Richard Linklater has literally made it his life’s purpose to make sure the memory of that early-80s interracial truce on the basis of earnest, earthy, fun-loving American clear-sky summer day masculinity is not forgotten
Obviously the idea that “Lethal Weapon” (or Die Hard) is apolitical is hilariously absurd.
But this ask makes the bridge from that to “the strange truce between black and white masculinity”, which is a very salient connection (again, see Die Hard.)
Which is what apolitics is really: a truce. It’s not really some ontological claim that what’s going on is outside politics, but it is the truce between two class elements to focus on something else. “Free speech” is not really a philosophical claim that speech has no negative consequences, but just that the various actors would like to stop fighting over speech acts, and they have larger reasons for a truce.
And whenever truces of the apolitical style collapse, it’s important to not put the cart before the horse. The implication of the ask (and civil libertarian discourse anyway) is that the injection of politics destroyed the apolitical realm, and that dissolved the truce. But what we really see is that something else destroyed the truce (lack of external enemies, a growing power imbalance, realization by one side they were getting a bad deal, whatever), and as that collapses it is reflected in the art becoming more self-awarely political.
Endorsed.
(Like, the bit in Die Hard where the emotional arc is that the new career woman’s liberation is a threat to the integrity of the nuclear family and the protagonist has to resolve this through exhibition of masculine virtue, which became a standard theme in 80s-90s action movies, is political as hell, the reaction to the breakdown of a gender truce)