The army goose stepping down the marble streets in the midday sun resembles a terrifying machine… But, Carlos, our plucky hero is ready: he has the skin of the juicy banana he stole from the market and he slides it into the road at just the right moment…
There is a choreography to state power. To be a cop, by which I mean a bearer of the state’s right to violence, entails a certain way of moving your body. The goose step is a kind of dance, one which contains within it ‘quite consciously and intentionally, the vision of a boot crashing down on a face’.
Of late, I have been obsessed with a genre I think of as police slapstick, a term that first came to me when I saw the video of the Lutzerath mud wizard pushing over and taunting police officers stuck in the mud. What defines the genre is that it is the very power of the police - the technological and legal superiority that feeds their arrogance - that leads to their downfall. It is the police officer's heavy riot gear which proves fatal in the duel with the dancing mud wizard in medieval robe.
A video, posted on Youtube 9 years ago and labeled ‘Instant Karma: Israeli Army vs. Palestinian Tire: 0-1’ shows a large tire being rolled down a hill at 4 IOF soldiers. At first it meanders but then it picks up pace and locks on. One soldier throws a brick at it but misses. A second tries to stop it with a kick but gets his foot caught inside. The tire rolls effortlessly on, leaving the soldier in the dust. The offscreen crowd erupts into laughter.
Other examples of the genre include ‘Cop Slips On Ice and Falls Police Chase Fail’, ‘Police officer falls head-first over school gate’ and ‘Police officer tumbles down playground slide’. ‘Little Kid Pushes Police into Lake!!!’ – posted by BritainsMostWantedTV – depicts a prank in which an officer is asked by a child to retrieve his keys which have fallen into a lake, after which the child pushes him in before sprinting. The policeman emerges furious, his sopping wet uniform sticking uncomfortable to his skin. Whoever is holding the camera is laughing so much they’re screaming. All of BritainsMostWantedTV’s videos are pranks played against the police, with names such as ‘Police Officer falls in Human Sh*t Water!!!’ and ‘Queen's Guard Spray with Water Guns by Kids on Queen's Platinum Jubilee!’. It's unclear what’s real and what's not in these surreal videos (why does the officer wading through Human Shit make no attempt to leave it despite the fact he keeps vomiting?) but their dedication to humiliating class enemies is noble.
On the forum Policespecials.com officers share stories of their own pratfalls. One described a time when a suspect was ramming the cage inside a police van so violently that two colleagues had to go inside to restrain him, quickly followed by a third. Unable to calm the headbutting prisoner, the fourth and last officer jumped in but accidentally let the cage door slam shut behind him, locking all four policemen inside with the raging suspect.
This has the narrative structure of a classic joke but it also makes it impossible to not feel the brutality of the police. In contrast, true Police slapstick momentarily makes it possible to not fear the police. Whilst it does this, however, it also carries the fear within itself, in that in it the violence of the police is returned unto themselves. This makes it distinct from copaganda, which similarly blunts the terror of the police.
If police slapstick carries a message it is that it is the overbearing power of the enemy which will lead to its downfall, that the Empire charging down the hill, armed to the teeth, is vulnerable to one tiny outstretched foot.