those same bad actors who act against their best interests when the chips are down.
Terry and his friends manage to deliver damning dash-cam footage to state police, and when the movie ends we’re supposed to just hope that these cops will hold their criminal partners accountable, and that this legal system they work hand in hand with every day won’t close ranks to protect their own. Unfortunately, in real life, police whistleblowers face retaliation, like demotions, harassment, intentionally negligent support in life or death scenarios, or are even murdered by fellow officers.1
It’s copaganda, through and through. By putting justice in the hands of reformed cops, it shrinks the problem back down to a few bad apples that just need to be taken to court, instead of a system of violence and oppression that’s an essential arm of the state. It fails to criticize the system of policing that allows this sort of injustice to exist, putting its full faith in that same institution to punish its own. It undermines the abolitionist movement, and the police don’t need any more help whitewashing their image. They already have huge budgets and plenty of journalists already doing stenography for them already.
It is incredibly frustrating that the cops in Rebel Ridge are not subjected to any violence on the level that they perpetrate across the entire movie. It’s worse that Terry is made to suffer in non-violent, “less lethal” resistance until a so called “good cop” decides to finally do the right thing and not execute unarmed civilians. Let’s be clear: All Cops Are Bastards, and the only good cops are ex-cops, usually ousted when they break from the thin blue line. Alec Karakatsanis said that “Criminal Law is really a weapon used against marginalized people in our society in ways that promote the interest of people who own things” and that people in power only enforce some laws against some people some times. In the case of the movie, how much of a redemption is it to save one life after willingly condemning another to death? How can a system that’s already failed the responsibility of wielding violence be trusted so unconditionally after the fact?
Is it possible that I’m an American media sadist, accustomed to a certain degree of gratuitous violence? Absolutely. But reforming the image of police by having them make the right choice only when someone they care about is under the gun of police brutality is seriously unsatisfying. Not only do the people in the right not get even, the people in the wrong get forgiveness. It fumbles the serious, real life stakes that it’s built to remind us of.
While non-violence is all well and good, there is no civil rights gain in human history that has happened without any violence from the side of the oppressed. Of course, violence from the oppressor is assumed and so for some reason those suffering the most are held to a higher standard. Violence, especially from the oppressed; black people subjugated by cops, Palestinians under apartheid, etc., is often retributive, and tiny compared to all the abuse they’ve sustained before, a lashing out by the unheard, the broken, the powerless.
In media, it’s certainly more satisfying. When you have an omniscient perspective in a story like Rebel Ridge, and you follow the struggles of its protagonists, you are bought into their struggle and their retribution is not only acceptable but necessary. Revenge is certainly not an unqualified moral good, but the violence wielded against our point of view characters is outlandishly unfair. Instead, its characters follow the principles of non-violent resistance, behaving with the utmost respect for their oppressors, abiding by the social contract despite being struck first. It might be more palatable if Terry’s non-violence inspired more bystanders to act against the police in the climax of the movie, if a bit heavy handed, but it instead inspires one of the oppressors. It’s a nice idea, but a dangerous fantasy that mostly serves to rehabilitate the police’s image.
I was extremely excited for I Am Your Beast, an action thriller from developer Strange Scaffold and publisher Frosty Pop, and it was hype well placed. It’s a sublime combination of high octane music, excellent writing and acting, with puzzle combat sandboxes built to be replayed and refined until you’ve speed run every level for an S rank.
In it, you play as Alphonse Harding, a killer for the United States government, who just wants to be left alone by his former handlers. When the Covert Operations Initiative comes calling, they don’t take no for an answer. After too many “One Last Jobs,” Harding is hunted through the wilderness by the same agency that made him such a lethal predator, and those overconfident, brutish, ruinous agents get to see firsthand what kind of beast he really is.
