Colour me bad: the OJ Simpson trial
We'll never be more than Friends, writes Paul Eksteen after watching David Schwimmer, as he critiques crime series.
|||Gone Surfing
It’s the People vs OJ Simpson (FOX Channel, DStv) and The Juice, as he was fondly known, is sipping from victory’s cup.
Take over-eager prosecutors, underhanded cops, a glove that won’t fit and Johnnie Cochrane’s fits of hysteria, and what do you get? A recipe for an acquittal, that’s what. Oh, and perhaps David Schwimmer, as the late Robert Kardashian, trying his best to look conflicted. Somehow Dave, I doubt we’ll ever be more than just Friends.
Anyway, Simpson throws a huge, TMZ-style party that we get to gate-crash just as they’re playing some synth-heavy song. I remember this tune, even though I cannot for the life of me recall the title. And the reason why I remember it probably won’t tie in with the original artistic vision. This tune takes me back to my school days and the annual inter-school athletics meet in which we took great pleasure in taunting our rivals by perverting the lyrics of popular songs.
Our treatment of this particular ditty, in a style only kids from the Cape Flats could truly do justice to, went something along the lines of “Jou ma en pa is ninja turtles”.
Which is kind of what OJ might have intended with this party. But aimed at who? The prosecutors? His late wife? Only OJ can answer that one, but considering how adroitly he skips around the truth, as he did with so many blockers in his lauded NFL career, I doubt we could ever get an honest answer.
In any case, the OJ Simpson trial was as much about America’s racial politics as it was about who killed Nicole Brown and Ron Goldman. A quick squizz through the rap music lyrics of the nineties reveals a black community at odds with their police force in general, and the LAPD in particular. While white America still seems to harbour a grudge at Simpson’s lawyers for playing the race card to secure his release, black America questioned why there was no such indignation surrounding the Rodney King debacle and countless courtroom lynchings perpertrated by an inherently racist system. They celebrated OJ’s escape.
It’s a political maelstrom neatly summed up in a scene in which OJ is on his now infamous crawl down the highway with the cops on his tail. One man tells his neighbours that he has no sympathy for OJ because, once he had made his fortune, he seemed to consider himself white.
“Well, he’s black now,” says his neighbour, pointing at the posse of police cars chasing him down. It reminded me of an episode of The Boondocks, titled The Trial of Robert Kelly, in which the R&B genius is found not guilty of peeing on a 14-year-old girl because the black prosecutor’s wife is white.
Is there a chance that we’ll ever get to a moment where justice is just that, and not a concept soured by centuries of mistrust and abuse? Because if those issues are not comprehensively addressed, there will always be those people ready to exploit the situation for their own ends.
At the same time, can we honestly believe without a shadow of doubt, as demanded by the law, that OJ killed his wife? There were glaring inconsistencies in the evidence brought by the prosecution. I’ve read a theory - a very convincing one too - that points an accusing finger at OJ’s son Jason. He was never questioned. Surely a history of mental issues and knife attacks would raise alarm bells?
Because of the celebrity involved, the OJ Simpson trial was never going to be an ordinary case. All the media attention, the egos, the ambition and the prejudices made sure of that. But that’s cold comfort for the familes of Nicole Brown and Ron Goldman, who have been relegated to bit-part players in their own tragedy. And where’s the justice in that?