Nah, he’s still the same, if you’Re a nice white kid in a nice white neighbourhood.
psychomathsays
Yeah, I wish we could have the kind of cops I imagined existed when I was a child. They never did exist, though. I think Eric Blair was almost certainly a misogynist, unfortunately, but I always liked this quote:
“I have no particular love for the idealized “worker” as he appears in the bourgeois Communist’s mind, but when I see an actual flesh-and-blood worker in conflict with his natural enemy, the policeman, I do not have to ask myself which side I am on.”
― George Orwell, Homage to Catalonia / Down and Out in Paris and London
When I moved to Canada from the UK at the age of 9, we went to Parliament Hill as one of our first out-of-city trips (from Toronto, where we lived). When my mother tried to get me to stand for a picture with a Mountie, I didn’t want to, because I’d never been that close to a firearm before, and the idea of a country where police officers needed firearms to do their daily job just Freaked. Me. The. Fuck. Out.
I got over it, eventually, ended up doing some small arms instruction in the army, but I’ll always remember that very vivid encounter.
I’d think the picture was better if the officer were all in their fully-militarized black. I get the lovely fun of having the desert-pattern armour, but the intimidation is frequently done by the ones dressed all in black.
At first, I laughed at the picture you posted. Then I thought about history, privilege, and my own whiteness a little further. While the satire behind the two images makes sense to me as a white person who was once a white child, it falls short beyond that context.
That Norman Rockwell painting glosses over a deep collusion between the police of the previous century and a widespread opposition to the social changes advocated by civil rights activists in the 50s and 60s. Think of Bull Connor, the police setting police dogs loose on civil rights demonstrators, and the fact that many on the police force were also clan members.
My thought is that the de facto role the police have fulfilled in a deeply racist culture has remained similar over the years: to protect and reproduce a race and class hierarchy that has been present since the founding days of the US. The faces, tactics, rhetoric, and PR have changed over the decades but the basic nature of the police force hasn’t. “Officer Friendly” has always been a public relations facade. It is only now that some of the white public are becoming aware of the deeper, frightening reality that underlies policing which black people and other minorities have had to face for a very, very long time.
While it is important that the awareness and acknowledgement of the problematic nature of policing has expanded, make no mistake: there is a reason why the child in the first painting is white. There is no time in US history when that portrait would have worked with a black child’s face.
brettsays
I think the guy on the left was actually worse, or at least came from a department that was much more likely to be crooked and brutal – and he was even more likely to engage in beat-downs before some of the push-back on civil rights by the Supreme Court in the 1960s.
A. Rsays
Nah, he’s still the same, if you’Re a nice white kid in a nice relatively wealthy white neighbourhood.
FTFY.
chigau (違う)says
Why did the little boy in the original picture ‘run away’?
cantspellgeekwoeesays
Actually, the police officer who was the model for the original Norman Rockwell painting was none other than Officer Obie of Stockbridge, Massachusetts.
*Cue the music
“You can get anything you want, at Alice’s Restaurant…”
Beatrice, an amateur cynic looking for a happy thoughtsays
timberwraith,
While it is important that the awareness and acknowledgement of the problematic nature of policing has expanded, make no mistake: there is a reason why the child in the first painting is white. There is no time in US history when that portrait would have worked with a black child’s face.
Worth repeating.
zenlikesays
cantspellgeekwoee,
apparently not the case, from pffft:
Obanhein posed for Norman Rockwell (himself a resident of Stockbridge) for a handful of sketches, including the 1959 black-and-white sketch “Policeman With Boys,” which was used in nationwide advertisements for Massachusetts Mutual Life Insurance Company (MassMutual).[2] He is sometimes mistaken (including on Guthrie’s own Web site) for the officer who posed for Rockwell’s more widely known painting “The Runaway”, which appeared on a 1958 cover of The Saturday Evening Post; this was not Obanhein but Massachusetts state trooper Richard Clemens.[3]
howardhersheysays
The “golden age” on the left might have looked a bit differently at a lunch counter in Mississippi if it were a black kid sitting there.
Mad Magazine, still sane after all these years…
That is clearly similar to the MAD Magazine version, but it is different.
Nah, he’s still the same, if you’Re a nice white kid in a nice white neighbourhood.
Yeah, I wish we could have the kind of cops I imagined existed when I was a child. They never did exist, though. I think Eric Blair was almost certainly a misogynist, unfortunately, but I always liked this quote:
“I have no particular love for the idealized “worker” as he appears in the bourgeois Communist’s mind, but when I see an actual flesh-and-blood worker in conflict with his natural enemy, the policeman, I do not have to ask myself which side I am on.”
― George Orwell, Homage to Catalonia / Down and Out in Paris and London
When I was a kid Officer Friendly didn’t carry a gun at all.
When I moved to Canada from the UK at the age of 9, we went to Parliament Hill as one of our first out-of-city trips (from Toronto, where we lived). When my mother tried to get me to stand for a picture with a Mountie, I didn’t want to, because I’d never been that close to a firearm before, and the idea of a country where police officers needed firearms to do their daily job just Freaked. Me. The. Fuck. Out.
I got over it, eventually, ended up doing some small arms instruction in the army, but I’ll always remember that very vivid encounter.
I’d think the picture was better if the officer were all in their fully-militarized black. I get the lovely fun of having the desert-pattern armour, but the intimidation is frequently done by the ones dressed all in black.
At first, I laughed at the picture you posted. Then I thought about history, privilege, and my own whiteness a little further. While the satire behind the two images makes sense to me as a white person who was once a white child, it falls short beyond that context.
That Norman Rockwell painting glosses over a deep collusion between the police of the previous century and a widespread opposition to the social changes advocated by civil rights activists in the 50s and 60s. Think of Bull Connor, the police setting police dogs loose on civil rights demonstrators, and the fact that many on the police force were also clan members.
My thought is that the de facto role the police have fulfilled in a deeply racist culture has remained similar over the years: to protect and reproduce a race and class hierarchy that has been present since the founding days of the US. The faces, tactics, rhetoric, and PR have changed over the decades but the basic nature of the police force hasn’t. “Officer Friendly” has always been a public relations facade. It is only now that some of the white public are becoming aware of the deeper, frightening reality that underlies policing which black people and other minorities have had to face for a very, very long time.
While it is important that the awareness and acknowledgement of the problematic nature of policing has expanded, make no mistake: there is a reason why the child in the first painting is white. There is no time in US history when that portrait would have worked with a black child’s face.
I think the guy on the left was actually worse, or at least came from a department that was much more likely to be crooked and brutal – and he was even more likely to engage in beat-downs before some of the push-back on civil rights by the Supreme Court in the 1960s.
FTFY.
Why did the little boy in the original picture ‘run away’?
Actually, the police officer who was the model for the original Norman Rockwell painting was none other than Officer Obie of Stockbridge, Massachusetts.
*Cue the music
“You can get anything you want, at Alice’s Restaurant…”
timberwraith,
Worth repeating.
cantspellgeekwoee,
apparently not the case, from pffft:
The “golden age” on the left might have looked a bit differently at a lunch counter in Mississippi if it were a black kid sitting there.