Director Cal McMau dismissed it 10 For years we have been doing research, mainly by looking at pictures taken on the phone that have been smuggled and uploaded to YouTube, some of which have been adapted from the film itself. He also worked with prison counselors for a charity Change backespecially former inmate and now counselor Kam Johnsepar, who was there to provide technical information (like what kind of kettles they had in prison) and to act as an authenticity guide. He also became a mentor of sorts to McMau, who began asking deep, deep questions about whether Johnsepar thought there was any good in prison. .“I remember him telling me that the only thing that makes the system good is locking people up. There is no other advantage,” McMau recalled.
There is a saying that has its origins in politics but has come to embody the idea that representation must go beyond expression: .‘There is nothing about us without us.” Although it is possible that Destroyer would have benefited from more prisoners and ex-prisoners being more involved in writing and developing the process, and it is undoubtedly important for prisoners to have a voice in an industry that is more focused on using their stories, it is clear that an effort is being made to bring together living knowledge Destroyer. Per McMau, this seems to go down well: .“Every inmate’s experience is different, but when we examine the inmates who are there, they often say we got that.”
This is not to say that the film lacks in other areas. Destroyer somehow explores a key point about why Taylor and Dee (or any other inmates we meet) end up in the penal system. For prison abolitionists who believe in building a world without prisons, understanding .‘why’ in prison it is important to understand why not.
Prison is a lazy afterthought – like policing, it’s a system that waits until an injury occurs and then takes punitive measures. Abolitionists are dedicated to preventing and reducing harm in the first place, which requires understanding the causes. Prisoners are disproportionately affected poverty, structural discrimination, childhood trauma and abuse, mental illness and addiction. Prison will never be the solution to crime, because by its very nature it is abusive, dangerous, violent and unsafe. Inside Wastermanwe see this from Taylor’s admission that his addiction to drugs started as soon as he was incarcerated.
Although the reasons why people commit crimes are often socio-economic and political, the government’s response is to punish rather than rehabilitate – it seems easier, cheaper and easier to make people disappear than to deal with the causes of their behaviour. But if we want to live in a safe world, we need to look at these causes and build interventions, support systems and care structures. More specifically: housing, education, equal pay, access to mental health support, child care support, access to healthy food and, when danger arises, transformative coping mechanisms that don’t perpetuate the cycle.
In Wasteman, the only clue we get as to why Taylor sold the drugs that led to his conviction is that he wanted to support his newborn son. We are left wondering why drug dealing was Taylor’s only option and what led him to that path, with no answers forthcoming. For viewers accustomed to demeaning depictions of inmates and the prison system, we are often asked to empathize only with the wrongfully convicted or those .‘just’ motivations, skipping can feel a little frustrating and unsatisfying. Copaganda in a very subtle way spreads the idea that sympathy for prisoners is only extended if we know every detail of their lives. As David Jonsson said when asked if he was creating Taylor’s backstory, .“I don’t really like to talk about my process.” Instead, he prefers to leave the audience to draw their own conclusions. .“I think asking this question is probably more important than the answer, especially in today’s world where we all know how difficult life is.”
Although it never appears prominently in the film, Tom Blyth explains that he put a lot of thought into Dee’s history. Violence, neglect and extreme vulnerability that led him to refuse to be used again, hence his violence, his tendency .“strike first.”
