Category: media

Even ‘Paw Patrol’ Is Getting Slammed For Depicting Cops As Too Benign

Amanda Hess: “It’s a joke, but it’s also not. As the protests against racist police violence enter their third week, the charges are mounting against fictional cops, too. Even big-hearted cartoon police dogs — or maybe especially big-hearted cartoon police dogs — are on notice. The effort to publicize police brutality also means banishing the good-cop archetype, which reigns on both television and in viral videos of the protests themselves. Paw Patrol seems harmless enough, and that’s the point: The movement rests on understanding that cops do plenty of harm.” – The New York Times

‘The Simpsons’ Wins Peabody Awards’ Top Honor

The long-running cartoon series was given the Peabodys’ Institutional Award along with (less of a surprise here) the PBS documentary series Frontline, while actor Cicely Tyson, 95, receives the Peabody Career Achievement Award. Among this years’ honorees were entertainment series Succession, Fleabag, Ramy, Stranger Things, and Chernobyl; documentaries Apollo 11, Hale County This Morning This Evening, Surviving R. Kelly, and four programs from PBS’s POV; the children’s animated series Molly of Denali; and the WNYC podcast Dolly Parton’s America. – Variety

How Indie Movie Theatres Are Innovating

“We will always have storytellers that want to tell stories and cinema has become an essential part of the way modern society does that,” said Tori Baker, the president and CEO of the nonprofit Salt Lake Film Society, which operates two art house theaters in Salt Lake City. “Sustainability — such as how many people at once, concession costs, what those concessions are — might shift. But what art houses have that the big chains don’t is the ability to innovate that experience.”  – Huffington Post

AMC Says It Will Reopen Its Cinemas Worldwide In July. Here’s Why It Needs To.

Affirming warnings it gave last week, the world’s largest movie theater chain reported that it lost $2.2 billion in the first quarter of 2020, a period that saw the beginning of the coronavirus shutdown. Though last week’s report warned of “doubt” that AMC could remain a “going concern,” the company’s CEO said Tuesday that, “in the end, AMC will both succeed and prosper.” – Variety

How American Movies Strenuously Avoided The Issue Of Racist Policing

“The entertainment industry has generally followed the official line: blithe ignorance and denial giving way to grudging admission of a problem, but only as far as the ‘bad apple’ theory. And while it is safe to say the majority of law-enforcement personnel are not racist, the existence of institutional racism is repeatedly denied.” Except, of course, by Black filmmakers. – The Guardian

California’s Cinemas Could Reopen As Soon As This Weekend

Guidelines, issued on Monday by the state’s Dept. of Public Health and currently under review by the governor’s office, require spacing between seats, masks required of all customers when entering and leaving the building and in line for concessions or restrooms, and an upper limit of 100 attendees or one-fourth of the theater’s capacity, whichever is lower. – Variety

Fixing The Messages On TV’s Cop Shows

“The power of the narrative that comes out of Hollywood — that not only travels to this country but travels globally; that creates a worldview, a mental model of black people and black communities as undeserving of empathy, as weak and damaged, as violent and as operating against society — is killing us. These narratives are killing us. And folks in Hollywood have the power to change that.” – Washington Post