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In a book released on the eve of the 2016 election called Asymmetric Politics, political scientists Matthew Grossmann and David Hopkins argued that Americas political parties dont just have different ideologies, but are really different kinds of organizations. Republicans are organized around broad symbolic principles, whereas Democrats are a coalition of social groups with particular policy concerns, the authors concluded.

I dont want to treat that book as gospel, but it speaks to a certain understanding that has existed throughout my 17 years covering national politics. Democrats have been considered the party of Asian, black, gay, Jewish and Latino people, along with atheists, teachers, union members, etc. in short, a coalition organized around a bunch of different identity groups. Meanwhile, Republicans have been thought of as the party of small government, low taxes, a strong national defense and traditional moral values in short, a coalition based around a few core ideological principles.

That has always been a fairly simplistic view of the parties. (And Grossmann and Hopkinss book is much more nuanced.) But as an easy rubric to understand the two parties it worked. It still does, to some extent. But less and less so.

The two big stories happening right now in American politics the 2020 Democratic primary and impeachment show both parties being reshaped in ways that break with that asymmetry: The GOP is becoming increasingly organized around identity groups, and Democrats are becoming increasingly ideological.

Let me start with the Republicans.

With Republicans on Capitol Hill strongly defending President Trump amid the Ukraine scandal, you might say that the GOP has simply abandoned many of its principles in deference to Trump. Maybe. But I think the more accurate story is that Republicans on Capitol Hill are standing firmly behind Trump because GOP voters and GOP activists and elites are demanding that they do so. There just isnt much room to break with the president of your party if close to 90 percent of voters in the party approve of him and many of those voters get their news from sources strongly supportive of that president.

Why are Republican voters and elites so strongly aligned with Trump? Theres not a simple answer, but I think identity rather than ideology is a big part of it. Trump is defending the identities of people who align themselves with the GOP, and this is a more powerful connection and reason to back him than pure ideological concerns. In defending Trump, conservative voters are really defending themselves.

No party ever governs strictly on ideology, but some of the breaks with conservative orthodoxy in the Trump era are notable.

If you think of the GOP as being broadly wary of government intervention into the economy, its been striking to watch the Trump administration try very hard to prop up the coal industry even as the rise of natural gas and other alternative fuel sources have reduced the need for coal. The administrations limits on travel from certain countries and cuts in the number of refugees who are entering the U.S. have affected Muslims most, suggesting that the GOPs long-championing of religious freedom is now really just about defending the values of Christian and Jewish people. On trade policy, Trump imposed tariffs on China and other nations, and after those nations retaliated by making it harder for U.S. farmers to sell their goods abroad, the administration gave direct financial aid to farmers.

The Republican Party has traditionally favored few tariffs, limited government intervention in the economy and not giving government money directly to people in lieu of them earning it through work. Its recent actions seem out of character for a party organized around a particular ideology.

But if you think of the GOP as being organized around identity groups, these policies hang together quite well. The clear beneficiaries of the Trump administrations actions have been businesses and corporations whose leaders back the president (such as those in the coal industry), conservative Christians, farmers, gun rights enthusiasts, people wary of increases in the number of foreign-born Americans and Islam, people wary of movements like Black Lives Matter and MeToo, pro-Israel activists and residents of rural areas.

Of course, Im not the first person to notice any of this. The journalist Ron Brownstein refers to the GOP as the coalition of restoration, trying to fight against a coalition of transformation led by Democrats. Robert Jones, head of the Public Religion Research Institute, has described Trump as the defender of a white Christian America that sees itself in decline. In a recent speech, Attorney General Willam Barr praised the Judeo-Christian values that have made this country great and warned that irreligion and secular values are being forced on people of faith. All three of those formulations describe a complicated mix of identity and ideology.

Some values and preferences that were always there, like racial resentment, rural resentment, nationalism, are being amplified and others, like free markets, are being diminished, Hans Noel, a scholar on political parties who teaches at Georgetown University, told me.

Allegiance to Trump is becoming more important to what it means to be conservative, he added, But post-Trump, that change may persist, with a conservatism that is more populist and nationalist.

You might argue that this was always the Republican Party that the GOP of Ronald Reagan and the two Bush presidents was similarly organized around conservative identity groups and not ideology. Perhaps the Bushes downplayed that dynamic for electoral reasons and to be politically correct, and therefore presented themselves as, say, more liberal on racial issues than the partys base voters really wanted. Maybe Trump has simply stripped away the artifice. And you could certainly also argue that the Trump administration, particularly its aggressive push to reduce the number of people on Medicaid, is quite ideologically conservative on many issues.

