The BART police officer Johannes Mehserle fatal shooting eight days ago of an unarmed, African-American man who was laying, stomach down, on the pavement of a subway platform - and the subsequent release of videos on the internet taken by onlookers - recalls some eerie similarities to the LAPD police beating of Rodney King in 1991.I will post again in the next few days to discuss the Mehserle shooting, but in the meantime I want to post a few relevant snippets from my dissertation about the 1991 LAPD case as a primer.
In reporting on the videotaped LAPD attack on Rodney King, newspapers routinely referred to the recorded violence as “the King beating” or “the beating of Rodney King.” I put “the beating of Rodney King” in quotes because it quickly became the commonplace description—in the popular press as well as academic writings such as the introduction to Reading Rodney King (Gooding-Williams 6)—of the brutality that George Holliday captured on videotape from his apartment balcony on March 2, 1991. In the headlines of The Los Angeles Times, for example, the case is most frequently referred to as the “King beating,” “King case,” or "the beating of Rodney King." In this context, Bill Nichols’ observation is significant: “‘The Rodney King trial,’ of course, is a misnomer: Mr. King was never on trial, four members of the LAPD were” (18).
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I emphasize the linguistic framing of the event because of the ways in which the police officers were so commonly removed as active participants in popular discourse. In the phrases “King beating,” or "the beating of Rodney King," the subject who is doing the “beating” is absent—implied rather than named—in the passive-voice construction of the sentence;it literally removes the beaters from the scene, de-emphasizing their role in the beating scene with their absence from the phrase itself. It is as if violence is imagined to have an agency all its own, or as if King is simultaneously beating himself and being beaten.
Such discursive maneuverings offered a prelude to the police officers' defense in the first trial. The initial, public circulation of the tape as evidence—the sense that the officers had indisputably been “caught in the act” of racist police brutality—turned out to not be as clear-cut as it initially appeared. Videographer George Holliday’s comment on the peculiarity of his experience of making the recording of the beating, that it depicted “images more than reality” (Hewitt, Edwards and Matsumoto 83), reflects the fact that the images—and fantasies of violent black masculinity—are always already circulating independently of events themselves. Holliday’s sentiments foreshadowed the problematic role his tape would play as “visible evidence” of the guilt of the police a year later. Numerous media scholars have written about George Holliday’s videotape, the trial, and the uprisings in Los Angeles after the acquittal of the police officers involved in the beating of King (Nichols; Alexander; Gooding-Williams; Tomasulo; Sobchack). Most of these discussions have interrogated prevalent assumptions (in popular discourse, news media, and even the courtroom arguments of the prosecutors of the Los Angeles District Attorney’s office) about the status of the tape as offering unmediated access to the event itself.
Nichols, for example, in his discussion of the deployment of the videotape, offers a compelling analysis of the media-savvy rhetorical strategies used by the lawyers for the police officers that muted the impact of the tape on the jury and resulted in the officers’ acquittals in the first trial. Nichols critiques the widespread assumption that the images represent visible evidence, arguing that the tape does not offer self-evident and factual documentation of the events that occurred. Nichols challenges the idea that the Holliday tape “speaks for itself” and that “no interpretive frame is necessary” for the viewer to understand what he/she sees (31).
Read in this context, the tape of LAPD beating of King does not, as Deputy District Attorney Terry White argued at the close of the first trial of the police in Simi Valley, show “conclusively what happened that night” as something “no one can rebut” (Serrano B2). Rather, the mobility of potential spectator (and juror) identification leaves little certainty as to interpretation, especially in the specific historical context of the U.S. in which beating scene occurred.
How is it possible that the jury believed police officers who said that they were scared of King, that King was about to attack them, that, as the juror reported, King was “controlling the whole show with his actions” (Serrano and Wilkenson A1)? In one sense, as Judith Butler argues, “he is hit in exchange for the blows he never delivered, but which he is, by virtue of his blackness, always about to deliver” (19). The subsequent rebellions after the acquittal of the police in 1992 perhaps retroactively confirmed the danger in King’s body (and consequently the dangerous nature of all black male bodies).
