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
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