Notably, Hopkins mostly disagrees with me, arguing that there have been some shifts in the Trump era but that the GOP has not fundamentally changed.

His racial appeals are more common, more central and more overt, and he is more likely than most Republicans to simply be misleading or dishonest about what his policies are, he told me. But his appeals to patriotism, nationalism and nostalgia for an idealized past are very much in line with traditional conservative rhetoric, and he increasingly speaks the language of small government and capitalism.

I think those arguments have merit. I dont think that the Republican Party has abandoned ideology in favor of identity completely. But it does seem like identity is playing a bigger and clearer role than it did a decade ago.

Lets move to the Democrats. Polling shows that a rising number of Democrats view themselves as liberal now half of the party, compared to less than a third in the early 2000s. Democratic voters are increasingly likely to support liberal positions such as allowing more immigrants into the country and the government playing a role in helping Americans pay for their health care.

But the shift among Democrats is even more evident among activists and elites. Groups like Black Lives Matter, Demand Justice, the Sunrise Movement, Planned Parenthood and the newly-revived Poor Peoples Campaign are pushing the Democratic Party in a more ideological direction. That ideology is perhaps best defined by a push for equality across a lot of realms and particularly around ethnicity and race, gender, income, sexual orientation and wealth.

I think this is why Kamala Harris struggled to win the support of young, liberal black Democratic activists in her presidential run. She often tried to connect with them on identity (as a woman of color), but many of them were more interested in Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren, who both made taking strong stands on racial and wealth inequality central to their candidacies.

What makes the Green New Deal notable is that its a solution to climate change on explicitly social-democratic grounds, said Daniel Schlozman, an expert on parties who teaches at Johns Hopkins University. He was referring to the fact that the Green New Deal is an environmental proposal but also includes liberal goals like guaranteeing all Americans a job and the ability to join a labor union.

I dont want to overstate this shift, which I think is largely about party activists and a certain bloc of the partys elected officials, including Sanders and Warren. You might argue both that Democrats have long been obsessed with equality and that the party still functions effectively as a bunch of different groups joined together. And its worth noting that about half of Democratic voters identify as moderate or conservative, not liberal. Another reason to be cautious about the idea that Democrats are more ideological than ever is that the leader in the national polls in the Democratic primary, Joe Biden, is running much more as a coalition-style candidate than an ideologically driven one. He seems to be trying to capture the nomination by combining the support of blacks, Catholics, liberals, moderates, Latinos, union members and whites, as opposed to running as an explicitly moderate or liberal candidate.

I think theres a ways yet to go before the trends we see add up to a fundamentally ideological Democratic Party, said Hopkins. But he added, Sanders and Warren are trying to redefine the party, and theres a chance they or their political descendants could succeed in the future.

Indeed, I think the party is changing, even if it has not fully changed. There has been a huge shift over the last five years by the Democratic Partys officials, activists and even its voters in terms of viewing racial inequality as being principally about societal problems like racism (rather than shortcomings in effort by black people). A greater focus on gender equality in the party has forced Democrats like Biden to cast aside support for limits on abortions that some of these pols had embraced in the past. Biden often criticizes the rising left wing in his party, but the former vice presidents actual campaign positions are solidly liberal hes against the death penalty, and supports allowing federal funding to be used for abortions, expanding Medicare to many more Americans, free community college, and decriminalizing marijuana. In many ways, Biden (and Pete Buttigieg) are essentially conceding to the rising power of the ideological left and simply offering a milder version of its ideas than Sanders and Warren.

Why do these party changes matter? First, they explain why fights between the elites and activists within both parties are so intense. Never-Trump Republicans such as Bill Kristol deeply believe they are defending the true Republican Party. Old-style Democrats such as Biden think they are defending the true Democratic Party. Secondly, these shifts explain why some seemingly-on-the rise politicians are struggling. Former House Speaker Paul Ryan was trying to find some middle course between the more ideologically conservative old-style GOP and the more identity-driven Trump version and just couldnt. I think Harris tried both to connect with the rising activists in her party and the more traditional folks and managed to excite neither group.

Third, and perhaps most importantly, these shifts matter because America is to some extent in a partisan civil war, and we essentially have three competing views on how to end it: A Biden/Bush/Kristol style approach that downplays divisions among Americas various identity groups and reaches for more compromises; a Sanders/Warren approach of resetting America along more equal lines; and a Trump/Barr vision that is decidedly Judeo-Christian and favors maintaining traditional norms over upsetting them to expand equality.

