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BRITTANY LUSE, HOST:
Hello, hello. I'm Brittany Luse, and you're listening to IT'S BEEN A MINUTE from NPR, a show about what's going on in culture and why it doesn't happen by accident.
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LUSE: A warning - this segment discusses mass shootings. This week, we're connecting the dots between Barbies for men, the NRA and an assassination attempt. I know, I know - how are all these things connected? Well, we're going to find out with The Wall Street Journal's Zusha Elinson, co-author of the book "American Gun," and Jennifer Mascia, senior news writer and founding staffer at The Trace, a nonpartisan nonprofit newsroom that covers guns. Zusha, Jennifer, welcome to IT'S BEEN A MINUTE.
ZUSHA ELINSON: Thanks for having us.
JENNIFER MASCIA: Thank you.
LUSE: All right. So to start, how did each of you find out that former President Donald Trump had been shot at?
MASCIA: A friend of mine texted me. I was having a day in Astoria, where I was a New York tourist, and a friend texted me before an AP alert even came in, and I almost threw up. I cover gun violence, and I never thought I would see this, regardless of your political persuasion. It punched me in the gut.
ELINSON: I also, you know, learned of it from emails and texts from my colleagues, and even this, I think, was far beyond the imagination and fears of anyone.
LUSE: I found out - me and my husband were out, and then he was like, oh, I guess, like, Donald Trump was shot? And I didn't believe him, and then he showed me a picture, and I still didn't believe him, because it's wild. This is the first time in, like, over 40 years that a former or sitting president has been shot at. I'd be surprised if you haven't heard what happened, but for anyone that needs a refresher, Donald Trump was speaking at a rally last Saturday in Pennsylvania when a gunman shot at him, killing one spectator and clipping Trump in the ear, and the response? Outrage, condemnations and prayers on all sides. NPR has done a lot of coverage on the response, but as far as I can tell, there's been less chatter about the gun, and this gun has a lot of symbolism - the AR-15. I'd like to start there. Zusha, you co-wrote a whole book, "American Gun," on the AR-15, and we'll get into the history later, but what does this gun symbolize today?
ELINSON: Yeah, there is no gun, probably, in the history of America that is a more potent symbol. This gun represents freedom. It represents the Second Amendment. It represents a whole host now of conservative and libertarian values. You know, you see it on flags at gun rights rallies, where - these big flags with the silhouette of the AR-15, and it says, come and take it. On the other side, for gun control supporters, for a lot of Americans, this gun represents a gun culture run amuck, and they see this gun as sort of the pinnacle of all that's wrong with guns in America, and you'll see survivors of mass shootings, you know, marching in the streets, carrying banners with the AR-15 crossed out. They want to get rid of that gun, so there's really no gun that encapsulates our nation's divide over firearms than this one.
LUSE: I would think that a lot of liberals might see this and say, you know, gun control now, as they often do after high-profile or mass shootings, and it's interesting that I haven't seen that as much from establishment Democrats, and Republicans are, of course, upset, but they're kind of talking around the gun. But Zusha, you think that we shouldn't expect Republicans to change their stance or really say anything. Can you expand on that?
ELINSON: Yeah, I'm actually writing a story about that right now. It's really interesting. If you look back in history, after the assassination attempt on Ronald Reagan, he eventually, 10 years after he was shot at, supported some of the most sweeping gun control measures that our nation has seen. That may surprise people - Republicans supporting gun control measures? He backed the Federal Assault Weapons Ban and the Brady Bill, which instituted the modern background check system. And so now, you have gun control activists saying that they hope to see that this assassination attempt may lead to big changes to gun laws, but in talking to political observers who see the playing field as it is, they don't think that's going to happen right now. Gun politics has changed a lot since the 1990s. We have a much more divided nation over guns. We have a much more divided Congress over guns.
LUSE: Yeah. You also said something really interesting in our pre-interview chat yesterday about how experiencing gun violence - I think many people might think that a survivor of a mass shooting would become pro-gun control, but you said that that's not necessarily the case.
