O.J. Simpson Is Dead. To Understand His Life, Watch These Two Shows – GQ
O.J. Simpson, who died this week at the age of 76, was a pop-cultural fixture long before he became America's most infamous alleged murderer. But in 2016, more than two decades after his acquittal, Simpson and the story of his rise and fall were once again at the center of the conversation, thanks to two remarkable television showsa five-part ESPN documentary, O.J.: Made in America, directed by Ezra Edelman, and a dramatic miniseries, Scott Alexander and Larry Karaszewski's The People Vs. O.J. Simpson. Made in America was a sprawling, kaleidoscopic, relevatory meditation on race, class, fame, and American justice, an early-21st-century television event as significant as the Sopranos finale it shared a title with; The People Vs.executive-produced by Ryan Murphy, with Cuba Gooding Jr. as O.J., David Schwimmer as a hapless Robert Kardashian, and John Travolta as a wildly meme-able Robert Shapirowas significantly pulpier, but in its camp-edged hyperrealness it captured the wild emotional energy the real-life O.J. trial threw off.
As a news event, the O.J. saga changed modern media forever; among other things, it ushered in the age of televised police chases and gavel-to-gavel court coverage as entertainment. But looking back, Made in America and People Vs. were also the beginning of somethingthe age of pop history going where journalism couldn't, reckoning with injustices often abetted by a feckless media. We've spent the ensuing decade-and-counting relitigating the tabloid 1990s through docudrama, putting a 21st-century lens informed by #MeToo and Black Lives Matter on recent history and questioning the conventional wisdom around everything from the life and death of Princess Diana (The Crown, Spencer), the Clinton/Lewinsky affair and the murder of Gianna Versace (Murphy's own Impeachment: American Crime Story and The Assassination of Gianna Versace: American Crime Story), the Pamela Anderson sex-tape scandal (Pam & Tommy), the Lorena Bobbitt case (Lorena), the public struggles of Britney Spears (Framing Britney Spears) and the Sinead O'Connor/SNL controversy (Nothing Compares).
Both shows are available to stream from various outlets; if you want to understand not just O.J. or his trial but the country in which it unfolded, they're both essential. In the meantime, revisit some of GQ's coverage of these television landmarks at the links below.
In this 2016 Q&A with GQ's Joshua Rivera, the actor Courtney B. Vance, who played defense attorney Johnnie Cochran on The People Vs. O.J. Simpson, reflected on the historical significance of the trial, its relevance to the age of #BlackLivesMatter, and Cochran's folk-hero status in the Black community. Johnnie understood the nature of what the case was about, Vance said. "He saw the larger vision. From the very beginninghe didn't need a jury consultant to tell him this case was about race, and race alone. He cut his teeth on cases like this, like Leonard Detweiler, whose only crime was driving while black ... Johnnie, that's how he began his journey with police brutality cases, knowing that the deck was stacked. And that's what African Americans knew, that the deck was stacked.
So knowing that going in, we were anticipating the deck being stacked. When you go into a trial, black lives don't matter, and we were going to end up holding the short end of the stick. So when we looked at our hand and we saw we were holding the long end, we were in shock and that's why we screamed.When you understand the history, you understand that African Americans by and large were not cheering for O.J. Simpson, because O.J. Simpson admittedly said he wasn't black. And even if you didn't hear him say it, you saw his life. Once he left USC and went pro he never looked back, or he never looked black. So we knew the cheering was for Johnnie Cochran, and how he worked the system in our favor, in the biggest case in history in terms of legalese. And we cheered him for his acumen.
Vance won an Emmy for his work on People Vs., and so did Sarah Paulson, who played Cochran's adversary, prosecutor Marcia Clark. In November 2016, just before that year's awards ceremony, Paulson spoke to GQ's Caity Weaver about the role and how sexism may have impacted the outcome of the O.J. trial. Women, collectively, I feel, were very anti-Marcia," Paulson said. "No one wanted to be that kind of woman because that kind of woman is perceived to not be liked by men, or desired by men, or wanted by men. So therefore we wanted to not be that way. Which I think is such a shame. Because if theres anyone in the world I could be like, it would be like Marcia Clark.
A few months later, Drew Magary wrote about the gruesome crime-scene photographs brought to light in Edelman's O.J.: Made in America, and praised the documentary for actually living up to the promise of what could have been a boilerplate subtitle.
Its about O.J. making himself into a football superstar, Magary wrote, "and then remaking himself into a TV icona fully calculated career trajectory that is common now for the likes of LeBron James but was unprecedented back in Simpsons time. Its about how Simpson, a black man, made himself into a member of white society, and how white society likewise made him into one of them (indeed, the series posits that Simpsons fall from grace was really a fall from whiteness). Its about a murder case that Simpsons defense team wisely made into a referendum on the Los Angeles Police Department and its history of racism, brutality, and sloppiness.
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O.J. Simpson Is Dead. To Understand His Life, Watch These Two Shows - GQ