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What Unites Republicans May Be Changing. Same With Democrats. - FiveThirtyEight

THE BOOKS, BY JOHN SELF

Fifty Shades of Grey trilogyBy EL James, 2012The dirty books about a sadomasochistic relationship that spawned a million monochrome imitators broke all the rules of publishing. They started out as Twilight fan fiction published online, then became self-published ebooks; the three books, once picked up by a mainstream publisher, appeared just weeks apart, and they were completely criticproof. If EL James seemed subsequently to be short of inspiration rewriting two of the books from the antagonists viewpoint her place in 21st-century pop culture, and the second-hand bookshops of Ireland, was already assured.

Solar BonesBy Mike McCormack, 2016Long-time fans of Mike McCormack (who once wrote a story about police arresting the only man in Ireland not to have written a memoir) were thrilled when his comeback novel proved a huge success, bagging the Goldsmiths Prize and the International Dublin Literary Award. Its flowing one-sentence structure of a dead man reviewing his life showed that experimental fiction can be popular. It was a triumph of discovery and smart publishing by Tramp Press, showing how small, independent Irish houses can take on the big boys and win. It also seems to have been influential in the Man Booker Prize changing its rules to allow Irish publishers to enter.

Gangsta GrannyBy David Walliams, 2011David Walliams is a publishing phenomenon, having written 11 of the UKs 50 bestselling books of the decade. This was his breakthrough childrens novel, which capitalised on his Roald Dahl-inspired formula of gross humour, wicked adults and Queen Elizabeth. Walliams is a representative of the ever-popular category of authors who are better known for something else. But dont be downhearted, bookworms: your chosen medium retains such an air of aspiration that everyone, even the YouTuber and Instagram influencer, still wants to be a writer.

My Brilliant FriendBy Elena Ferrante, translated by Ann Goldstein, 2012The rise of literature in translation, from about 3 per cent of books sold in the UK and Ireland at the start of the decade to about 6 per cent now, is exemplified by Elena Ferrantes four-volume Neapolitan saga of female friendship, which started quietly in 2012 and has now sold 10 million copies worldwide. So popular have the books proved that when her first novel since completing the series was published, last month, British newspapers rushed to be the first to review it even though its published only in Italian at present.

The Handmaids TaleBy Margaret Atwood, 1985One of the most influential books of the decade was published almost 35 years ago. The Handmaids Tale, acclaimed in its day but never a bestseller, gained new life with the recent television adaptation and Margaret Atwoods 2019 Booker-winning sequel, The Testaments. But its popularity this decade also spoke of fears for an uncertain world where the political climate seems closer to Atwoods totalitarian state of Gilead than ever an impulse that also saw George Orwells 70-year-old novel Nineteen Eighty-Four become a bestseller in the month after Donald Trumps inauguration as US president.

LordeReleased in 2013 when she was 16, Lordes debut album, Pure Heroine, undercut the cheesiness of lyrics steeped in brand-laden braggadocio, with Royals. It was also probably the first album that could truly be viewed through a post-Body Talk lens. By the time of Melodrama, a collaboration with one of the producers of the decade, Jack Antonoff, her dominance was copper-fastened. It could be argued that not since the mid-20th century have teenagers been so central to sociopolitical and cultural discourse. Lorde represented a shift in what is cool: vulnerability, ennui, resistance, resilience, so-many-feelings, and the equity of the emotional labour of teendom relative to adult struggles.

Kanye WestPopulism, narcissism, My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy, egomania, mental illness, celebrity, reality television, delusions of grandeur, outbursts, controversy, red hats, zebra trainers, paparazzi, memes, power, Adidas, stage design, Yeezus, Twitter, SNL, the 2015 Brit Awards, fashion weeks, Glastonbury, Good, The Life of Pablo, Christianity, race, gender, Watch the Throne, Chicago, Calabasas, architecture, Coachella, Sunday Service, Taylor Swift, ye, slides, drill, Kids See Ghosts, opera, rage, insecurity, feuds, outbursts, gospel, Tidal, Vogue, manifestos, Cruel Summer, presidents, spiralling, cancel culture, forgiveness, deep dives, Obama, Grammys, Kardashians, CAPS LOCK, despair, hope, art, fear, fragility, genius.

