F*ck the police: resistance, agency, and power in Black male racial–sexual pleasure

Abstract

ABSTRACT With media attention highlighting the murders of unarmed Black men at the hands of police, questions have risen regarding pornographic films that eroticize White ‘police' abuse of Black ‘suspects'. Nonetheless, few performers of colour continue to participate in race play pornographic films and arguably some people of colour watch and enjoy these films. This led us to ask how can such erotic performances of racial abuse by White ‘police officers' on Black male bodies be read for pleasure? And if the performances can be read in such a way, how should pleasure be read in these performances? Using a pornographic method in our data collection and a transgressive reading of the Black male performances in our visual analysis, as well as grounding our findings in a politics of perversion and an erotic (sexual) autonomy, we find that the performances can be read for pleasure. The pleasure is revealed in three ways: modes of resistance at the onset of the films, temporal agency in the Black male performances throughout the films and shifts in power from the White ‘cops' to the Black ‘suspects' by film's end. This results in the Black ‘suspects’ taking back control by reclaiming their own racial-sexual pleasure.