ELINSON: I mean, being shot at is one of the most traumatic things a human being can experience - leads to PTSD, to, you know, horrific nightmares - but one thing it doesn't necessarily lead to is a desire for more gun control. In interviewing a lot of the survivors of the horrific mass shooting in Las Vegas, which was this guy shot up a country music festival, a lot of those survivors didn't want any new gun laws. We interviewed people who bought their first AR-15 after being shot at with an AR-15, and so I think it's interesting to note that not everyone who's shot at wants new gun laws.
LUSE: So the number of assault rifles owned by civilians rose from 400,000 in the early '90s to more than 20 million now, and many of the mass shootings that have happened in the past couple of decades, including Sandy Hook and Uvalde, were carried out using an AR-15 or an AR-15-style weapon. How did this gun become so popular?
MASCIA: AR-15s are lightweight. They're easy to use. The bullets that they fire tend to be very destructive. It's a miracle that former President Trump wasn't hurt more.
ELINSON: So back in the day, the '80s and '90s, this gun was the outcast - even in the gun world. We spoke with gun executives who would show their wares at NRA conventions. One told us that he got the middle finger - people flipped him off for even having his wares on his little booth there of AR-15s.
LUSE: Wow.
ELINSON: They despised, sort of, the military-style guns at the time. You know, these were sportsmen who liked their wood stock, gleaming, steel hunting rifles - they liked to go hunting, but a lot has changed since the '80s and '90s. Politically, culturally, we have a whole new gun culture now. It's not focused on hunting. It's focused on self-defense. After, you know, 9/11, where military imagery became really popular - right? - you had Hummers being sold. You had camo clothing being hot, and at that time, the AR-15 really takes off as a consumer item, and what supercharged it was politics, right? Every time a Democrat is running for office and saying we need to restrict this type of gun, people ran out to buy it. The first big boom occurred when Barack Obama was running for president. The NRA claimed that he was going to go - come and take all your guns and was going to ban AR-15s, even though he was extremely moderate on guns. The other thing that really transformed the gun from a niche product into a mass-market blockbuster was marketing. In the mid-2000s, they placed name-brand products in popular video games, and we took a look at internal company emails from those times where they talked about wanting to hook young consumers on their brand...
LUSE: Geez.
ELINSON: ...So that by the time they turned 18, they would buy their branded AR-15s.
LUSE: Wow.
ELINSON: And the last thing I'll say is that people who buy this gun really like it. As Jennifer mentioned, it's easy to shoot, and the AR-15 is the most modifiable, interchangeable gun on the market. You can switch out every part. You can get new parts. You can upgrade them, and that's why they call the AR-15 Legos for adults or Barbies for men.
LUSE: You know, something else I have noticed, thinking about and preparing for this conversation, is that the NRA really has such a diminished footprint in today's politics compared to when I was a kid. And, you know, I used to see Charlton Heston hoisting a rifle over his head at speaking engagements that he had as NRA president, which - he was NRA president, I believe, five times. You know, the NRA was this big group to contend with politically, but I just don't see them in that way now. Like, they have, you know, diminished membership, and their finances aren't what they used to be. So with all that in mind, what is propping up this pro-gun conversation? Jennifer, what do you think?
MASCIA: The NRA has contracted in recent years. It's had to deal with corruption scandal. Several of their top executives were found liable in a civil trial for essentially raiding the company coffers, so the NRA has diminished. In terms of filing the kind of lawsuits that end up Supreme Court cases, that's really left to the gun groups that have formed to the right of the NRA, who feel the NRA is too moderate. These groups have popped up and kind of absorbed the membership that jumped ship. The truth is that the NRA isn't really even necessary anymore. The Republican Party has completely absorbed all of those policies, so that in place of the NRA, we really have NRA-ism, and all of those things the NRA fought for are totally, you know, a sure thing with the Republican Party. And the NRA really was so successful, it made itself unnecessary.