BeyoncAlthough Beyonc is criminally under-recognised when it comes to many of the industrys big awards, particularly for her albums, she still dominated this decade. From her era-defining performances at Coachella, the Super Bowl and Glastonbury to evolving the very concept of concept albums with both Beyonc and Lemonade, it would be hard to know who to carve next to her on the Mount Rushmore of popular music, given how out on her own she is. With her astute, magpie-like approach to visual influences, her once-in-a-generation voice, her flawless moves, and her songwriting of incredible prowess and originality, she is everything.

StormzyStormzy stands on the shoulders of the grime godfathers and -mothers, but once he got up there he ascended to levels no UK rapper had reached before. This bonafide pop stars headline performance at Glastonbury this year was a baseline for English popular culture from which the next decade will be measured. Its telling that he also took that moment to shout out those who have come up before and alongside him. Britains strain of hip hop has boomeranged to influence the sounds emerging from North America, particularly Drake, and in Ireland, but his talent, humility, humour and sense of duty to community are all his own.

The Odd Future incubatorIn many ways the 2010s were the decade of the collective. As young artists picked through the fragments of a fractured music-industry infrastructure, new ways of organising, releasing, creating, promoting and merchandising were born. The Odd Future Wolf Gang Kill Them All collective have not just raised some of the most intriguing artists of the decade Tyler, the Creator, Syd Tha Kyd, Frank Ocean, Earl Sweatshirt but also manifested a genie-out-of-the-bottle cultural moment. Their shows, music and online presence were hip hops contemporary punk moment, of which there will always be a before and after, and which the 2010s solidified.

Game of Thrones2011-19Winter came and went. Some nasty things were done for love. Every method of murder, rape, torture, incest and resurrection was graphically explored. Lannisters sent their regards (and always paid their debts). Wights, white walkers, dragons, giants and a gazillion extras in leather and pelts got stuck with the pointy end. Hodor held the door. Jon Snow knew nothing and, almost 10 years later, comprehended less. Books were sidelined. Fans clashed. Starbucks entered the frame The show of the decade was a sordid and sprawling fantasy so big it felt as if we were living it. And now our watch is ended.

The Killing2007, 2011-12Although it premiered in 2007, Forbrydelsen didnt reach anglophone audiences until 2011 not that the -phone mattered much by then. Here began the concentration-sharpening joys of drama with subtitles. The epitome of Scandi crime drama ushering in The Bridge, Borgen, you name it The Killing introduced audiences to Sarah Lund, a complicated detective with an obsessional drive and a hardy knit sweater. Like The Wire, it wove its narrative through different spheres police, politicians, criminals, military but at a breakneck pace, encouraging other detective shows, such as Line of Duty and Happy Valley, to forge new moulds for its own deepening heroes and villains.

Fleabag2016-19As a rule, plays dont work well on television; the stories operate by different rules. Fleabag, on the other hand, a solo show that became a phenomenon, never cared much for rules. Lena Dunhams Girls might have been more attuned to the zeitgeist young, female, privileged, comically flawed but Phoebe Waller-Bridge found a way to make her own character more conspiratorial, more charming, more alarming, more intimate, more fun. Much of that involved her sly asides, but the characters, the cast, the rococo forbidden fantasies (Kneel! commands Andrew Scotts hot priest) and the sexual frankness were desire and guilt brokered by a wit that knew no bounds.

The Leftovers2014-17The showrunner Damon Lindelof began the decade with the disappointing fizzle of Lost. He ends it with the dazzling promise of Watchmen (which, like Legion, asks us to take comic-book-inspired work seriously). But in between came this gem of a series, which even in the reported golden era of scripted television brought the medium to whole new places. The Rapture or Departure has happened, spiriting away 2 per cent of the worlds population and leaving the unchosen to pick up the pieces. The show, though, kept shattering them, spinning them and making daring mosaics in its absorbing combination of uncanny events, deep emotion, wild comedy and twisting philosophy.

Love/Hate2010-14Is it really five years since Love/Hate ended, finally loosening its grip on the national conversation? If that seems unlikely it may say something about just how game-changing was Stuart Carolans heroically vivid drama of Irelands criminal underworld. A combination of budget and ambition gave us star performances (Aiden Gillen, Brian Gleeson), breakout performances (Robert Sheehan, Aoibhinn McGinnity, Charlie Murphy, Killian Scott, Peter Coonan) and, of course, indelible performances (Tom Vaughan-Lawlors extraordinary everycrook, Nidge). So what if it lost the spark of its earlier years, as though decline, even in depiction, were contagious? It remains the high-water mark for Irish television. Coolaboola.

