Stephen King’s Cop Fetish (Part 2)

Why does Stephen King get a pass on his role as a police apologist? 

Stephen King is one of the most prominent, uncredited – and ostensibly “liberal” – purveyors of pro-cop propaganda and crypto-authoritarian “common sense” in the US. I’ve written on this subject before (see here), but King’s blue balls (so to speak) have been on my mind lately. This is because his latest detective novel, Holly, is due out next month, and you can expect a review from me when it arrives. Probably a savage review, given my feelings regarding King’s creation Holly Gibney, a character who is the heroine of roughly half a dozen books and two TV series.

I hate Holly Gibney a good deal more than most fictional characters I’ve encountered, so Holly ought to be a real blast. In preparation for this blessed arrival, I’ve been digging through King’s voluminous output to explore my thesis that Maine’s most celebrated son (and a favorite of mainstream liberal Twitter) is, consciously or not, a “thin blue line” authoritarian. Banging on about King’s ideological sins from 40 years ago (The Stand, Cujo, etc.) seemed unfair for the purposes of this post, so I sampled a more recent novel*: 2002’s From a Buick 8, which is, allegedly, slowly making its way into a film adaptation.
*I’m aware that this is still a decades-old novel: see my other post on King and cops for very recent work, and watch for my review of Holly in September.

Justice Lupe (left) and Cynthia Erivo (right), both of whom have played Holly Gibney

From a Buick 8, for those who haven’t read it, is a cosmic horror novel about a mysterious, possibly interdimensional object’s appearance in western Pennsylvania and the events that follow. As a cosmic horror novel, it’s extremely thin gruel. The story is told from the collective perspectives of a troop of Pennsylvania State Police (“Troop D”), who take it upon themselves to conceal and research the object. I use the words “conceal” and “research” deliberately, and I’ll explain why that’s important.

The action in From a Buick 8 unfolds when Troop D decides to extralegally and, through conspiracy, steal a weird, nonfunctioning car. This decision is the point from which all subsequent events in the book originate, and I think it’s worth noting the fact that what kicks off From a Buick 8 is unethical police conduct, though it’s framed as noble. It’s not. Police conceal many things; property theft, murder, torture, drug trafficking, gang activity, and other forms of jackbooted, thuggish bullshit. In King’s apologetics in From a Buick 8, Troop D promises themselves to tell literally nobody outside of their inner circle about the potentially apocalyptic item they’ve purloined and kept off the books.

The book is wretchedly of its time. I remember the year 2002 quite well; the frothing, dead-brained patriotic fervor, the push to roll back rights and protections against police depredation, the tanks bought from the US Army on the cheap by Podunk police departments, and much more soul-crushing fun. 2002 was also only three years after Stephen King was run down by a drunk driver and severely injured; almost killed. I can’t read minds and I don’t know King personally, but I would wager that this experience a) solidified his longstanding preoccupation with alcoholism, and b) painted the authority figures who would have dealt with such a disaster (police, EMTs, etc.) in the best possible light.

Even so, authentic leftists didn’t get swept up in the post-9/11 fervor. Hillary Clinton failed this test. So did Joe Biden. Barack Obama, fortunately for his political career, was not a member of the US Congress at the time. The fact that America’s so-called left succumbed to patriotism and even a reactionary embrace of the local police and “America’s Mayor” Rudolph Giuliani exposes its essential bankruptcy, to my way of thinking. But I’m willing to cut King’s novel slack, given his mindset at the time.

Slack dispensed, From a Buick 8 is fucking inexcusable. I was particularly pissed off at the idiotic justification King/the protagonists articulate for keeping the mystery of their interdimensional gizmo to themselves (note: not just the cops, not just the Pennsylvania State Police, but Troop D alone). In their/King’s telling, “scientists are death’s crop dusters.” What the fuck does that mean? With some vague hand-waving about Three Mile Island (itself a longstanding King fixation) and nuclear weapons, readers are told that scientists can’t be trusted. This is where the word “research” comes into play.

QAnon – everyone’s favorite fascist religious cult – has a variety of catchphrases, some of which have spread to the Far Right more widely. One of them is “do your research.” When a Q person says “do your research,” they don’t want someone to read books and peer-reviewed articles. What they mostly mean by “research” is watching indoctrinating, low-budget, fact-free YouTube videos – preferably hours of them. What Troop D in From a Buick 8 decides to do to “research” their find does not involve gas chromatographs, magnetometers, or robotic probes. It involves Polaroids, a video camera, a half-assed alien autopsy performed by someone with zero background in biology or anatomy, and a cheap thermometer stuck in the window of a shed. Contact, this ain’t.

Is From a Buick 8 intended as a subtle critique of the police, a Greek meta-chorus in which readers are invited to take a critical look at the life of Troop D and the mistakes they’ve made? Don’t bullshit a bullshitter, Stephen King apologists. This is not an author who does shades of gray well, when he even bothers with such niceties. King’s books draw clear, jarring lines between big-g Good (often interwoven with big-g God, incidentally) and big-e Evil (even in the case of From a Buick 8, which features King’s second big-e Evil automobile). Troop D is portrayed as imperfect but lovable; a family of good-hearted, mostly male working stiffs. This good-ol’-boy characterization is used to justify the following:

·       Using a police dog to maul and terrify people (King has the blue-line balls to name this dog “Mister Dylan,” the book’s second reference to Bob Dylan, including the title. It’s said that if a suspect shakes a finger at a cop, they’ll wind up “picking their nose with a pencil.” This is not a particularly funny joke, given the abuses of police dogs in real life.
·       “Rough riding” a prisoner.
·       An incredibly disgusting, victim-blaming attitude (“I wanted to hit her… A language she would actually understand.”) toward a prisoner of domestic violence – an extremely troubling depiction, given the record of domestic violence in police departments.
·       The characterization of the Pennsylvania State Police as “good men doing bad chores,” an excuse for brutality that goes all the way back to the emergence of modern policing, and
·       Open contempt for civilians. In fact, the terms “civilian” and “citizen” are rarely – if ever – used. Instead, Troop D uses the terms “John Q” and “looky-loo” and sneers at the idea of such peons worrying about “how their tax dollars are spent.” Speaking personally as a police abolitionist, my “tax dollars” are literally last on the list of my grievances.

Stephen King’s horror fiction is highly normative – even, as he has acknowledged, conservative. The premise of most of his stories is a disruption of the status quo followed by a struggle to restore it. In such a framework, police are often representatives of authority and normality. This perspective is, in short, small town bullshit and consistently excludes or excuses the brutality and excesses of authority.

I predict that Holly will continue King’s love affair with police and his slide from horror author to detective fiction author. We’ll see if my prediction plays out soon enough – and you can expect a review from me then.