[On June 17th, 1994, O.J. Simpson was arrested by the LAPD. The subsequent trial featured a number of individuals whose stories have a great deal to tell us about America, then, now, and overall, so this week I’ll AmericanStudy a handful of Simpson trial figures. Leading up to a special weekend post from one of my favorite young AmericanStudiers!]
On how OJ
reflected celebrity culture, how he changed it, and what can’t be captured by
that frame.
At the
time of his 1994 arrest, O.J. Simpson was likely best known to many Americans
for his supporting role as Detective
Nordberg in the popular Naked Gun comedies;
the third and final such film, Naked Gun 33 1/3: The Final
Insult (1994) had been released in theaters just a few months before
the arrest. Simpson wasn’t the first famous athlete to act in a comedy from the filmmakers
responsible for the Naked Gun series,
nor was he the first famous football player (or even running back) to parlay
that sports success into
an acting career. Indeed, if the rise of celebrity culture was a central element
of American society in the second half of the 20th century, sports
celebrities, and more exactly athletes who crossed over into other cultural
media and broader overarching fame, were quite representative of that trend. In
that sense Simpson in the 1980s and 90s was just an example of a much larger
set of trends, and likely not one who would have particularly stood out from
the crowd were it not for everything that happened in and after 1994.
When those
shocking 1994 events transpired, however, O.J. Simpson’s brand of celebrity
changed, and I would argue that this story likewise changed celebrity coverage
and culture overall. The infamous white Bronco chase is an
especially telling case in point: this wasn’t a celebrity appearing on screen intentionally,
in projects like films or TV shows that reflect choices and career and contribute
to a crafted image; these were raw, unfiltered videos of a celebrity fleeing
accusations of (and arrest for) having committed a heinous crime, pursued by
law enforcement, threatening his own life, surrounded by gawkers and paparazzi
alike, chaotic glimpses into the hardest and darkest realities of life to which
any of us might be connected. Of course there had been celebrity
criminals and trials before, and public obsessions with figures like Bonnie
& Clyde or Wild West outlaws.
But this was perhaps the first 24/7
cable news celebrity crime story, and so again I would argue that in these
moments Simpson became and remained a distinctly different form of celebrity
than we had ever seen before.
That new
form of celebrity unquestionably influenced the trial as well, as I’ll continue
considering in later posts in this series. But the People
v. O.J. Simpson: American Crime Story (2016) TV show, which I recently
rewatched with my sons due to the American Legal class connection you’ll hear
more about in the weekend post, starts with clips from a very different news
story and its cable news coverage: the Rodney King beating,
the acquittal of the officers involved, and the resulting
LA riots. And I would agree with the show’s implication there (and will
explore layers to these themes in my next couple posts), that a great deal of what
unfolded in the Simpson trial had more to do with those contexts of race,
justice, and community than it did with celebrity culture. In a justifiably famous moment from the show,
O.J. Simpson (Cuba Gooding Jr.) exclaims, “I’m not Black! I’m O.J.!” But
however famous Simpson had become, he was also still Black, and at the very
least we can’t separate his celebrity from those communal contexts.
Next
figure tomorrow,
Ben
PS. What
do you think? Simpson trial figures or stories you’d highlight?
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