Blue Is the Warmest ColourAbdellatif Kechiche, 2013There are lessons about our times in the strange history of Abdellatif Kechiches powerful, brilliantly acted lesbian love story. Loud were the cheers when, to no enormous surprise, it won the Palme dOr at Cannes and, for the first time, two actors La Seydoux and Adle Exarchopoulos received honorary Palmes. When accusations emerged of abusive behaviour on set the atmosphere around the film soured. Blue Is the Warmest Colour, conspicuous by its absence from ongoing best-of-decade lists, feels even less fashionable in the aftermath of the Harvey Weinstein scandal and the #MeToo fightback. Yet it remains the same passionate film that took the Palme six years ago. Posterity will decide.

The LobsterYorgos Lanthimos, 2015Throughout the decade, various Irish film companies moved towards high-end international coproduction. A year before securing four Oscar nominations with Lenny Abrahamsons Room, Element Pictures showed what was possible when it premiered Yorgos Lanthimoss first English-language feature to delirious acclaim at Cannes. Colin Farrell and Rachel Weisz are set loose in a world where, if individuals fail to couple up, they are transformed into the animal of their choice. The Greek director denies his films contain any explicit message, but this grim, funny, surreal masterpiece does feel like an argument against conformity. The ideal film for a period of uncertainty.

Lady BirdGreta Gerwig, 2017The first best-director Oscar of the decade went to a woman, Kathryn Bigelow, for The Hurt Locker. Yet only one woman has even been nominated in the succeeding years. The better news is that that honour was for Greta Gerwigs delightful, resonant Lady Bird. Saoirse Ronan is incandescent as a teenager who should be infuriating a bit pretentious, very stroppy but who emerges as a hero to compare with Huck Finn or Scout Finch. The wonder is the way the film acknowledges the traumas of adolescence while still admitting the excitement and promise of that condition. The interplay between Ronan and, as her mom, Laurie Metcalfe is flawless.

Get OutJordan Peele, 2017In previous decades Hollywood tended to form its debates on race into pious lectures that were less fun than double geography homework. Jordan Peeles genius was to work cutting criticism of complacent white values into the most compelling of horror yarns. By the way, I would have voted for Obama for a third term if I could, Bradley Whitford says to his daughters black boyfriend. There was some grumbling when the film was entered as a comedy at the Golden Globes, but it really is darkly hilarious throughout. That darkness is heightened by a closing adjacency to the Black Lives Matter movement.

Marriage StoryNoah Baumbach, 2019This was the decade when the means of delivery again became a topic of discourse. Noah Baumbachs terrific break-up movie deserves mention for its old-fashioned cinematic values. Adam Driver and Scarlett Johansson are terrific as a Bohemian couple breaking up traumatically at either ends of the United States. Robbie Ryans cinematography finds yawning gaps in the smallest spaces. On a more prosaic level, Marriage Story offered confirmation that Netflix, which produced the film, now sits where the old studios used to sit. It played in cinemas. A few short weeks later, the picture was generating online debate as it arrived on the streaming service. Welcome to the 2020s.

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Fifty Shades, Kanye, Love/Hate: The films, TV, books and music that defined the decade - The Irish Times

A Sacramento-area school district is responding to questions from the American Civil Liberties Union after an elementary school teacher allegedly threw away student posters about the Black Lives Matter movement.

The teacher assigned a project in September related to causes that students at San Juan Unified School District care about and changes they want to see in school.

But when four students created art projects in support of the Black Lives Matter movement, NBC News affiliate KCRA reported that the teacher allegedly decided to throw those posters away and made students do the assignment over again.

The lesson plan came from a parent volunteer for the class, who titled the project Art can manifest in activism can manifest in our communities and school, according to a letter from the ACLU Foundation of Northern California to the San Juan Unified School District.

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The class teacher, who allegedly found the Black Lives Matter posters were overtly political and inappropriate, ultimately threw away those projects and banned the volunteer from returning to the class, the ACLU letter said.

The volunteer said the teacher asked "her whether students were getting shot at the school and demanded answers regarding why a presentation on Black Lives Matter was relevant to Del Paso Manor Elementary," according to the ACLU letter.

"(The teacher) pressed our parent to say why she felt that Black Lives Matter was an appropriate topic to be discussed at school, and also to explain how Black Lives Matter was something they should be talking about when there's no shootings that happened at the school," wrote Abre Conner, a staff attorney with ACLU Foundation of Northern California.

The ACLU claims that the teacher's actions amounted to an attempt to censor the parent volunteer's free speech. It also noted that under California's Education Code, student freedom of speech is protected.

