How “Brooklyn Nine-Nine” and “PAW Patrol” Push Cop Propaganda

            If you’ve been on Facebook and seen videos of cops dancing to pop music or read an article about the police saving a kitten, you’ve been exposed to propaganda, or in this case, copaganda. The media has become saturated with imagery of “good” cops ever since the Black Lives Matter movement gained traction. In the digital age, police officers have had to up their PR game in order to keep the public’s trust. This form of marketing has transformed from quite obvious to more subtle and insidious. Copaganda has been able to permeate into our society through not only strategic reporting but also television shows and films.


            One of the most recent examples of copaganda I was able to sniff out is Brooklyn Nine-Nine, the NBC comedy about a diverse group of quirky cops. The timing of the release of Brooklyn Nine-Nine is no accident. The show premiered on September 17, 2013, only two months after the foundation of Black Lives Matter. The show has been praised for its diversity, including a gay Black man and a bisexual Latina woman as some of the main characters. The show and its writers don’t take the time to criticize police brutality or racial profiling, but instead, chooses to be a recruitment ad for the New York Police Department. It hails the NYPD as a beacon of diversity and acceptance. In Brooklyn Nine-Nine, the characters are predominantly shown doing mundane police work and even goofing off, to divorce them from the violence and atrocities they are capable of committing. In 2018 alone, according to Michael Harriot, the police killed 1,165 people, but this topic is never broached in the narrative of the show. As Bree Rody-Mantha said, “it incorporates a[n]… uncritical take on… police officers… and perpetuates the idea that brutal police officers are ‘bad eggs’ in a sea of good eggs.”

            Another show that acts as a positive ambassador for the police is the popular children’s show, PAW Patrol. This show is more sinister due to its target audience being children. PAW Patrol is attempting to subtly indoctrinate children and desensitize them to a police state. In the show, the dog Chase, who is a police dog, is the leader of the team. He does nothing to prove that he is more capable than the other dogs, but according to Walt Downing, “is a police dog and, thus, is a natural figure of authority.” It sends a terrifying message to our youth that the police are unquestionably the domineering power structure in society that we must blindly accept. Later on in the show, Chase is also equipped with a drone to follow other characters. This is a chilling, and almost Orwellian, reflection of real life; in 2017, April Glaser reported that 167 police departments have acquired drones for observation of the public. This is an attempt to normalize a surveillance state in the minds of children.
            Brooklyn Nine-Nine and PAW Patrol are only two examples of television being used to push copaganda. What makes them so abhorrent is their target audiences: white liberals and children. Since these shows aren’t marketed towards white conservatives, they can easily go unchecked, but they are still just as dangerous. It may seem overdramatic to pick apart seemingly harmless comedies and children’s cartoons, but we must not passively consume these messages. What makes Brooklyn Nine-Nine and PAW Patrol so terrifying is the fact that they don’t view themselves as propaganda. They unknowingly made themselves spokespersons for state-sanctioned violence and killings. That is why we must not passively consume such messages. We must always remain critical.

Sources

Downing, Walt. “The Misogyny and Authoritarianism of ‘Paw Patrol’” Medium, 7 December 2018, https://medium.com/s/story/paw-patrol-is-a-republican-dystopia-f178161fce54.
Glaser, April. “Police Departments are Using Drones to Find and Chase Down Suspects.” Vox, 6 April 2017, https://www.vox.com/2017/4/6/15209290/police-fire-department-acquired-drone-us-flying-robot-law-enforcement.
Harriot, Michael. “Here’s How Many People Police Killed in 2018.” The Root, 3 January 2019, https://www.theroot.com/here-s-how-many-people-police-killed-in-2018-1831469528.
Rody-Mantha, Bree. “Is Brooklyn Nine-Nine Propaganda? Well, it Certainly isn’t Activism.” Medium, 15 December 2019, https://medium.com/@Breeganism/is-brooklyn-nine-nine-propaganda-well-it-certainly-isnt-activism-48b7013b533b.

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