I once had a teacher who said the Dick Tracy comic was “insidious” because all the villains were disfigured. You know, Flat Top and Prune Face and all them. She said it was wrong to think people who look different are bad. She talked about movies that played on our fears of things that are different and made them worse. She was careful not to look at me and no one else in the class did either, but I felt like they were all thinking about me. I would have if I were them. I felt like Miss Mahoney was trying to tell me and everybody that I was okay. It just made me embarrassed. I felt my cheeks flush but of course no one could tell.
Her heart was in the right place but she might as well have told people to take snakes to the prom. It’s only natural that people feel a little weird about freaks. I do. It’s hard-wired into us, right?
And that’s why Dick Tracy made sense in a way. Look, when nature sets you outside, and people keep you there, it has an effect. It’s not just that you get bitter. (Though you do.) You start to feel outside. Outside everything. Not just outside normal appearances and experiences. You feel outside morality, like the rules don’t apply to you. If I’m not a man, why should I be governed by man’s values? That’s not how I thought, not something I came up with; it’s just how I felt.
I was a bad guy. I could’ve grown up into a Dick Tracy villain if I hadn’t gotten turned around. But I did. I got turned around so far that now I catch bad guys. Don’t worry. I can’t smell your weed and I wouldn’t give a shit if I could. I’m homicide, not vice. Yeah, yeah, I’m Turner and Hooch all in one. Officer Jo-Jo. MacGruff. I can take a joke, but please try to come up with one I haven’t heard a hundred times already. Otherwise let me live my dime-store pulp life in peace.
I’m Abe Moten, dog-faced detective!