By censoring and punishing the students, the school violated their constitutional free speech rights, and sent the damaging message that supporting Black lives is not welcome in their classrooms, Conner said in the statement.

The school district maintains the assignment was for students to produce artwork related to changes they wanted to see within the school, not larger social issues. Those who engaged in larger commentary were asked to redo the assignment, the district said.

"It is inconsistent with our values and never our intent or desire for any student to feel uncomfortable or unwelcome to discuss issues that are important to them," the district said in a statement. "We sincerely apologize if this experience made any student feel such discomfort. Censoring a student's assigned work because of its content would not be acceptable."

The ACLU is asking the district to provide a public apology, allow the parent to return to her role as a classroom volunteer, hang student Black Lives Matter posters during a spring art display, provide curriculum and events that include Black Lives Matter and create cultural and sensitivity training for staff as well as parent engagement training.

Phil McCausland is an NBC News reporter focused on the rural-urban divide.

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A California teacher threw away student art on Black Lives Matter, the ACLU says - NBC News

Hollywood has long been fascinated with the figure of the black police officer. On screen, black cops and federal agents show that the apparatus of the state can be diverse, funny, kind and even anti-racist. They suggest that the uniform, which has been worn to police and intimidate black people, can be repurposed to give black people authority and power to fight injustice. Agent J (Will Smith) in Men in Black, the unfortunately named Jefferson Davis (Brian Tyree Henry) in Into the Spiderverse, Raymond Holt (Andre Braugher) in Brooklyn 99 they're friendly crusaders for justice. They get you to root for the police.

The Black Lives Matter movement has focused antiracist activism and critique on the police. In response, Hollywood has doubled down on its portrayal of black police officers.

Recently, the Black Lives Matter movement has focused anti-racist activism and critique on the police. In response, Hollywood has doubled down on its portrayal of black police officers and nowhere more than in HBOs new "Watchmen" television series. The star, Angela Abar (Regina King), is a police officer who is also a superhero; with her at the center of the show, the black cop becomes an almost mythological figure. Episode six of the series goes even further, turning the black cop into the single originary hero of the Watchmen universe.

(Spoilers below.)

"Watchmen" is set in an alternate, much more racially progressive 2019. But episode six is a flashback. Will Reeves (Louis Gossett Jr.), a black police officer in the 1940s, discovers a plot by the KKK to use mind control to force black people to kill each other. Reeves' fellow white officers are enthusiastic participants in the conspiracy and they hang Reeves by the neck from a tree, strangling him within within an inch of his life to prevent his interference. Reeves, though, takes the hood from his attempted lynching, and makes a mask of it to cover his face while he fights the Klan. He becomes Hooded Justice this world's first superhero, who inspires all the others.

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"The black police officer emerged as this tortured figure with split alliances, who needed to still help maintain order," Steven Thrasher, a Northwestern University Medill School of Journalism professor whose scholarship focuses on social justice issues, told me. "I think emotionally what it's supposed to do is get audiences, particularly black audiences, to look at black police officers and to feel sympathetic for them, rather than to question the institution of policing, or to think about how it's structurally racist."

Thrasher points to the first episode of "Watchmen," in which a black cop has to convince his superior to let him unlock his gun to confront a violent white supremacist. The officer is killed because of the delay in weapon authorization. The world of "Watchmen" has more restraints on police; cops can't use firearms without getting specific clearance. But the show encourages you to see these restraints as dangerous bureaucratic interference.

The world of "Watchmen" has more restraints on police. But the show encourages you to see these restraints as dangerous bureaucratic interference.

In the real world, the speed with which police resort to lethal force regularly results in the murder of young black children and the shooting of black people peacefully sitting in their homes. But through the figure of the black cop, "Watchmen" presents an alternate reality in which black people are endangered when police are slower to fire guns. "I found myself cheering for the black cop in that scene, which I realized was a form of emotional manipulation," Thrasher said.

Episode six similarly encourages viewers to identify their own safety and fate with that of a black police officer. At the beginning of the episode, Angela Abar has taken drugs which make her remember Will Reeves' life. Throughout the show Angela, watching like the viewer, periodically replaces Will. She stands in his place when he's sworn in as a cop; she experiences his near-lynching with him. She models the reaction of the audience, and particularly of a black audience, which is supposed to empathize and identify with this particular police officer.

What this police officer does is telling. James Baldwin observed that black police officers in the 30s and 40s were often eager to prove themselves by arresting or harassing black people. This is why, he argues, "black cops were yet more terrifying than white ones."