LUSE: You know, as we've been talking, something that I've been thinking about is you've both detailed all of these reasons why the AR-15 is such a popular gun, but I keep weighing that against the fact that the AR-15 is the weapon of choice for so many mass shooters. How do the AR-15's owners - or supporters, I suppose - how do they weigh the benefits or the appeal of the gun with the fact that it does have this association with all of these gruesome happenings? I mean, even right up to this week and the assassination attempt on Donald Trump.
MASCIA: Well, one of my colleagues owns many guns. He's a military veteran and a police veteran, and he believes in gun safety, and if I think about him, he's a responsible gun owner. He knows that he would never use it in that way. He's trained on it. He keeps it away from his child. It's locked up. A lot of AR-15 owners think, well, that's not me. However, many AR-15 owners don't have to be trained. They don't have to go through vetting or background checks, in many states. When 450 million guns proliferate in a society, it suddenly becomes the casual thing. We forget that they are deadly weapons. They are a big responsibility.
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LUSE: Well, Jennifer, Zusha, I have learned so much here. Thank you so much for talking with me about this.
MASCIA: Thanks for having us.
ELINSON: Thank you, Brittany.
LUSE: And as a thank you, I'd like to teach you something by playing a game with you two. Can you stick around for a tiny bit longer?
MASCIA: Yeah.
ELINSON: Absolutely.
LUSE: All right. We'll be right back with a little game I like to call "But Did You Know?"
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LUSE: Stick around.
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LUSE: All right, all right. We're going to play a little game I like to call "But Did You Know?"
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LUSE: Here's how it works. I'm going to share a story that's been making headlines this week, and as I give you some background on the story, I'll also ask you trivia related to it, but don't worry - it's all multiple-choice. The right answer is in there somewhere, and the first one to blurt out the right answer gets a point. Person with the most points wins, and their prize is bragging rights. This is public media, baby. All right. We are going to take a look this week at the Ambani wedding. Did you all hear about this?
MASCIA: Yes, I did. It's been going on forever.
LUSE: (Laughter) What about you Zusha? Ringing any bells?
ELINSON: No.
LUSE: Well, great. You're going to learn a lot today. Basically, Anant Ambani, the son of India's richest man, got married to billionaire heiress Radhika Merchant, and some of the world's most powerful and most famous people attended. It's like if a giant wedding was also somehow an exclusive music festival, and that's what we're going to be talking about today. Are you ready?
MASCIA: Yes.
ELINSON: Yes.
LUSE: All right. See, Zusha, I like that. I like your bravery right now. You're going in. But the right answer's in there somewhere, so you still got a chance, OK? So to start, which of these stars did not perform at the wedding, or one of its pre-parties? 'Cause Zusha, there was a lot of pre-parties. Did not perform, OK?
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LUSE: Was it A, Rihanna, B, Justin Bieber or C, Taylor Swift?
MASCIA: C.
ELINSON: I'm going to go with Justin Bieber.
LUSE: All right. Well, the answer is Taylor Swift.
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LUSE: Jennifer, you were confident, and you were correct. So that's not even the full list, OK? Katy Perry, David Guetta, the Backstreet Boys and Pitbull all also performed at the wedding or at a pre-party - multiple pre-parties, again. If you could book anyone to play your dream wedding, who would it be?
ELINSON: Speaking for my wife particularly, I think we'd have to book Beyonce.
LUSE: Taste, a woman of taste. Good choice, Zusha.
MASCIA: I'd like to choose Madonna from 1990.
LUSE: I love the specificity.
MASCIA: I'm taking her "Vogue" era.
LUSE: (Laughter).
MASCIA: I'm taking her "Vogue" era.
LUSE: I love that. Excellent choices. Very, very good. I chose Big Freedia. That's who I would want. I feel like Big Freedia...
ELINSON: (Laughter).
