[dismiss]

On Fanlore, users with accounts can edit pages including user pages, can create pages, and more. Any information you publish on a page or an edit summary will be accessible by the public and to Fanlore personnel. Because Fanlore is a wiki, information published on Fanlore will be publicly available forever, even if edited later. Be mindful when sharing personal information, including your religious or political views, health, racial background, country of origin, sexual identity and/or personal relationships. To learn more, check out our Terms of Service and Privacy Policy. Select "dismiss" to agree to these terms.

Copaganda

From Fanlore
Jump to navigation Jump to search
Related terms: Politics, Docaganda (a lesser used, medical equivalent)
See also: Race and Fandom, Ableism in Fandom, Leftism in Fandom, Anarchism in Fandom, List of Police Procedural Fandoms, Buddy Cop Fandom
Click here for related articles on Fanlore.
(Caution: This article addresses the portrayal of the police in fandom and source texts. Links to articles and videos etc may go into real life examples and histories of police misconduct and their consequences.)

Copaganda is a term referring to the different ways in which cops are portrayed in the media and society at large as being a positive force for good, with little in the way of addressing the systemic and institutional negatives that come with them, in order to influence public opinion to side with the police. Sometimes this idea will also incorporate the wider criminal justice system as a whole.

Though the concept of pointing out and criticising the way in which cops are portrayed in the media has been around for a while, the term itself is relatively new, and the rejuvenated Black Lives Matter movement in 2020 appears to have somewhat reignited discussion around the topic, both in fandom and wider society.

Even where shows focused on the police have addressed matters of institutional corruption and systemic bigotry, fans have pointed out that this is often done in a way that relies on the concept that it's a small proportion of bad cops who are discovered and brought to justice by the good members of law enforcement. In reality, it has been demonstrated repeatedly that cops who try to bring corrupt members of law enforcement to justice or who do not stand with the oft-reference "thin blue line" often suffer negative consequences and rarely remain within law enforcement, instead being driven out[1].

Fandom

Though it is argued that copaganda often makes its way into most media texts in some form or another, certain fandoms have been criticised more than others:

Brooklyn Nine Nine

Brooklyn Nine Nine seems to be one of the most prominant fandoms in discussions regarding copaganda.[2] One argument is that B99's copaganda is more subtle and overlooked due to its diverse cast and occasional attempts at addressing social issues. Hence, the show's portrayal of cops is more palatable to its liberal audience, and more easily forgiven or dismissed than more egregious cops shows, aimed at more conservative audiences.

Videos

Articles

PAW Patrol

Memes and discussions surrounding the kids TV show PAW Patrol in regards to copaganda tend to focus on the character of Chase, a police dog, and the ways in which a pro-police mindset is established at an early age.

Other Examples

Impact on Fanworks & Fanon

Some fans ignore or change the jobs of canon cop characters in fanworks if they wish to diminish the impact of copaganda, or don't feel comfortable writing cop characters, especially in shows where the characters are in otherwise non-cop related shows, such as Yasmin Khan in Doctor Who.

Aurorfic is a specifc trope in the Harry Potter fandom involving characters being aurors, as part of the magical law enforcement.

Copaganda and the prevalence of lesbian cop characters

Since the 80s, queer law enforcement characters and their inclusion have often been used as a 'shorthand', which is being increasingly called out in more recent years. While in the 80s and 90s the inclusions of queer characters in law enforcement shows was a shorthand to bypass the homophobia that was prevalent in society and media, this changed through the 2000s. As law enforcement was more widely criticised and institutional corruption was increasingly uncovered, queer law enforcement became a means of making the law enforcement institution look good:

In the 80s and 90s, the gay cop archetype was one TV shows used because it was one of the only ways to ensure that street audiences could immediately identify a gay character as trustworthy and law-abiding and go against stereotypes of gay people as deviants.

But starting in the 2000s, there was a major shift. Having gay cops was no longer a way to make people look good, it was a way to make law enforcement look good.

As social acceptability of queer people became more normalized, and the reputation of law enforcement as discriminatory and unethical became more widely discussed, lesbian cops — by nature of being women and being gay — were a way to signal that law enforcement institutions in these properties were diverse and fair. By having the face of law enforcement in your world be a person from a marginalized background, these properties create the idea that these institutions are egalitarian so they don't have to address systematic discrimination and bias in law enforcement within the narrative.

With the advent of Black Lives Matter, and discussions of race and policing, the queer women of color cop has surged on TV in recent years. Same principle — the more marginalized the cop, the more egalitarian the institution of law enforcement appears, the less people will accuse the cops on your TV show of being part of the problem.

Aria Velz [3]

Even in shows which aren't police procedurals, sapphic characters seem to be more likely to be working within law enforcement. This, in turn, means that a notable number of popular femslash pairings — canon or fanon — have one or both characters within the pairing being a member of law enforcement, or being closely related to law enforcement. Some examples of canon pairings from amongst the most popular femslash ships on Archive of Our Own include:

This can lead to discourse within fandoms, ranging from analysis and discussions about the use of characters for sanitisation of law enforcement through to fandom drama and weaponisation in ship wars.

Criticism

Some fans feel the term is misused, namely by people calling media from other countries or based on non-American cultures "copaganda" without considering that the country the media was made in doesn't have the same police corruption as America.[4] This is common among American anime fans. A counterargument that is sometimes offered is that this misunderstands the criticism: that the police as an institution and punitive justice more broadly are not bad due to corruption, but are inherently so, and that this is applicable no matter what country the police force exists in. Less radical fans will argue that the USA is not the only country with corruption within its police forces.

[lesser-flamingo]
don't know how to break this to you op but there is no country in earth with police that "doesnt have any problems with corruption". the only difference is America's cop problem has become more visible to the rest of the world.[5]

Links & Further Reading

Videos

Articles

Other

References

  1. ^ "Musa al-Gharbi, 'Police Punish the 'Good Apples, The Atlantic, 1 July 2020". Archived from the original on 2024-08-05.
  2. ^ 'More people need to understand what we mean when we say that “Brooklyn 99 is pro-cop propaganda”' - Tumblr (June 2020)
  3. ^ Law enforcement is one of the most visible occupations for queer women on TV, but why did that happen?, Aria Velz, TikTok, (2023).
  4. ^ https://damnfandomproblems.tumblr.com/post/723573693936189440/fandom-problem-4148-there-is-a-huge-problem-with#notes
  5. ^ [1]
Retrieved from "https://fanlore.org/w/index.php?title=Copaganda&oldid=2763688"