SummaryDriven to maintain social order, policing in the United States has exploded in scope and scale over hundreds of years. Now, American policing embodies one word: power. A cogent essay film inviting conscious engagement and reflection on a system of control that has gone largely unquestioned, Power is a sweeping chronicle of the history an...
SummaryDriven to maintain social order, policing in the United States has exploded in scope and scale over hundreds of years. Now, American policing embodies one word: power. A cogent essay film inviting conscious engagement and reflection on a system of control that has gone largely unquestioned, Power is a sweeping chronicle of the history an...
The film is utterly singular to American design—as is the policing system in question—and a masterclass in effective documentary work that exists solely to deliver an impalpable truth.
Questions about unchecked police power have become one of today’s hot button social issues, and the public is deeply divided about it, depending on who one speaks with. Writer-director Yance Ford’s latest pours ample fuel onto this fire with a cinematic essay that clearly has an impassioned view on the subject, making a strong case that some will obviously agree with but that others are likely to decry as an agenda-driven leftist treatise. Through a series of interviews with academics who have studied the issue and criminal justice insiders, viewers are shown the dual-edged sword surrounding this subject. While the film acknowledges that there is a need for policing in light of the prevalence of violent crime, it also argues that the supposed deterrent to this problem – a greater police presence with wider, legally sanctioned latitude in carrying out its mission – is simultaneously contributing to its growth, circumstances that have long gone unrecognized and/or willfully ignored as a result of longstanding prejudicial societal conditions that have only furthered the proliferation of this issue. Those conditions, in turn, are dissected in terms of how and why they fell into place through the years as a means to curtail the freedoms of those who were seen as posing an inherent (if somewhat overblown and paranoic) threat to the social order imposed by an entitled power structure (namely, anyone whose demographic attributes didn’t match those of the self-appointed elite). Archive footage thus explores the efforts of early police forces to contain the lives and activities of slaves, indigenous peoples, immigrants and labor organizers, all of whom were considered suspect simply by virtue of their own innate identities. And, from these dubiously sanctioned roots, the power of those in charge has only grown more formidable and pervasive in forcefully holding down those who are perceived as dangers to the status quo, such as student radicals, social and political opponents, and others outside “the mainstream,” thanks to the supply of increasingly alarming means more typical of paramilitary operations than the civilized maintenance of law and order necessary for the functioning of a supposedly mature democracy. Good cases are made in favor of these arguments, to be sure. And, in all fairness, the film incorporates the views of constituents within the system who are legitimately trying to reform it internally. Admittedly, though, “Power” has a tendency to become somewhat circular in making its point, redundantly repeating its genuinely valid contentions but without offering solutions to a scenario that only seems to growing worse without impactful efforts to contain it, a decidedly missed opportunity to meaningfully address the situation. Perhaps that’s what is needed next, with this offering serving primarily to draw attention to and raise awareness of the issue, but I think the public at large is already sufficiently cognizant of the situation that this release could have gone farther in tackling its subject. Sustained recognition of the problem is certainly a noteworthy takeaway from this production, but it’s unfortunate that it didn’t seek to expand on that notion and offer us more in terms of providing answers – and hope for the future.
É um documentário que fará o possível apra defender a tese de que, quanto mais forte o poder policial, pior apra a democracia. Apesar de alguns pontos de interesecção serem bem defendidos, como o racismo estrutural (gostei particularmente da citação filosófica sobre negros), peca, obvimente, por não apresentar contrapontos ao debate. E seria algo fundamental, pois o filme é um tanto maçante e acadêmico, com muita enrolação e ideias repetidas. Por mais que o resgate histórico seja importante, em determinado momento o filme anda em looping no argumento, muito porque a defesa de uma tese sem a antítese de fato paralisa a fluidez da trama. Acaba sendo mais um documentário com grande potencial, mas com pouca abertura para se compreender a complexidade da questão.
The goal of Power is to call police brutality into question, not put it on trial. It feels like a primer, a crash course for those who didn’t know and more food for thought for those who do know of its dangers and its harrowing legacy in this country.
Power achieves a profoundly unsettling sweep by prioritizing breadth over depth, and Ford’s doc is able to cover a ton of ground as it hopscotches between chapter titles like “PROPERTY” and “STATUS QUO” in order to argue that policing has always served as an instrument to maintain class order.
The point isn’t the data, but the spider-web nature of the argument; seemingly disparate things (labor strikes, slave patrols, the removal of Indigenous Americans from their land) are drawn together in “Power,” which becomes an act of pattern recognition. It is not easy viewing, but it’s a strong introduction to a topic that seems freshly relevant every day.
The film, then, is a useful primer for historicizing and contextualizing the relationship between methods of social control and the rise of policing, both as an unchecked institution and a term associated with the history of the United States. One just wishes the film would slow down every once in a while.
I'd hate to accuse this of propagandism if it was not, but it really is. There isn't any balanced argument in this doc, it's only a parade of police defund advocates who have absolutely nothing substantial to say on the state of policing. The documentary tries to make its case by showing old footage from people getting beaten up in the 1960s,50s and 40s mixed in with scary music to make sure people think bad guys when they see police officers. A couple times they have footage of nuclear bombs going off, i'm not sure what that's about. The whole thing is a waste of time because it adds nothing new to the conversation. There are many superior documentaries about the subject.
I had great hopes and expectations for this film, however after the first 5 minutes it came clear that it will be the typical Netflix/woke/BLM **** without any professional or scientific context. Modern police comes from slave patrols??? What about the US constitution which lies on the theory of separation of powers by Montesquieu? How dare the filmmakers take the courage to ignore the Roman Empire and the prætorian system which is the ancient foundation of police forces across the western world? This movie is nothing but a woke/BLM fever-dream of demolishing the US constitutional system and to create chaos and anarchy. If this is how the average US citizen thinks about one of the most important functions of the government then the Land of the Free clearly deserve to sink down the BLM/woke cesspit.