LUSE: ...I feel like she would get the party going.
MASCIA: Yeah.
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BIG FREEDIA: (Rapping) Tune it up hot, hot. Go, let's go. Y'all get back now. Y'all get back now.
LUSE: All right, well, next question, question number two. How many everyday people did the Ambanis throw a feast for ahead of the wedding? Mind you, when I say everyday people, I mean, regular people. These are not people they know. These are strangers.
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LUSE: Was it A, 5,000 people, B, 10,000 people or C, 50,000 people?
ELINSON: I'll go with B.
MASCIA: I'm going to go with C, because I know that they have billions and billions of dollars, and India has a lot of people.
LUSE: Well, Jennifer, again, your reporter's hunches served you because the answer was indeed 50,000 people.
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LUSE: The three-day feast was held in the Ambanis' hometown in Gujarat, perhaps to preempt a bit of criticism about the lavish expense of the rest of the wedding. Another thing they did for regular people was hold a mass wedding for about 50 other couples. Question - would either of you ever go to a buffet that big?
MASCIA: No.
LUSE: Jennifer says no. Zusha, what do you say?
ELINSON: Having grown up going to a restaurant called Ponderosa...
LUSE: Great wings there, yeah.
ELINSON: ...We loved the jello. I would definitely go.
LUSE: (Laughter) You know what, Zusha, I'm with you. I feel like if a billionaire's throwing a buffet, I at least want to see. All right. So to recap the score, Zusha, you are at zero points...
ELINSON: (Laughter).
LUSE: ...But there's still one more question. Jennifer, you're at two points, holding strong. Without further ado, the final question - how much did the wedding likely cost? Now, these are estimates.
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LUSE: Was it estimated between A, $100 to $300 million, B, $300 to $600 million or C, $600 to $900 million?
MASCIA: I'll take B.
ELINSON: All right, I'm going with B as well. I'm just going to copy Jennifer, because she knows all the answers.
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LUSE: Well, you were both right, but Jennifer was first.
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LUSE: The answer is B...
ELINSON: (Laughter).
LUSE: ...$300-600 million. The Daily Mail estimated that the three-day wedding cost around $320 million, and accounting for five months of pre-wedding events, The Guardian put the total price at around $600 million. If I think about it too long (laughter), I will have a nervous breakdown (laughter).
MASCIA: They were wearing emeralds the size of credit cards.
LUSE: Look at you. Jennifer, were you there? Because you have the tea.
MASCIA: I read the Daily Mail a lot, OK?
LUSE: (Laughter).
MASCIA: Everyone needs an outlet, and my outlet is gossip, OK? We cover very grim stuff.
LUSE: (Laughter).
ELINSON: I would recommend to The Trace's editors that you open up a rich wedding...
MASCIA: (Laughter).
ELINSON: ...Gossip column for Jennifer.
LUSE: Please, please. All right. Well, that's it for this week's edition of "But Did You Know?" Congratulations to Jennifer on your win.
MASCIA: Thank you.
LUSE: Zusha, Jennifer, thank you both so much for joining me today.
MASCIA: Thanks for having us.
ELINSON: What a pleasure and an honor. Thank you.
LUSE: That was Zusha Elinson from The Wall Street Journal and Jennifer Mascia from The Trace. I'm going to take a quick break, and when I get back, we'll get into why so many people want to see comedians playing cops on the big screen.
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LUSE: My big question this week is, why does America love a funny Black cop?
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LUSE: Which big-screen cop would you want solving a crime for you?
SORAYA MCDONALD: I'm going with Axel Foley. Axel seems pretty competent. He pays attention to detail.
ALYSSA ROSENBERG: I would definitely prefer to be rescued by the Paw Patrol, if I had to be rescued by a series of cops.
LUSE: Hollywood's been in a pinch for a while now, and this summer was looking no different. The big-budget Memorial Day weekend movies failed to move audiences, and with no Barbenheimer-like event on the horizon, Hollywood was getting nervous. Enter "Bad Boys: Ride Or Die."
