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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