If ‘Kindergarten Cop’ is a problem, can ‘Naked Gun’ be safe?

Could police shows and movies be the new pornography of the 21st century? If the Northwest Film Center’s Cinema Unbound Drive-In Theater in Portland, Oregon, is any indication, yes.

They were beginning their new film schedule with the cloying 1990 comedyaction flick “Kindergarten Cop,” featuring Arnold Schwarzenegger playing a police detective who masquerades as a teacher. That was until local Portland author Lois Leveen stepped in to say the PG-13 movie promoted a “school-to-prison pipeline,” according to the alternative weekly newspaper Willamette Week.

In a message, Leveen warned of the movie’s dangers in no uncertain terms, “Tell @nwfilmcenter there’s nothing fun in cops traumatizing kids. National reckoning on overpolicing is a weird time to revive ‘Kindergarten Cop.’ IRL, we are trying to end school-to-prison pipeline. 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.’ … They are relics of how pop culture feeds racist assumptions. Because despite what the movie shows … in reality, schools don’t transform cops. Cops transform schools, and in an extremely detrimental way.”

The movie was summarily pulled from the Northwest Film Center schedule, which will show other legendary classics including “Xanadu” and “Pee-wee’s Big Adventure.” No one can accuse the film center of catering only to highbrow tastes.

Nor can anyone accuse self-appointed censor Leveen of being a discerning film critic. This is unquestionably the first time in the history of cinema that anyone has compared “Kindergarten Cop” with “Birth of a Nation” or “Gone With the Wind” (History of Film 101 final exam essay question: “Arnold Schwarzenegger vs. Clark Gable — discuss”).

There is no disputing the odious undercurrent of director D.W. Griffith’s “Birth of a Nation,” which glorified the Ku Klux Klan, but in terms of technique, it is generally acknowledged as one of the greatest, if not the greatest, silent film ever made. “Gone With the Wind,” even in spite of its revisionist and controversial portrayal of the antebellum South is, well, “Gone With the Wind,” but worthy of mention because adjusted for inflation it is the highest-grossing film of all-time. (It also bears mention that in “Gone With the Wind,” Hattie McDaniel became the first African American actress to win an Academy Award. McDaniel, a true groundbreaker, was forced to accept the award in a segregated ceremony.)

There is, and always has been, a dichotomy between the artistic nature of a film and the film’s politics. Two of the most widely recognized great films of the 20th century were propaganda films — Leni Riefenstahl’s “Triumph of the Will,” a tribute to Adolf Hitler’s Third Reich, and Sergei Eisenstein’s “Battleship Potemkin,” a paean to the Soviet Communist revolution. No serious connoisseur of cinema would consider banning those films (at least not yet).

If we are going to go down this path and censor cop movies, we are going to lose a lot of great films and film characters — for starters, Claude Rains in “Casablanca,” Orson Welles in “Touch of Evil,” Clint Eastwood in “Dirty Harry” and Gene Hackman in “The French Connection.” And to think Schwarzenegger isn’t even a bad cop in his movie — bad actor, OK, but not a bad cop.

This is not Leveen’s first foray into entertainment censorship. Some years back, she trained her stern visage on that notorious scourge of children’s educational television, “Dora the Explorer.” Dora is a Latina girl with math and map reading skills, selfconfidence and a warm personality, all of which help her and her pet monkey, Boots, take on different challenges, all the while singing and dancing. Now you might think that bilingual Dora would be a perfect role model for young children. Think again, wrote Leveen in a 2008 essay. Dora apparently represents a monolithic global television market serving the transnational interests of Viacom, as well as being an avatar of the rapacious nature of the global industrial economy. You can almost hear “Saturday Night Live’s” Church Lady in the background chastising poor Dora, “Now who could it be? Could it be … Satan?”

Although she may not realize it, Leveen and her scolding are part of a noble longstanding tradition of protecting our youth. Think of Tipper Gore and her crusade against rap music in the 1980s. She wanted to censor, among others, Prince, Madonna and (gasp!) Cyndi Lauper. In the 1920s, the city of Boston acquired quite a reputation for censorship of books and magazines, including the works of William Faulkner, Ernest Hemingway and H.G. Wells. “Banned in Boston” became a badge of honor for authors and often guaranteed increased sales in the rest of the country. We can even trace Leveen’s moral campaign back to the fourth century B.C., when the Athenians sentenced Socrates to death for corrupting the minds of Athens’ young people. Quite select company.

So thanks to Leveen for protecting our youth from the “new porn” of cop movies and “Dora the Explorer.” It’s also comforting to know the vanguard is supported by film devotees like the spineless jellyfish at the Northwest Film Center.

Oh, and look out, Leslie Nielsen, with your perverted “Naked Gun” movies, which are extremely funny but totally devoid of any redeeming value — you’re next.