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INNER CIRCLE: (Singing) Bad boys, bad boys, what you going to do? What you going to do...
LUSE: The buddy cops Marcus Burnett and Mike Lowrey, played by superstars Martin Lawrence and Will Smith, came back for the fourth installment of the series.
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WILL SMITH: (As Mike Lowrey) Marcus, get in the car.
MARTIN LAWRENCE: (As Marcus Burnett) He has a gun to my head.
SMITH: (As Mike Lowrey) You want to deal with him, or you want to deal with me?
LAWRENCE: (As Marcus Burnett) Sorry, sir, but I got to go.
LUSE: "Bad Boys: Ride Or Die" opening weekend ticket sales were nearly double with the studio projected. Then, just in time for the Fourth of July weekend, Eddie Murphy reprised his role as streetwise Detroit police officer Axel Foley in "Beverly Hills Cop: Axel F."
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EDDIE MURPHY: (As Axel Foley) This isn't my first time in Beverly Hills.
LUSE: This is Murphy's fourth movie playing Axel, and it shot to number one on Netflix, with 41 million views in its first week. The people have spoken - America loves an onscreen cop, but I've also noticed that America specifically loves an onscreen cop played by a funny Black guy. Just think of all the comedic actors who struck box-office gold multiple times playing cops, or cop-like characters - Martin Lawrence in the "Bad Boys" and "Big Momma's House" series, Chris Tucker in the "Rush Hour" series, Kevin Hart in the "Ride Along" series, Will Smith - who has carried every type of badge you can imagine - and Eddie Murphy, who credits his role in the "Beverly Hills Cop" series with his massive blockbuster appeal. So why does America love a funny Black cop? To help me answer it, I've got critic Soraya McDonald, who wrote a deep dive on all of Will Smith's law enforcement roles, and Washington Post editor and opinion columnist Alyssa Rosenberg, who wrote a five-part series on Hollywood's long relationship with law enforcement - on- and off-screen.
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LUSE: Soraya, Alyssa, welcome to IT'S BEEN A MINUTE.
ROSENBERG: Thank you for having us.
MCDONALD: Yes, thank you.
LUSE: So today, we are talking specifically about Black cop characters played by comedians. My first question is why do you think playing a funny Black cop has such blockbuster appeal?
MCDONALD: They're disarming.
LUSE: Say more about that. You say disarming?
MCDONALD: Yes. Some of these ideas I'm really just sort of stealing from Alyssa...
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MCDONALD: ...Because I think when I spoke to her, Alyssa made this point about police departments acting as a sort of citizenship machine. In America, there are various ethnic groups of white immigrants who come to America who are maybe, like, at best, sort of considered white with an asterisk. You see this with Irish people in particular.
ROSENBERG: Italian Americans, too, right? Those most of all are the two white immigrant groups that earn their whiteness, in part, by going into law enforcement.
LUSE: And so you see kind of, like, the Black cop archetype as kind of in that tradition, of kind of becoming American through entering the police force?
MCDONALD: Exactly.
ROSENBERG: Yeah, although I think with - and Soraya, I mean, correct me if I'm wrong - I think there's an extent to which, when Irish Americans and Italian Americans joined law enforcement, that was part of a sort of mass transformation of those communities from ethnic to white.
MCDONALD: Yes.
ROSENBERG: But when Black officers join police departments, firefighting departments, that has never quite turned into a mass transformation.
MCDONALD: No.
ROSENBERG: Those characters, those individuals, to a certain extent, become blue rather than Black, but don't necessarily become white.
LUSE: But I wonder specifically about the comedy part. Why is it that American audiences seem to continuously latch on to seeing Black comedians playing cops in kind of these action-comedy films?
