Tag: American Crime Story

Of course we know how it turned out. But what I didn’t know is that the prosecution thought that they might have actually pulled it out in the end, despite the mistakes and the circus and the bullshit. So it’s gutting to watch them as the verdicts are read, and see them realize that the evidence never really mattered.

So many reactions to these episodes and The People vs O.J. Simpson as a whole. First, that Sarah Paulson damn well better be at least nominated for an Emmy for this performance. Sterling Brown and Courtney Vance too. The whole cast was outstanding, even Cartoon Johnny Travolta.

Secondly, it had a weird echo in this election year, on the pointlessness of argument in some situations. This was a case study in motivated reasoning, people convincing themselves that things were “true” because they wanted it to be so. Facts and evidence and reason don’t just fail to diminish that effect, they increase it. You probably could have polled the jury on the very first day and gotten the same result.

Then, Chris Darden, holy heck. In some ways I think that what was going on in that courtroom, as written here, was one of the few actual examples of “political correctness” I’ve ever seen. As in, pure cowardice. People just didn’t want to be seen saying things they felt uncomfortable about. So they left it to him. Brown shows so well the rage that has built up after months of this. If this was a Tarantino movie he would have Hulked out and smashed the whole place up then thrown OJ into the ocean.

What I appreciate about the script and the show is that they never make anything tidy. Cochran both descends into bullshit fantasia in that closing argument and is absolutely 100% correct about the larger picture with the LAPD. Clark is purely right to see this as a murder trial, full stop, and yet wrong too.

What I didn’t realize was that even in 1995, the idea of domestic violence hadn’t really sunk in: “Prosecutor Marcia Clark made a case that, at the time, was unique: Women who have been the victims of partner abuse are very likely to be killed by their spouses.” That seems obvious now (well, one hopes), and that this trial had much to do with making it obvious is at least some benefit. The show demonstrates how easily and lightly Nicole’s terror is waved off.

I would never have expected this show to be this good. Let’s hope they can avoid the sophomore curse in Season 2.

It’s probably an essential example of privilege that until I saw the protest signs outside the courtroom, I’d totally forgotten the single biggest actual divide in opinion in my circles about the trial: the women vs the men. Now this is the boomtown San Francisco techy/goth/weirdo scene, but still. The women saw a wife-beating murderer, full stop, trying to change the subject. That story was so old, so common, there really wasn’t any need to overthink it. The men were into the theories and the details and the soap opera, because it wasn’t personal to them. Just TV.

These episodes of American Crime Story do a good job of showing what unites both sides in this case: bitches, man. The amount of crap that gets thrown at Marcia Clark, oy. And because this is back in the Elder Days, it’s all mediated. It’s what TV producers and news desks and tabloid editors think will sell, what they (mostly men) think is a good story or a good quote from “real people like you”. People talk shit about the internet but it’s nothing to the hellbeast that was television, believe me.

It’s also interesting to watch Chris Darden’s character move along his path in the story. It’s a trap! I was kind of glad to see him back off from Marcia’s hotel room but honestly there was no scenario that was going to end well at that point.

I have to add, about the gloves: obviously they shrank, yes? So why not go buy a new pair of the same model, confirm first that they are larger than the gloves in evidence, confirm that they fit the hands of someone of OJ’s build etc., and then have him try those new ones on? And then compare them to show how the old ones are smaller? But in a way, this is like inviting your co-prosecutor/boss to your friend’s birthday party for the weekend. You lost as soon as you got into it, because we are not rational beings.

I don’t remember the details of the tales of OJ being depicted so vividly in American Crime Story: The People v. O. J. Simpson. I remember the Bronco chase, but probably as much from coverage after the fact as at the time. I remember the trial going on and on in its soap opera way, but not much concrete – probably because I was deliberately avoiding it. I have no interest in reality TV or TV reality, I just don’t even want to see it. What I do remember is that the general opinion around me was that probably it was all true: that he did it and that the cops had monkeyed with the evidence. And what I don’t remember at all is OJ.

I have no idea how accurate this show is, how much what we see is like what “really happened”. It seems realistic but then that’s their job. But in the story they’re telling, what immediately strikes now, watching it from 2016, is the depth of Johnnie Cochran, his gravity as a person and the deadly serious business of the work he did. As a peripheral spectator, I only saw the showboat. The writers and Courtney Vance do an amazing job of showing us the man who has seen so many terrible things.

The same with Sarah Paulson as Marcia Clark – how at the same time as she has her particular blind spots, she never stops seeing the bottom line truth: two people, slaughtered in rage.

Really, the whole cast is superb, even CGI John Travolta. (Again, no idea how true to life, but boy have I known people like the one he’s portraying…) In a way, though, the most difficult job is Cuba Gooding Jr.’s, because as written, OJ is just … not there. He can’t, or won’t, deal with any of it. He acts like it’s not even real. Nobody wants to have to talk to him. Well, except Bob Kardovian or whoever he is. Everything is projected on to him, nothing is underneath the projections. If they could have legally tried him under a different name, in some completely different town, well. But then they only even came to suspect him because he was the famous Orenthal J Simpson, and they had to go tell him in person.

And then in Episode 4 we get a small reminder of what’s not a projection, what’s not a circus, in the pure volcanic rage of Joseph Siravo’s Fred Goldman, father of the dead delivery boy or cocaine smuggler or gigolo or whatever awful caricature people used, instead of seeing his real son, his dead son. It’s crushing.

A stray thought: listening to OJ strangling his football team metaphor, I began to wonder – are we seeing a prequel to Concussion? I have no idea if this has ever been suggested, but I wonder. Could he really have been such a barely-there sketch of a person all along? It seems unlikely.

In a way I’m reminded of Manhattan – we all know how it turns out, but they’re making it riveting to watch anyway. On to the trial!