The way in which the tape was deconstructed by the defense as visible evidence, during the first trial of the police officers, seems on the surface to run counter to popular assumptions that video and film are mediums for documenting events. From the first Lumiere “actualités” to the present, cinema, especially the documentary, has been invoked and used as a media for documentation of historical events and “reality.” Indeed, the “replication of the historical real,” the impetus to record, preserve, and document, is arguably the primary function of the documentary (Renov 26). However, as Holliday indicates when he describes the events he recorded as “images more than reality,” the relationship between the “reality” of the pro-filmic event and the “images” that are captured (much less the images that are viewed and how they are perceived by a spectator) is never simple.
Works Cited
Alexander, Elizabeth. "‘Can You Be Black and Look at This?’: Reading the Rodney King Video(S)." Public Culture 7 (1994): 77-94.
Butler, Judith. "Endangered/Endangering: Schematic Racism and White Paranoia." Reading Rodney King/Reading Urban Uprising. Ed. Robert Gooding-Williams. New York: Rutledge, 1993. 15-22.
Gooding-Williams, Robert. Reading Rodney King/Reading Urban Uprising. New York: Routledge, 1993.
Hewitt, Bill, Wayne Edwards, and Nancy Matsumoto. "Trouble: When L.A. Cops Furiously Beat a Black Motorist, They Didn't Know They Were on George Holliday's Candid Camera." People Magazine March 25 1991: 83.
Nichols, Bill. Blurred Boundaries. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1994.
Renov, Michael. "Toward a Poetics of Documentary." Theorizing Documentary. Ed. Michael Renov. New York: Routledge, 1993.
Serrano, Richard A. "Jury Told Video Proves Case against Officers." Los Angeles Times 21-Apr-92: B1.
Serrano, Richard A, and Tracy Wilkenson. "All 4 in King Beating Acquitted." Los Angeles Times 30-Apr-92: A1.
Sobchack, Vivian. The Persistence of History: Cinema, Television, and the Modern Event. AFI Film Readers. New York: Routledge, 1996.
Tomasulo, Frank P. "'I'll See It When I Believe It': Rodney King and the Prison-House of Video." The Persistence of History: Cinema, Television, and the Modern Event. Ed. Vivian Sobchack. New York: Routledge, 1996. 69-90.
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I emphasize the linguistic framing of the event because of the ways in which the police officers were so commonly removed as active participants in popular discourse. In the phrases “King beating,” or "the beating of Rodney King," the subject who is doing the “beating” is absent—implied rather than named—in the passive-voice construction of the sentence;it literally removes the beaters from the scene, de-emphasizing their role in the beating scene with their absence from the phrase itself. It is as if violence is imagined to have an agency all its own, or as if King is simultaneously beating himself and being beaten.
Such discursive maneuverings offered a prelude to the police officers' defense in the first trial. The initial, public circulation of the tape as evidence—the sense that the officers had indisputably been “caught in the act” of racist police brutality—turned out to not be as clear-cut as it initially appeared. Videographer George Holliday’s comment on the peculiarity of his experience of making the recording of the beating, that it depicted “images more than reality” (Hewitt, Edwards and Matsumoto 83), reflects the fact that the images—and fantasies of violent black masculinity—are always already circulating independently of events themselves. Holliday’s sentiments foreshadowed the problematic role his tape would play as “visible evidence” of the guilt of the police a year later. Numerous media scholars have written about George Holliday’s videotape, the trial, and the uprisings in Los Angeles after the acquittal of the police officers involved in the beating of King (Nichols; Alexander; Gooding-Williams; Tomasulo; Sobchack). Most of these discussions have interrogated prevalent assumptions (in popular discourse, news media, and even the courtroom arguments of the prosecutors of the Los Angeles District Attorney’s office) about the status of the tape as offering unmediated access to the event itself.