But Will never accosts loitering black kids, or rounds up black sex workers, or exercises his authority against any black people at all. Instead, he spends his time arresting a white man who firebombed a Jewish deli, and patiently listening to a traumatized black female suspect. His wife dislikes his police work and his vigilante crusade but only because it stains his soul with anger and violence. He never does anything shameful. He is never implicated in the day-by-day racist bullying and harassment which would have made up much of police work in the 1940s. A whole barrel of bad apples can't corrupt the pure black cop.

To its credit, "Watchmen" is unflinching in its depiction of the ugliness of the barrel. The episode is a bleak picture of how American institutions, and especially American law enforcement, is in league with white supremacy. The Klan and the police force are indistinguishable; their goals, and indeed their membership, are one and the same.

The episode is a bleak picture of how American institutions, and especially American law enforcement, is in league with white supremacy.

Nor are alternate institutions of justice any better. Reeves inspires other heroes, who eventually become the super team known as the Minutemen. But to work with them, Reeves has to wear white makeup around his eyes under his mask so his colleagues won't know he's black. When he tries to enlist the heroes in fighting the Klan, they're uninterested and hostile. The superheroes aren't part of the Klan themselves, as the cops are, but the are still white. They don't think black people can be helped and they resent being asked to try.

In the original "Watchmen" comic, Hooded Justice's identity was uncertain, but it was heavily suggested that he was a white man. By making him black, the television show deliberately restores black heroism to the center of American history. It insists that justice, in the United States, is justice for black people, or it is worthless. This is a powerful and noble interpretation.

But "Watchmen" still can't imagine justice, hooded or otherwise, separate from policing. The alternative to a racist white police force, for "Watchmen," is not black activism or collective action. It's simply a better, blacker police officer.

When Hooded Justice joins the Minutemen, one of Will's white comrades tells him he is especially welcome to the team because, "you legitimize the whole enterprise." We're supposed to understand that the Minutemen are using Will to shore up their own racist and blinkered vision of justice. We're not necessarily supposed to recognize that by using the image of the black cop, "Watchmen" may be doing the same thing.

Noah Berlatsky is a freelance writer and cultural critic based in Chicago. He edits the website The Hooded Utilitarian and is the author of several books, including most recently "Wonder Woman: Bondage and Feminism in the Marston/Peter Comics, 1941-1948."

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HBO's 'Watchmen' tackles criminal justice and race, but can't see past the hero black cop trope - NBC News

From an artistic perspective, the past decade in movies is the decade of mumblecore. The movement of intimately scaled, often improvised, low-budget dramas and comedies that pull their actors from the lives and milieux of filmmakers who build stories around their personal experiences has become the energy-giving core of the American cinema. All decade long, aside from the reliably surprising masterworks by established filmmakers such as Martin Scorsese, Clint Eastwood, Spike Lee, Sofia Coppola, Wes Anderson, Jim Jarmusch, Frederick Wiseman, and Paul Thomas Anderson, there has been a profusion of daring films by younger filmmakers who are part of the mumblecore constellation, as well as a bunch of actors (and cinematographers and other artists) who emerged from those films.

The mumblecore generation has now entered, and in many ways transformed, the true mainstream of movies: Greta Gerwig, Terence Nance, Josephine Decker, Andrew Bujalski, Amy Seimetz, Barry Jenkins, Joe Swanberg, Lena Dunham, Adam Driver, Sophia Takal, Nathan Silver, Shane Carruth, David Lowery, Kate Lyn Sheil, Alex Ross Perry, Kentucker Audley, Lynn Shelton, Robert Greene, Ronald Bronstein, and the Safdie brothers, to name just a few. I could nearly have filled my decade list with their filmsbut, in the interest of spreading (and acknowledging) the love, I included only a few exemplary ones.

Of course, whats overarchingly important in this decade in movies reaches far beyond the movies themselves. Most crucially, this has been the decade of the public acknowledgmentwith the activism and advocacy of the #MeToo, Times Up, Black Lives Matter, and #OscarsSoWhite movements, along with the accusations against Harvey Weinstein and many other men in the mediaof the rotting foundation on which the film industry and society at large are built. The misrepresentations, whitewashings, banalizations, and exclusions that have sustained the Hollywood system have begun to come to light, and there have even been consequences for some of the perpetrators.

