Clockwise Cat Strikes Back
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"Texas Dashcam Vid": Corrupt Cops<br />
and Black Heroines<br />
by Alison Ross<br />
"The [Sandra Bland] video is a one-shot masterpiece of found<br />
cinema." (Ty Burr, Boston Globe)<br />
"Texas Dashcam Vid," starring Sandra Bland and Brian Encinia, is the hottest thing in the<br />
burgeoning genre of found cinema this year. If you want visceral action that sparks a fire<br />
in your gut, you've got it. If you want witty unscripted dialogue between a feisty assured<br />
femme and a redneck authority figure whose self-esteem is likely proportional to the girth<br />
of his manhood, you've got it. We also have timely sociopolitical themes percolating<br />
through the video, as we witness a swaggering Caucasian cop become increasingly<br />
incensed as a Black woman - how DARE she! - refuses to submit demurely to the creepy<br />
cop's irrational demands.<br />
And moral dilemmas abound: What, really, was Sandra Bland being pulled over for?<br />
Driving While Under the Influence of Being a Strong Black Woman, or Failing to Signal<br />
to a Caucasian Cop Who Was Entrapping Her By Making Her Think He Was Trying to<br />
Pass, When In Reality He Needed to Fulfill His Weekly Quota of "Tickets For Petty<br />
Shit"? And what about that cigarette? Should Sandra be allowed to smoke in her car?<br />
What if poor ego-bruised Brian Encinia got lung cancer from the second-hand smoke<br />
exhaled vaguely in his direction during what could have been a brief interaction that he<br />
intentionally prolonged because his macho maleness was under threat by someone cooler<br />
and sharper, who also happened to have ovaries and a deep skin tone? Would he be able<br />
to sue the Bland family for cancer treatment money? Is the cigarette the real culprit here?<br />
Should Encinia have arrested the tobacco company instead?<br />
When Brian Encinia invents and then escalates a conflict over Sandra's smoking stick,<br />
that's when the real action heats up. Until this point, the video relies on banter mixed<br />
with generic officer-offender conversation to propel the plot. But when Officer Encinia<br />
intones in a manner calculated to stoke tensions that Sandra seems irritated, and she<br />
bluntly responds that yes, she is irritated, because she was simply trying let him pass, he
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