MCDONALD: I really feel like it functions as a form of sort of cinematic absolution, where you can go to a movie theater, you know, and you can see this person who's African American, who's a leading man, who is able to embody all the, sort of, tropes of a leading man, whether it be his masculinity, this idea that he is a protector - right? - he is - you are sort of instantly on his side, and that is in very stark contrast to the dynamics that exist, sort of, in real life, particularly racialized dynamics, with police as an institution.
ROSENBERG: And could I try a theory out on both of you?
LUSE: Sure.
ROSENBERG: One thing I think is really interesting is that both comedians and fictional cops have, if not identical, sort of parallel roles in our culture. Comedians say the things that you're not supposed to say.
LUSE: Right. Right.
ROSENBERG: And our fictional cops see the things that you're not supposed to see. Like, they take on sort of a burden for the rest of society, right? I mean, the crime in pop culture is often, you know, much more dramatic. The criminals are sort of much more degraded. And so I think there's something very interesting about combining those complimentary truth teller roles in a single character, right?
And I think it's especially interesting that, you know, you have "Bad Boys 4" and "Beverly Hills Cop: Axel F" out the summer. Both of which are Black cops are charged with cleaning up police departments that have been corrupted...
LUSE: Right.
ROSENBERG: ...By white figures of authority, while also burnishing the reputations of white cops who they are personally connected to.
LUSE: And both these scripts shared one of the same writers, right?
ROSENBERG: Yes. It's fascinating that we have these two very reassuring movies that essentially have the same message, which is that If there are problems with police departments, it's those bad white guys over there. It's not a systemic problem.
LUSE: Right. Like, bad apples.
ROSENBERG: And things can be cleaned up by these sort of comforting, highly sympathetic Black comedians.
LUSE: To me, I also think about what it means having these characters who both are poking fun at individuals who might have power over them, but they also, like, represent and enforce this power. In a way, it kind of allows both the image of the police and the image of the actor to kind of have it both ways. They both - the actor and the institution - get to be authoritative, but they also get to be kind of nonthreatening or just kidding.
ROSENBERG: Yeah, absolutely.
LUSE: I mean, these are star-making vehicles to just come clean. I actually had never seen "Beverly Hills Cop" until (laughter) - until, like, the past month. But I actually just found out that adjusted for inflation, "Beverly Hills Cop" is the highest-grossing R-rated film in the U.S. since 1977. I really was blown by how much it did for Eddie Murphy. He was basically the first Black actor to play a cop in a big blockbuster after the Blaxploitation era - like, being the only person whose name is on the movie poster.
He had absolute top billing. It wasn't just unusual to have a Black man as the hero cop at that time. It was also unusual to have him as the only star and the main star of a film at that time. So kind of watching "Beverly Hills Cop" - the first one - and getting back in that mindset, it allowed me to kind of see it from a totally different perspective.
Like, he's also, though, I noticed, never the butt of the joke. He's always positioned - even physically - as equal or more important to the other white actors who are in the scene with him. Eddie Murphy's character, Axel Foley makes a lot of racial commentary that I imagine was very risque at that time, and he gets away with it.
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JOHN ASTON: (As Sergeant Taggart) We have six witnesses that say you broke in and started tearing up the place, then jumped out the window.
MURPHY: (As Axel Foley) And you guys believe that? Are you cops or doormen?
LUSE: And the assumption is - I mean, from how popular this movie was - he was able to get the audience to identify with him - this Black man from Detroit - in very white Beverly Hills. That was really a big breakthrough entertainment moment.
ROSENBERG: But I think this is a really interesting point, right? That, yes, like, Eddie Murphy is a huge star and really important. At the same time, to a certain extent, playing a cop and becoming a huge star can be constricting, right? It can lead to...
LUSE: Yes.
ROSENBERG: ...People expecting you to be a certain way, to take on certain kinds of roles, and that is not necessarily artistically satisfying for everybody.
LUSE: Certainly. Certainly.
ROSENBERG: You know, if you think about Will Smith and the sort of troika of, you know, not just cop comedies, but, like, it's almost like an establishment trilogy, right? You know, you've got "Bad Boys."
