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selenakThis tv season/miniseries is something I probably wouldn't have watched if the buzz hadn't been so overhwelmingly positive and curiosity-inciting, so when it became available on Amazon Prime in my region, I tuned in, and indeed, the hype did not lie. I watched the tenth and last episode today. What the series is does is taking something I remembered as a lurid, crazy 90s event and using it for a smart, layered examination of racism, sexism, the transformation of reality into a live tv spectacle at the expense of any boundaries - and doing it while offering a bunch of great actors the occasion to play complicated, interesting roles. (Yes, okay, and some comedy relief in the form of Kato and Robert Shapiro.) It's so easy to turn people into caricatures for the public consciousness. What The People vs O.J. Simpson does is turning caricatures back into complicated people in the case of four characters in particular - Marcia Clark, Chris Darden, Johnny Cochran and Robert Kardashian. (The lawyers are whom the series is interested in most. O.J. himself isn't a main character, which I thought was a wise choice. He's prominent only in the first and last episode, and otherwise the catalyst for various events and moves.)
I was in the US for part of the O.J. trial madness, one entire rainy January in Los Angeles long, as I had to do research at one of the USC libraries. By the time the verdict came, I was back in Germany, of course, but I remember being stunned as I heard it. Decades and many black men and boys shot by cops later, it's far more understandable to me, and one of the things the series does so well is establishing this context early on. Otoh something I did notice at the time was the incredible hostility which state attorney Marcia Clark came in for, and not just from the media. I was staying with the cousin of a friend of my parents', and this woman, who was and is as conservative and indeed racist as they come, had it in for Ms. Clark ("such a bitch" for being "mean" to O.J.), whereas she thought O.J. was nice, charming, handsome, and innnocent, and when I asked her who she then thought did it, she said she didn't care, as the late Nicole Brown Simpson had clearly been a golddigger and had it coming. What The People vs O.J. Simpson also does is to examine the sexism as thoroughly as the racism, and it's no wonder that the episode Marcia, Marcia, Marcia has been singled out for particular critical praise - Sarah Paulson is outstanding in it (and throughout the show), and it's almost unbearable intense in its depiction of the relentless denigration and pressure Clark is under from all sides. The series does this without ever falling into the trap of making Marcia Clark a saint or not at fault. She's clueless and simply wrong when Darden early on points out to her how Mark Fuhrmann will be perceived, for example. (Just as Darden, for his part, makes that collossal mistake with the glove against her wishes.) And she can't see that it's not just show and ego for Johnny Cochran, that the crusading fervour is real, never mind the way O.J. Simpson turned his back on the black community made him the least likely figure to be used to lay bare a societal wrong. What ultimately makes Clark & Darden more sympathetic than Cochran to me, though, is that they are shown as capable of taking responsibilities for their own actions and faults, capable, too, of apologizing. Which Cochran never does throughout the series, not even when mid season a dark chapter from his own past is revealed.
The series also never loses sight of the fact that the brutal murder of two people is what triggered all of this. The scene where Fred Goldman, murder victim Ron Goldman's father, talks to the prosecution people about how his son is treated as a footnote to his own murder is devastating. The clashing perceptions of realities are never more raw than in the final episode when the crowd celebrates the verdict as a victory over a racist system (and a racist LAPD in particular) while the Goldmans hears the celebration of the freedom of his son's murderer. The genius of the show is that you understand where everyone is coming from. BTW, while the series avoids inventing a scene indicting or exonorating Simpson, I don't think it's amiss to say the writers were coming from the assumption that he did it. One powerful subplot is that of Robert Kardashian going from best friend and admirer of O.J. to struggling with doubts (he's the defense team's sole member actually bothered by the fact no credible alternate suspects have emerged, as he was friends with the late Nicole, too) to living with the growing horror that his friend is most likely a murderer. (Sidenote: I know via popular osmosis that Kardashian's kids grew up to be reality tv stars, and there are two pointed scenes foreshadowing this, but I never watched their show - or any other reality tv - so I had zilch opinions on Kardashians going into this series.
For all the serious issues the show examines, it's also often witty; Robert Shapiro, self absorbed celebrity lawyer extraordinaire, would have been right at homne in The Good Wife, and the "Dream Team" infighting between Shapiro, F. Lee Bailey and Cochran is very much in the vein of this show as well. Not to mention the amount of facepalming by both prosecution and defense when Fay Resnick publishes her trashy tell all book, or when yet another completely implausible yet true twist occurs (as Vanity Fair journalist Dominic Dunne comments, an airport thriller wouldn't get away with something as unlikely as Fuhrmann's caught on tape tirades also including denigration Judge Ito's wife). One of the central themes gets hammered down a bit, but since it has unbearable contemporary relevance, I can't blame the scriptwriters there - story and emotion always wins over facts, and so does whoever creates the most powerful, simple narrative. Marcia Clark sees Simpson killing his wife and her companion as the ultimate consequence of years of escalating spousal abuse, and she assumes she'll make the jury see this as well, naively believing the women will be able to identify with Nicole as a battered wife, but she can't, because Cochran's counter narrative - the racist evil LAPD, whose systematic abuse is all too well known in the black community, especially not two years after the Rodney King trial, framed a black man - connects with the jurors far more and on a deeper level.
