They Said You Had to Render Under Ceaser:
Subversive Black Masculinity in Training Day
After recently re-watching Training Day, my thinking about this film has completely
changed. My initial read of the Alonzo Harris character was that he is a contemporary
representation of what Donald Bogle calls “the brutal black buck” stereotype; black male
characters positioned as animalistic, barbaric, hypermasculine threats to the white
establishment (represented, of course, by the ultimate “good guy” police officer Jake
Hoyt). This is certainly a valid reading in many respects, but it occurred to me that
Alonzo is much more subversive in his endeavors as a corrupt police detective. It's easy
to dismiss him as the villain, deserving of punishment at the film's end (by Jake shooting
him, his community turning their backs on him, and the Russian mafia ultimately
gunning him down in the street), but I think it's more important that we read Alonzo as
the tragic hero of the film.
Before we get to Alonzo, let's first think about Jake. Jake is such a poorly drawn
character, because he's such an excessively good person. He stops the two dope fiends
from raping the young girl in the alley, initially balks at smoking the drugs Alonzo gives
him, refuses to shoot the former police officer turned drug dealer Roger, and doesn't
even have the courage of his convictions to kill Alonzo during the climactic scene in the
film. Now, I'm not saying these aren't noble qualities, or that he shouldn't have saved the
damsel in distress, or should have shot Roger to prove he's on the “right” side good/evil,
etc., but he never truly stops to listen to what Alonzo really has to say. Jake is caught up
in the ideology of the system, so much so that it is clear he has drawn a line between
good and evil, and decided that he's going to stay on the side of what he's been told is
good, despite the fact that Alonzo is systematically pointing out how flawed the system's
notion of good really is (stay in your place, don't question authority, the law is the law,
there are no grey areas, and so on). Jake will never make a real difference in fighting
crime if his attitude is to do things strictly by the book, and moreover, he's too worried
throughout the film about protecting his own career, family, and life to truly effect any
real change. He talks a good game, but his words are empty, and refusing to
acknowledge Alonzo's revelations signals his unquestioning allegiance to the system.
Alonzo is ultimately trying to show Jake that not only is the police force corrupt, but
that the patriarchal American system is corrupt. During a key scene at the beginning of
the film, Alonzo tells Jake that the newspaper is “90% bullshit,” and that he has to
“unlearn the bullshit they teach you at the academy". Alonzo knows that “the nature of
the game” is corruption, and that the establishment has all the power. The police force is
not exempt from the patriarchal structure that we have created an enabled as a culture.
This is exemplified in the scene at the restaurant with the “three wise men”; three older,
white, high-ranking police officials through whom all of the illegal business in the police
force is facilitated.
Alonzo is acutely aware that he's a product of the system's corruption, and this gives him
the impetus to antagonize their authority, which in turn, is why he must be killed. His
death alleviates the threat to the system/patriarchy, and functions to restore their power.
In his speech at Zuccotti park during the Occupy Wall Street protests in 2011, Slavoj
Zizek said that “the true dreamers are those who think things can go on indefinitely the
way they are. We are not dreamers. We are the awakening from a dream that is turning
into a nightmare.” True justice can only be accomplished by working to destroy the
system, and this is what Alonzo is attempting to do. He actively plays by its rules, and
participates in its corruption as a means of antagonizing power so that he might create
true change. We should be rooting for Alonzo. When he is shot down in the street at the
films' end, we should view this as the ultimate tragedy, because it kills any chance of
unmasking the real criminal element in the film; the patriarchal system that manipulates
people like Jake into believing in the illusion of the system as just, honest, ethical, etc. As
Alonzo tells him, he must either be “a wolf or a sheep,” and Jake is just another
patrolman in waiting (akin to the one helping a motorist change a tire on the side of the
road midway through the film). Jake is the villain of the film. He holds on to the dream
that his service will lead to an honest, peaceful society. He fights Alonzo the whole way,
blinded by a false sense of justice that leads him to believe that multiple small acts
(locking up a few petty thieves here, a few drug dealers there) actually make a difference
in fighting the injustice of the system. Alonzo is awake, leading a team of men intent on
destroying the dream of system.
There's another great quote from one of my favorite horror films, The Cabin in the Woods,
where Jules and Marty have the following exchange when they realize they are driving
out of cell phone range:
Marty: That's the whole point! Get off the grid, right? No cell phone reception, no
entrapment cameras. Go some place for one God damn weekend where you
can't globally position my ass. Okay, this is the whole issue…
Jules: Is society crumbling, Marty?
Marty: “No, society is binding. Right? It's filling in the cracks with concrete.
Everything's filed or reported, logged, right? Chips in our kids heads so they
won't get lost. Society needs to crumble. We're all just too chicken shit to let
it.”
Alonzo wants society to crumble, but Jake, and more importantly we, are too chicken
shit to let it. This is also why the community turn their back on him at the end of the
film. They remain complicit in their own subordination, just like Jake. They don't really
want to face the reality of the system, because it means giving up everything. We desire
living a life outside of patriarchy, the system, the 1%, structure, rules, etc., but none of us
want to truly give up the comforts of our lives and culture to achieve true freedom.
posted on 10/27/15 by apw