LUSE: Yeah.
ROSENBERG: You've got "Independence Day, " where he plays an ace fighter pilot. And then you have "Men In Black," where he plays a New York City cop who gets sort of elevated...
LUSE: Yeah.
ROSENBERG: ...To this, you know, secret intelligence agency.
LUSE: Space force.
ROSENBERG: Yeah, like, the space force...
LUSE: (Laughter).
ROSENBERG: ...Basically. Like, you have this sort of establishment trilogy where...
LUSE: Yeah.
ROSENBERG: ...Will Smith becomes, like, he can perform any American protective masculinity.
LUSE: I'm glad you bring up Will Smith, though, because I mean, you know, he's also somebody who is reprising a big role this summer in the "Bad Boys" franchise - the newest film Bad Boys: Ride Or Die." And he picked up his police badge as he was strategically - very strategically pursuing movie stardom. Talk to me about why it was so advantageous for him to play a cop.
MCDONALD: That was part of his plan with James Lassiter.
LUSE: Right, his manager.
MCDONALD: If you say, I want to be a movie star, then it's like, OK, how do we do that, right? Like, we make you this leading man, what do Americans like? What do people like about American film, right? There's a whole lot there to sort of pull on and trade on in terms of, like, you have this authority figure who is entrusted with a gun.
LUSE: I wonder, also, though, specifically, like, when I think about, even when you take the character of a cop down to like brass tacks. Like you mentioned, there's, like, masculinity. There's guns. There's the idea of that hero. You brought up competence when you talked about Axel Foley earlier on, somebody who's a problem solver. And also, too, if you're masculine, at least thinking like in the kind of classic American cinema sense, then there's a certain kind of sexiness a lot of American audiences feel comfortable with. And it seems like Will Smith was seeking that out.
MCDONALD: And he had the looks, right? He's tall. He's handsome. He's got a great smile. He has rhythm. He's a good dancer. You know, he's a jokester. Like, he has this very comfortable screen presence.
LUSE: We've talked a lot about film cops, how Americans feel about them and what the stars get out of playing them. But cops themselves have become divisive to many Americans in recent years. You know, arguments for police abolition have entered mainstream discourse. We've seen many calls to defund police departments following the murder of George Floyd and the protests of 2020. Alyssa, I would love to get your thoughts on this. Have cop movies changed at all since then?
ROSENBERG: I don't really think so. And in fact, like, to the extent that conversations about abolition have entered mainstream discourse, it is not clear to me at all that that has affected the market for cop shows. And look. You know, I mean, I think that the cop story as it exists is a highly American phenomenon and is - you know, comes out of this historical relationship between law enforcement agencies and Hollywood - right? - to stem off formal regulation. The entertainment industry basically cuts a deal with both moralists and police officers. But also, frankly, like, if you want to make movies, it is logistically easier if you have the support of the police. Right? Like, if you want to pull a permit to shoot on a street...
LUSE: Sure. You have to go through police. Right.
ROSENBERG: It is easier if the police department likes you. But people all over the world love stories about crime and detectives, right? I mean...
LUSE: Oh, yeah.
ROSENBERG: Sherlock Holmes is a British creation - Inspector Clouseau, right? It meets a sort of primal urge to see evil punished, to be reassured that there is order in the world. And so do I think that police stories have evolved? I mean, look. I think we see this huge explosion of, you know, true crime consumption...
LUSE: Right.
ROSENBERG: ...And, you know, an extent to which, like, people want to solve the mystery themselves, which, to a certain extent, is, like, kind of an implicit critique of the police, right? It's like they want to be able to come in and solve the mystery. They want to pick up where law enforcement has failed. So I think maybe to a certain extent, the American audience has sort of shifted to the criminals as opposed to the cops, in some cases even to sort of the victims instead of the cops. But there is this deep and abiding interest in crime, in violence, in mysteries.