Lastly: the concluding "where are they now?" credits tell us Mark Fuhrman these days is a valued consultant at FOX TV. Of course he is. At the rate things are going, I wouldn't be surprised if the Orange Menance ends up hiring him as well.
I was in the US for part of the O.J. trial madness, one entire rainy January in Los Angeles long, as I had to do research at one of the USC libraries. By the time the verdict came, I was back in Germany, of course, but I remember being stunned as I heard it. Decades and many black men and boys shot by cops later, it's far more understandable to me, and one of the things the series does so well is establishing this context early on. Otoh something I did notice at the time was the incredible hostility which state attorney Marcia Clark came in for, and not just from the media. I was staying with the cousin of a friend of my parents', and this woman, who was and is as conservative and indeed racist as they come, had it in for Ms. Clark ("such a bitch" for being "mean" to O.J.), whereas she thought O.J. was nice, charming, handsome, and innnocent, and when I asked her who she then thought did it, she said she didn't care, as the late Nicole Brown Simpson had clearly been a golddigger and had it coming. What The People vs O.J. Simpson also does is to examine the sexism as thoroughly as the racism, and it's no wonder that the episode Marcia, Marcia, Marcia has been singled out for particular critical praise - Sarah Paulson is outstanding in it (and throughout the show), and it's almost unbearable intense in its depiction of the relentless denigration and pressure Clark is under from all sides. The series does this without ever falling into the trap of making Marcia Clark a saint or not at fault. She's clueless and simply wrong when Darden early on points out to her how Mark Fuhrmann will be perceived, for example. (Just as Darden, for his part, makes that collossal mistake with the glove against her wishes.) And she can't see that it's not just show and ego for Johnny Cochran, that the crusading fervour is real, never mind the way O.J. Simpson turned his back on the black community made him the least likely figure to be used to lay bare a societal wrong. What ultimately makes Clark & Darden more sympathetic than Cochran to me, though, is that they are shown as capable of taking responsibilities for their own actions and faults, capable, too, of apologizing. Which Cochran never does throughout the series, not even when mid season a dark chapter from his own past is revealed.
The series also never loses sight of the fact that the brutal murder of two people is what triggered all of this. The scene where Fred Goldman, murder victim Ron Goldman's father, talks to the prosecution people about how his son is treated as a footnote to his own murder is devastating. The clashing perceptions of realities are never more raw than in the final episode when the crowd celebrates the verdict as a victory over a racist system (and a racist LAPD in particular) while the Goldmans hears the celebration of the freedom of his son's murderer. The genius of the show is that you understand where everyone is coming from. BTW, while the series avoids inventing a scene indicting or exonorating Simpson, I don't think it's amiss to say the writers were coming from the assumption that he did it. One powerful subplot is that of Robert Kardashian going from best friend and admirer of O.J. to struggling with doubts (he's the defense team's sole member actually bothered by the fact no credible alternate suspects have emerged, as he was friends with the late Nicole, too) to living with the growing horror that his friend is most likely a murderer. (Sidenote: I know via popular osmosis that Kardashian's kids grew up to be reality tv stars, and there are two pointed scenes foreshadowing this, but I never watched their show - or any other reality tv - so I had zilch opinions on Kardashians going into this series.
For all the serious issues the show examines, it's also often witty; Robert Shapiro, self absorbed celebrity lawyer extraordinaire, would have been right at homne in The Good Wife, and the "Dream Team" infighting between Shapiro, F. Lee Bailey and Cochran is very much in the vein of this show as well. Not to mention the amount of facepalming by both prosecution and defense when Fay Resnick publishes her trashy tell all book, or when yet another completely implausible yet true twist occurs (as Vanity Fair journalist Dominic Dunne comments, an airport thriller wouldn't get away with something as unlikely as Fuhrmann's caught on tape tirades also including denigration Judge Ito's wife). One of the central themes gets hammered down a bit, but since it has unbearable contemporary relevance, I can't blame the scriptwriters there - story and emotion always wins over facts, and so does whoever creates the most powerful, simple narrative. Marcia Clark sees Simpson killing his wife and her companion as the ultimate consequence of years of escalating spousal abuse, and she assumes she'll make the jury see this as well, naively believing the women will be able to identify with Nicole as a battered wife, but she can't, because Cochran's counter narrative - the racist evil LAPD, whose systematic abuse is all too well known in the black community, especially not two years after the Rodney King trial, framed a black man - connects with the jurors far more and on a deeper level.
Lastly: the concluding "where are they now?" credits tell us Mark Fuhrman these days is a valued consultant at FOX TV. Of course he is. At the rate things are going, I wouldn't be surprised if the Orange Menance ends up hiring him as well.
no subject
Date: 2017-03-11 05:38 pm (UTC)(I was mildly surprised this didn't get nominated for Yuletide last year, though I think I would have been a bit too intimidated by the volume of reporting on the case and being worried I don't know enough to take it on; also arguably the show IS the best possible fanfic of the true events.)
Have you seen
Also if you haven't watch the Ezra Edelman documentary series, OJ: Made in America (the one that won the feature documentary oscar despite obviously being a television series, but whatever, it's great), I hope you get the chance. Especially since you spent some time in L.A. during that era, it's well worth taking the time with.
no subject
Date: 2017-03-12 11:24 am (UTC)Vid: yes, that was one of the things which made me curious about the show.
Documentary: if and when it gets available in my part of the woods.
no subject
Date: 2017-03-12 10:14 pm (UTC)