Nichols, for example, in his discussion of the deployment of the videotape, offers a compelling analysis of the media-savvy rhetorical strategies used by the lawyers for the police officers that muted the impact of the tape on the jury and resulted in the officers’ acquittals in the first trial. Nichols critiques the widespread assumption that the images represent visible evidence, arguing that the tape does not offer self-evident and factual documentation of the events that occurred. Nichols challenges the idea that the Holliday tape “speaks for itself” and that “no interpretive frame is necessary” for the viewer to understand what he/she sees (31).
Read in this context, the tape of LAPD beating of King does not, as Deputy District Attorney Terry White argued at the close of the first trial of the police in Simi Valley, show “conclusively what happened that night” as something “no one can rebut” (Serrano B2). Rather, the mobility of potential spectator (and juror) identification leaves little certainty as to interpretation, especially in the specific historical context of the U.S. in which beating scene occurred.
How is it possible that the jury believed police officers who said that they were scared of King, that King was about to attack them, that, as the juror reported, King was “controlling the whole show with his actions” (Serrano and Wilkenson A1)? In one sense, as Judith Butler argues, “he is hit in exchange for the blows he never delivered, but which he is, by virtue of his blackness, always about to deliver” (19). The subsequent rebellions after the acquittal of the police in 1992 perhaps retroactively confirmed the danger in King’s body (and consequently the dangerous nature of all black male bodies).
The way in which the tape was deconstructed by the defense as visible evidence, during the first trial of the police officers, seems on the surface to run counter to popular assumptions that video and film are mediums for documenting events. From the first Lumiere “actualités” to the present, cinema, especially the documentary, has been invoked and used as a media for documentation of historical events and “reality.” Indeed, the “replication of the historical real,” the impetus to record, preserve, and document, is arguably the primary function of the documentary (Renov 26). However, as Holliday indicates when he describes the events he recorded as “images more than reality,” the relationship between the “reality” of the pro-filmic event and the “images” that are captured (much less the images that are viewed and how they are perceived by a spectator) is never simple.
Works Cited
Alexander, Elizabeth. "‘Can You Be Black and Look at This?’: Reading the Rodney King Video(S)." Public Culture 7 (1994): 77-94.
Butler, Judith. "Endangered/Endangering: Schematic Racism and White Paranoia." Reading Rodney King/Reading Urban Uprising. Ed. Robert Gooding-Williams. New York: Rutledge, 1993. 15-22.
Gooding-Williams, Robert. Reading Rodney King/Reading Urban Uprising. New York: Routledge, 1993.
Hewitt, Bill, Wayne Edwards, and Nancy Matsumoto. "Trouble: When L.A. Cops Furiously Beat a Black Motorist, They Didn't Know They Were on George Holliday's Candid Camera." People Magazine March 25 1991: 83.
Nichols, Bill. Blurred Boundaries. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1994.
Renov, Michael. "Toward a Poetics of Documentary." Theorizing Documentary. Ed. Michael Renov. New York: Routledge, 1993.
Serrano, Richard A. "Jury Told Video Proves Case against Officers." Los Angeles Times 21-Apr-92: B1.
Serrano, Richard A, and Tracy Wilkenson. "All 4 in King Beating Acquitted." Los Angeles Times 30-Apr-92: A1.
Sobchack, Vivian. The Persistence of History: Cinema, Television, and the Modern Event. AFI Film Readers. New York: Routledge, 1996.
Tomasulo, Frank P. "'I'll See It When I Believe It': Rodney King and the Prison-House of Video." The Persistence of History: Cinema, Television, and the Modern Event. Ed. Vivian Sobchack. New York: Routledge, 1996. 69-90.
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2 comments:
Sadly, these types of situations keep on occurring.
In 1991, a group of four Sacramento County Sheriffs beat me off camera while hog tied in a jail cell. I'm a white guy. The cops were also white men. At the time I was a drunk Marine, and I think it was a gang-mentality type thing. None of them could take me one on one, and they wanted to feel good about their masculinity. You've done some good work here, but I think it's worth delving into the gang mentality aspect of this case. Race does play a role, but it's not the only role.
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