LUSE: Yeah.
ROSENBERG: Right? And I just - I don't see that being touched by the last four years at all.
LUSE: We've been talking about cop action comedies. We've been talking about how cop action comedies have a pretty strong moment this summer, but the superhero has prevailed at the box office for much of the last decade, almost two. Soraya, my producer tells me that you think superhero movies are linked to cop movies. Talk to me about that.
MCDONALD: I do in a couple different ways. I will say, again, this is not an original thought that I can take credit for. It is something that has stuck in my head ever since I interviewed Boots Riley, who said to me, superheroes are cops. And that completely kind of reframed the way I looked at those movies and those stories because superheroes are imaginary. They're not real.
LUSE: Right.
MCDONALD: They exist extrajudicially.
LUSE: Yes. It sounds like the superhero's, like, to a certain degree, the police archetype unchained.
MCDONALD: Exactly. Yes.
LUSE: You know, it's interesting. Our producer Alexis, who worked at Marvel for a stint was the first person to tell me - I did not know this - that DC Comics literally actually stands for Detective Comics.
MCDONALD: Yes. People forget about this, but, like, Batman is the world's greatest detective.
LUSE: You know, despite more talk about abolition and critiquing law enforcement, you know, "Law And Order: SVU" is always on. This probably is not ending anytime soon.
MCDONALD: No.
LUSE: But as society's view of cops continue to shift, what type of cop do you think we'll see next?
MCDONALD: I would not be surprised if someone hasn't already pitched Taylor Sheridan or someone, like, a showrunner like him like a customs and border patrol drama.
ROSENBERG: I mean, look. One of the reasons for the persistence of the genre is that it's expansive, right? And as law enforcement agencies have proliferated in the United States, I mean, the fact colleges have their own police forces - you have all sorts of specific government agencies with their own distinct police forces. The genre has been able to be really capacious and expand along with the police apparatus of the United States. It's also just - you know, it's sort of ludicrously capacious in some ways, right? Like, yes, Will Smith has, like, played a cop in a bunch of, like, sort of conventional, realistic movies. He's also been in "Bright," where he plays a cop who has an orc for a partner, right? Like, so it's like orc cop, cop rock, cops in outer space, you know, "Paul Blart Mall Cop," right? Like...
LUSE: Anything we can attach a badge to.
ROSENBERG: And so I don't want to hazard a guess because cop shows can be anything. Cop stories can be anything. And judging by the last century of American entertainment history, they probably will be.
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LUSE: Alyssa, Sarah, thank you so much for unpacking this with me today. This has been so interesting.
MCDONALD: Thank you for putting us together. It's just - it's such a pleasure to talk to the both of you.
ROSENBERG: Yes, totally. Thank you for having us.
LUSE: That was Alyssa Rosenberg, editor and opinion columnist for the Washington Post, and critic Soraya McDonald. This episode of IT'S BEEN A MINUTE was produced by...
BARTON GIRDWOOD, BYLINE: Barton Girdwood.
ALEXIS WILLIAMS, BYLINE: Alexis Williams.
LIAM MCBAIN, BYLINE: Liam McBain.
COREY ANTONIO ROSE, BYLINE: Corey Antonio Rose.
LUSE: This episode was edited by...
JESSICA PLACZEK, BYLINE: Jessica Placzek.
LUSE: Engineering support came from...
JOSH NEWELL, BYLINE: Josh Newell.
MAGGIE LUTHAR, BYLINE: Maggie Luthar.
GILLY MOON, BYLINE: Gilly Moon.
LUSE: Our executive producer is...
VERALYN WILLIAMS, BYLINE: Veralyn Williams.
LUSE: Our VP of programming is...
YOLANDA SANGWENI, BYLINE: Yolanda Sangweni.
LUSE: All right. That's all for this episode of IT'S BEEN A MINUTE from NPR. I'm Brittany Luse. Talk soon.
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