this just in: cops are not, in fact, people.
seriously, though, you know what’s actually dangerous and fucked up? the idea that police officers aren’t real humans, because guess what? the cops that kill black kids for having the audacity to exist? they’re people. the cops that sexually assault girls in their custody? they’re people, too. stop acting like cops are fucking possessed by demons or some shit, because they aren’t. they’re all just people, some of whom are racist, or sexist, or narcississtic, or paranoid, whose flaws amd failings are encouraged and protected by the system, leading to disastrous consequences.
a show like law & order and its spinoffs might count as “cop propaganda” (depending on how you define propaganda but that’s a whole other can of worms). in these shows, cops regularly flout the law, take liberties in detaining and holding suspects, and shoot suspects, and they are the heroes. that’s depicting police officers, as they are now, and saying “they have good reasons for doing what they do, we promise!”
the idea behind brooklyn nine-nine was to parody and subvert these “gritty cop drama” tropes by making a goofy cop sitcom. i think the intent of the show was to take a different perspective than the one constantly shown on tv, and in that regard, i personally think it’s been successful.
you’re free to dislike and criticize brooklyn nine-nine, god knows it isn’t perfect (they focus more on individual bad cops than on flawed infrastructure, there are quite a few fat jokes and other insensitive humor in the first season or two, it might trivialize some aspects of crime that shouldn’t be, etc). but shutting down any conversation of its merits (discussion of racism, homophobia, and sexism within the police hierarchy, discussion of racial profiling, its diverse cast, multiple mentions of transphobia, depiction of the horrors of the prison system, etc) with cries of “PROPAGANDA” is reductive and only serves to prevent critical thought and conversation about the depiction of police officers in our media.
janainaart
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2087
