In this scene from 2007’s Bee Movie, police accost an old lady eating honey, one grabs her by the neck, and she gasps: “I can’t breathe!” A throwaway line from an old animated movie, it’s now gone viral due to its topicality in 2020.
The scene has aged like milk, yes, but it shows that we always knew what chokeholds were for: it’s right there in the name. The purpose is to cause cerebral ischemia and stop people breathing. Those outcomes were never in doubt, not by cops who claimed it was a legitimate form of restraint or by media who parroted them. It was so obvious that “lateral vascular neck restraint” was just choking people that we joked about police choking old ladies in childrens’ movies. The lack of enforcement of formal bans on chokeholds returned to cops a covertly lethal weapon which they then used to kill Americans over and over and over again.
UPDATE: It’s been suggested the line has been dubbed in. Here’s an official clip from the movie showing it.