It’s the revenge fantasy boiled down to a perfectly scoped, 10 hour time trial. It’s music bumps, with RJ Lake’s soundtrack taking over your pulse like Hotline Miami’s. The dialogue is well acted, with the enemy barks getting a special shout out in making their forthcoming demise so much sweeter. It makes me feel like SUPERHOT makes me feel, while keeping the game moving lightning fast. It’s got one of the best feeling pistols ever put to screen. In I Am Your Beast, murder is easy, like chucking a bear trap at a person’s head like a fastball. Everyone should play it, period.
Smartly, Strange Scaffold dodges adhering closely to real life political hotbeds that IAYB can’t fail by pulling its punches: when the game’s primary antagonist walks away unscathed, its because he never put himself in any danger in the first place, and he’s capitulating finally to the player’s demands. It’s a more fantastical revenge story, putting the player in the shoes of someone like John Wick, a precision instrument navigating reckless chaos. Its stakes are more personal, even if it (correctly) identifies the US as a barbaric empire broadly at fault for the game’s setup.
Where Rebel Ridge undermines its systemic critiques with overt criminal conspiracies and a few “truly” bad apples, IAYB takes the overwhelmingly disproportionate military action of its villains and responds in kind, implicitly taking a stand against the military industrial complex and violent US interventionism. Sure, it’s a much less pointed and topical critique, but it’s at least wielded correctly.
Since the injustice is perpetrated by three letter agencies on anonymous American soil, Harding is given free rein to point their own hardware against them. When turning an RPG back towards a company of brutal yet overmatched soldiers, when they have made themselves completely above the law in their hunt for someone else’s life they feel entitled to, it would be wrong not to pull the trigger. In case you’re having doubts, the game opens with a scene where the COI kicks the proverbial dog, shooting an innocent bird that you follow through the woods during the game’s opening credits.
Their violence is not pointless, cruelty is the point. Those who view themselves as above the rest of the world, inflicting whatever pain they can to remind you of that perceived authority. In media driven by action, we recognize its not fair for the oppressors to monopolize the violence, yet people still hold those living under the worst conditions imaginable to a higher standard, always asking that they remain dignified and presentable in their outrage while being bombed each and every day.
Liv Agar highlights something important in her essay on Patriarchy and Why people like J.D. Vance hate being called weird:2
“The sadist loves when they are considered ‘dangerous’ and a threat that should be feared… It reminds them that they are the oppressor and that the ‘natural order’ they see themselves on top of remains intact. Yet the “weird” line does not paint the right as something that should be feared… This line places them in a subordinate social position, under those whose political rhetoric incorporates compassion as a virtue… It is thus an inversion of their ‘natural’ order…”
In movies and video games, protagonists and player characters are imbued with the privilege of agency, in order to justify their stories and points of view as ones we should care about. Sometimes this means killing people, and if we’re supposed to like them, it’s usually a motherfucker who the script wants to deserve it. They destroy the notion of that supposedly natural order where the oppressor deserves whatever they can take simply because they can. When its laid out cleanly in a narratively satisfying bow, that idea is much easier to swallow.
For us in the real world, the truth is that standing up to those in power means that you don’t have any of your own, aside from the people standing next to you and behind you. Changes in civil rights don’t happen without a lot of people in streets publicly fighting the savage oppressor. When those protests become violent, when those suffering are radicalized into taking drastic action, whether it’s self immolation or retribution, it’s never without context, even if we don’t get the moral clarity and perfect perspective of an authored narrative.
Sometimes you get the opportunity to punch a Nazi and the only right thing to do is take it. Sometimes any kind of protest feels completely hopeless, and you feel like you don’t have any options left to make your voice heard. More often, you get to march and occupy the streets and campuses you call home, while you’re surveilled, bullied, and beaten by state actors enforcing the laws that are convenient for them at the time. My point is that we need to remain compassionate, and to not be afraid to fight back. It can’t be wrong to stand up to injustice.
Tipping’s family apparently continues to pursue a wrongful death suit against the city. It’s only alleged murder in this case.
Walz dropping the weird line, especially for the VP debate, feels like a defanging of one of the best political speakers of my time, even if it was to be expected for the bipartisan genocide perpetrators division. How well are we changing the system from the inside so far?