Despite becoming the fledgling Fox Network’s biggest hit show and launching Johnny Depp to stardom, 21 Jumps Street has not received much critical attention. Between the successful and gritty crime dramas like Hill Street Blues and Cagney and Lacey and the saccharine teen shows like The Facts of Life and Growing Pains, 21 Jump Street filled a gap in prime-time programming by exploring the anxieties of American teens and American culture via four young police officers who work in a secret undercover unit housed in a deconsecrated chapel. Officers Hanson, Hoffs, Ioki, and Penhall penetrate local high schools, shopping malls, and other teen spaces, in order to solve a cornucopia of crimes. Fueled by American cultural anxieties like the war on drugs, homosexuality, and increasing levels of violent crime, 21 Jump Street tackles serious social issues—drug abuse, kidnapping, rape, burglary, and murder, to a name a few—more realistically than its contemporaries. However, despite its accolades, the series ultimately paints a bleak picture of American teens as kids who are largely unsupervised, fold under constant peer pressure, are highly suggestible, and in need of moral guidance. Jump Street, then, undermines its progressive depiction of contemporary social problems by ultimately endorsing Reagan’s prevailing political conservative ideology of the time.
About the presenterHolly A Wheeler
Holly Wheeler is a Professor of literature and writing at Monroe Community College in Rochester, NY, where she teaches children’s literature, detective fiction, American literature, and writing. Her research interests include gender and politics in television, dystopian fiction, representations of women in crime fiction, and the experience of military students attending community college. Her work has been published by the Community College Journal of Research and Practice, Greenwood Press, Stylus Publishing, and McFarland and Company.