NOT THE BABYLON BEE: Portland’s NW Film Center cancels drive-in showing of Arnold Schwarzenegger’s 1990 film Kindergarten Cop, after SJW compares the action-comedy to Birth of a Nation.
On Saturday, Portland author Lois Leveen—whose writing credits include contributions to The New York Times and The Atlantic and the book The Secrets of Mary Bowser, a novel based on the life of a slave-turned-Union spy—took to Twitter to excoriate the organization for leading off its series with the movie.
“National reckoning on overpolicing is a weird time to revive Kindergarten Cop. IRL, we are trying to end the school-to-prison pipeline,” she tweeted. “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. 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.”
In a message sent to [Willamette Week] over the weekend with the subject line “Kindergarten Cop-Out: Why Does NW Film Center Think There’s Anything Fun About Cops Traumatizing Schoolchildren,” Leveen elaborated on her concerns.
“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,'” she wrote. “They are relics of how pop culture feeds racist assumptions.”
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Leveen also did not immediately respond to WW‘s request for further comment. But based on her Twitter response, the Film Center’s statement left her dissatisfied.
“I think what you meant to type was, ‘Yes, we made a grave error in not realizing the implicit racism in that programming decision. We apologize and are rethinking who makes our programming decisions hereafter.’ How deep a white normativity hole will @nwfilmcenter keep digging?”
I was going to compare the Portland Film Center’s spineless response to Trader Joe and Goya standing up to SJW cancel culture. But, forget it, Jake – it’s Portlandia.