Vulture: ‘Reacher’ a ‘White Power Fantasy’
Readers roast op-ed attacking Prime Video series, American conservatives
Prime Video’s “Reacher” is a blast from the past. The 1980s, to be specific.
The Reagan decade featured muscle-bound heroes who defeated the bad guys sans apology. Arnold Schwarzenegger and Sylvester Stallone led the testosterone brigade. The 1987 classic “Predator” embodied that spirit, courtesy of Ah-nold, Jesse “The Body” Ventura and Carl Weathers.
Star Alan Ritchson’s hulking frame captures what author Lee Child envisioned with his popular book series.
It helps explain “Reacher’s” popularity on the streaming platform. There’s nothing quite like it in today’s marketplace, and audiences hunger for a rare blast of masculinity.
Here’s betting Jerry Seinfeld is a fan.
A Vulture scribe sees it differently. The show, the journalist argues, is a “white power fantasy.”
This isn’t merely hackneyed wallpaper TV; it’s uncanny fiction that exemplifies just how intensely Hollywood has returned to whiteness after years of feigning interest in diversity broadly and Blackness with a particular extricative zeal.
The proof? It’s partly due to a word Reacher WANTS to use regarding a black official but doesn’t. Oh.
There’s a sense that the word “uppity” remains unspoken in every instance, just on the tip of Reacher’s tongue.
The show’s second season is similarly problematic, apparently.
Black and brown people seem to appear only to prove he’s a man who can move through any domain. The story avoids the specific, focused, noxious undertow of racism that powered the first season in favor of something more diffused.
The writer repeatedly conflates “white power” with conservatism in crude fashion. The two are interchangeable, giving the author wiggle room to explore these observations.
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Vulture, the pop culture arm of New York Magazine, stirred up trouble within its readership. Its Facebook page visitors overwhelmingly shredded the “white-power” argument.
I spent 26 years in journalism, and this is just embarrassing. I have never seen a piece miss the mark this badly. There is nothing “white-power” about this character or the series. The character’s best friend is a woman and a person of color. He loves old blues music and hangs out at a black-owned barber shop (in season one). He isn’t hateful or racist in any way, shape or form. This is so far off the mark that the author comes off as both projecting and desperate. – Jeremy D. Bonfiglio
In her twisting of the series, she deftly ignored one of the main characters who appeared prominently in both seasons: Reacher’s former army lieutenant, Neagley (Maria Sten). Neagley is mixed race and fully trusted by Reacher. Her prominent role in season 1 is only enhanced in season 2. Odd how her character is entirely not mentioned in the Vulture review, perhaps because it doesn’t support the false narrative she is trying to push.
– Ryan Littlefield
Well the show IS racist. BUT SO ARE MANY OF YOU! He only steals illegal guns for him and his crew to illegally use FROM BLACKS .. I guess in Reacher’s world WHITES DON’T COMMIT CRIME OR OWN GUNS! Its amazing to see moron right wingers DEFEND the guy who JUST CALLED YOU STUPID ,FAKE CHRISTIAN, UN-AMERICAN, RACIST TROGLODYTES ! THAT’S HYSTERICAL!
The thing you’re complaining about isn’t even in the books. It’s pure Hollywood. “We need more POC in this show… make them criminals.” In the books, Reacher steals guns from White and Hispanic criminals.
@Keith Diggs Once again, why? Seriously. I don’t come here every day, I occasionally get linked to articles from other sites. Sometimes I read comments, sometimes I don’t. But every time I do, you’re here, screeching and raving like an obese blue-haired gender studies major. You really need a new hobby. Does Media Matters really pay that well? I read this site occasionally after my long day at work, or my long day out on a hike or at the beach. Going outside works wonders, my friend. Get a life, get a job.
What!? Did Reacher give a eulogy at a KKK funeral? Complain that kids are being raised in a biracial jungle? Say all blacks think and vote alike? Racist bastard!
The Vulture article is a nice scale model of what is wrong with modern “journalism.’ It used to be about collecting facts, verifying them, sorting them, presenting them in a useful way, and then drawing some conclusion and inviting the reader to draw the same one, or a different one. Since “All the President’s Men” the movie made ink-stained wretches into matinee idols, journalism schools have attracted dewy eyed idealists, turned them into storytellers, and given them credentials. So they show up, write the story they feeeel, and then sort through what few facts they have in an effort to support their feeeelings. And if there aren’t enough facts, they just make some up, and ignore the facts that don’t fit. Honestly, the Vulture author can hear the unspoken word “uppity,” can hear things that haven’t been said, that are just on the tip of Reacher’s tongue? Really? If you strain hard, you can hear them, too, unless they are drowned out by the rustling noises made by the Emperor’s New
Clothes. The unnamed author is not presenting a review of an entertainment show, but instead giving a tour of his own psyche, with special emphasis on the closet where he keeps his undeserved guilt.
Why can’t we enjoy entertainment for what it is? No one will see the alternative. The layoffs will continue. As for Alan Ritchson, why don’t he take the knee for these Woke journalists. More kowtowing for his transgressions of existing.
So if you are an insulated, out of touch, woman studies writer or Hollywood’s narcissists funny boy studio executives and wonder why the high failure rate, figure this out… white culture with no regard to protect white tradition, European ethnic identities, gender bending roles kills the industry. All you see now is black, feminist actors, where have the white men gone?
None of this matters. Alan Ritchson did great damage to this series after going after it’s fanbase in a leftist rant. This Reacher series is dead and Alan killed it.
Yep. White power, black power, it doesn’t matter. Richson ruined it by mindlessly falling into the hollywood pit of thinking I needed to know his bias. On reflection, it was right to star Tom Cruise.
It is certainly dead to me.
Unfortunately he revealed himself to be an idiot. It’s so much better when we know nothing about these actors.
Amazing how thoroughly some of these people have been indoctrinated. Doubtful this person ever has an original thought. Just follow that left wing template that if it’s white, it’s bad.
Journalists don’t exist any longer in corporate run media. The new term is “urinalist”.
Hooray for journalism!
Yay!
Yay!
Yay!
Hip hip hooray!