The response of the movie industry to this heroic and pain-filled activism has been not even quarter-assed. The Academy has taken much bruited yet minor steps to diversify its membership (which still named the white-savior movie Green Book Best Picture). Reboots of mediocre so-called classics get made with women in the leading roles and, often under mens direction and studio supervision, improve the rancid source material incrementally. Superhero productions feature three women striding silently into battle rather than none, and reliably include actors of color in roles of ahistorical and impersonal substance. There are the noteworthy exceptions, such as Black Panther, which, as good as it is, remains the one film that the systems defenders trot out as its justification.

Yet this decade has also seen, in surprising ways, the convergence of these two currents of activism and aesthetics in ways that I hope will continue in the next decade and beyond. Many of the substantial changes in the industry have come from the new generation of filmmakersyes, mumblecore. Its creators put into bold artistic action the fundamental premise that promises to turn minor shifts in the industry into a sea change: namely, the idea that the personal experience of filmmakers and a films participants is inseparable from the films process, its subject, its contents, and its style. (The idea is at work in documentaries, too.) The necessity, the urgency, of diversifying the ranks of directors is inseparable from the diversification of the spectrum of experienceand of artistic inspirationthat the cinema can offer. The first-person accounts, the daringly original artistry, and the self-aware and group-oriented activities of these filmmakers have opened the cinema to far more varied voices and ideas.

The rise of this generation of filmmakers has coincided with the rise of independent production, which has taken the place of studios for director-driven movies. At the same time, this shift hasnt helped many independent filmmakers from earlier years whose artistry is among the treasures of their times and whom the industry has nonetheless ignored. This decade was also the decade in which Julie Dash, Wendell B. Harris, Jr., Rachel Amodeo, Leslie Harris, Zeinabu irene Davis, and Billy Woodberry still didnt make their second features. Spike Lee long found himself shut out even of independent financing, using his own money for Red Hook Summer and then turning to Kickstarter before being, um, restablished, at a time when he was already long established and his projects should have been prime productions.

Nonetheless, independent productions, including both new filmmakers and the generations of veterans, have, for the most part, proved to be liberating for filmmakers, and that system is one of the reasons why American filmmaking has been so artistically innovative all decade longeven if much of that filmmaking has been an economic sidebar to Hollywood product.

The decade of independent filmmaking not coincidentally parallels the decade of the Marvel juggernaut, which began in 2008, with Iron Man, and soon thereafter came to dominate the box office, the release calendar, and multiplex screensthree factors that are askew to the art of movies. What renders the Marvel trend significant is that it has come to command the so-called discourse and has marked the careers of directors and actors. Superhero movies themselves may offer a modicum of pleasure, and, on rare occasion, even more. Some of them feature delightful effects, moments of symbolic resonance, playful humor, and even a few striking performances that mesh well with the stark (or, rather, Stark) writing. These pleasuresyes, authentically cinematicare, however, secondary to the over-all tone that these movies convey: highly managed production to the point of inhumanity. The superhero movies seldom transmit more than a glimmer of personal sensibility, and almost never do so through the essence of movies: images and sounds. The green screen and the computer graphics take precedence. Thats why many directors of less-than-distinctive visual sensibility get hired by Marvel to make superhero movies; they basically direct actors, while the visuals are farmed out to technicians and specialists. Thats also why the Marvel movies are, over all, deadening.

Many critics bemoan another of the decades trends, a related one: because the studios have turned to superheroes, childrens movies, franchises, and assorted other bombastic spectacles, theyve stopped making (or, actually, drastically cut back on) so-called mid-range dramas for adults. I find the complaint misplaced: there are plenty of good and substantial movies being made, not often by the studios but, rather, by independent producers, and also by streaming services. Meanwhile, that categorys place in the mainstream has been taken over by serious-minded television seriesand, with only a handful of exceptions, theyre basically the same thing: script-delivery systems, minus discernible directorial originality or inventiveness. When studios were the only game in town, directors went to them hat in hand, knowing that, with large budgets at stake, their films had to be commercial. Most of the best ones werent (one timely example: Martin Scorseses The King of Comedy, from 1983, cost nineteen million dollars to make and took in two and a half million dollars at the box office), and, as a result, the best directors careers were imperilled, often stalled, even completely shut down.

Now such ambitious movies of substance are rarely being made by studios but by independent producers, and theyre not being made on a mid-range budget but on low budgets. In exchange, directors are freer than ever to make movies without the distortions and the trivializations that the heavy hands of studio executives imposed. Filmmakers themselves, and their personal visions, are whats being sold by these independent producers, and, as a result, they can make movies as they see fitwhich is why there are many more American movies on the decade list than I expected going into it.

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The Twenty-Seven Best Movies of the Decade - The New Yorker