An Oregon woman is taking a victory lap following a local group’s decision to cancel a planned screening of Kindergarten Cop after she and others complained that the 1990 comedy makes light of the “school-to-prison pipeline.” They also complained that the movie contains problematic racial undertones.
“It’s true Kindergarten Cop is only a movie. So are Birth of a Nation and Gone With the Wind, but we recognize films like those are not ‘good family fun,’” Portland author Lois Leveen, who, of course, is white, told the Willamette Week in an email. “They are relics of how pop culture feeds racist assumptions.”
“Because despite what the movie shows,” she adds, “in reality, schools don’t transform cops. Cops transform schools, and in an extremely detrimental way.”
For reference, here is the trailer to the 1990 movie starring former California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger:
The Northwest Film Center, which had planned to kick off its summer drive-in series with the Schwarzenegger comedy to highlight “its importance in Oregon filmmaking history,” will instead show another screening of a documentary honoring the late Rep. John Lewis, inadvertently underscoring the unseriousness of the style of activism that got Kindergarten Cop canceled.
“After discussion with staff and community members, however, we agreed that at this moment in history, John Lewis: Good Trouble is the right film to open this year’s Drive-In series,” the group said in a statement.
The cancellation comes after Leveen and others complained loudly about Kindergarten Cop’s supposedly problematic themes.
“National reckoning on overpolicing is a weird time to revive Kindergarten Cop. IRL, we are trying to end the school-to-prison pipeline,” Leveen said on social media. “There’s nothing entertaining about the presence of police in schools, which feeds the ‘school-to-prison’ pipeline in which African American, Latinx and other kids of color are criminalized rather than educated.”
She adds, “Five- and 6-year-olds are handcuffed and hauled off to jail routinely in this country. And this criminalizing of children increases dramatically when cops are assigned to work in schools.”
Genuine advocates for police reform ought to be furious with people like Leveen. Nothing threatens to undermine the movement quite like those whose self-indulgent and ultimately pointless “contributions” to protesting police brutality would turn it into a parody of itself.
As noted before, so-called allies such as Leveen, whose own selfish goals, demands, and actions are distracting from the original purpose and goal of the movement, endanger the effort to build the sort of coalition necessary to bring about real and meaningful change. As dedicated protesters talk about criminal justice reform, people like Leveen are out here comparing an innocuous 90s comedy to blatantly racist films like Birth of a Nation.
Guess who gets more attention?
Radical censorship, going after harmless comedies and children’s cartoons, will have the exact opposite effect of building a movement for police reform. It will alienate the otherwise winnable middle. The effort will be that much more difficult so long as the Leveens of the world continue to stand in the way, weighing down the conversation with “contributions” to the movement that are as crazy as they sound.
