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When the white Bronco loped into the sunset of Los Angeles, the O.J. saga seemed to have reached the point of supersaturation, with 95 million people spontaneously tuned to the chase. So as the story transitioned from real-time man-on-the-run thriller to plodding courtroom drama, no one expected the audience to gallop along in a robust stride. But gallop they did, when 19 networks decided to broadcast the trial. The pieces were now in place: Cable television had proven its sovereignty, the 24-hour news cycle had been hatched, and an entirely new creature — reality television — had gestated an embryo that would grow into a goliath. The audience propagated itself during the trial, eventually booming to 150 million tuning into the verdict — 38 million more people than watched this year’s Super Bowl.
But in 1995, in the middle of the trial, if you asked someone “What do you think about the O.J. Simpson case?” you usually got a sneer. Why was a Brentwood murder getting more attention than the Oklahoma City bombing and domestic terrorism? Who cares about these sleazeballs — slacker houseguest Kato Kaelin, cokehead socialite Faye Resnick, nazi archivist Mark Fuhrman, and all those corrupt celebrity lawyers? And do you really believe that the blood on the sock contains the preservative EDTA?
Their diatribe made it abundantly clear: The most disgusted individual was also the most heavily invested. Experts of the case hated themselves, and everyone was an expert.
This put the media in a double-bind, between populist fascination and elitist posturing. Highbrow outlets like The New Yorker and Vanity Fair, in particular, put themselves through contortionist maneuvers to discreetly divulge their obsession with the trial. (Reporters from both publications appear as characters in The People v. O.J. Simpson.) The cheekiest meta-media mag of the era, Spy, even slapped O.J. on its cover, but somehow squeaked ironic self-disgust with a headline: “1,001 Reasons Why the O.J. Trial Is the Most Absurd Event in the History of America.”
Inside, you found 21 uninterrupted pages of said absurdity.
Adam Gopnik, writing for The New Yorker, turned the gruesome double murder into intellectual fodder by deploying a classic technique — contorting the story inward until it becomes a media fable. Just three weeks after the Bronco chase, he diagnosed the media’s obsession with the case:
The most striking feature of that obsession has been the endless search for portent and meaning — the stately unfolding, in column after column and special after network special, of the belief that what we had here was essentially a text, as full of hidden allusions and telling ironies and larger meanings as a passage from Donne.
The term wasn’t available at the time, but today Gopnik seems to have perfectly described a modern media object: the hot take. His observation was astute — the media’s role in society really was transforming, from a search for truth (“Is O.J. guilty?”) to a search for meaning (“What does O.J. signify?”). Decades later, that shift continues, with the hot take and the explainer and the recap [*cough*] still ascending in popularity.
But in the ’90s, something even more important was happening. It wasn’t just the mainstream media who became self-aware — the public was discovering itself too. All the sudden, instead of merely watching the Bronco, we began to watch ourselves watching the Bronco. For the first time, the viewing public developed a sense of themselves as an audience.
The third episode of The People v. O.J. Simpson brilliantly captures this transformation. The show parades an unabashed mania for content — for how media is manufactured, how it is distributed, how it is consumed, analyzed, and manipulated. In every scene of this episode, people are seen reading magazines, browsing newsstands, listening to the radio, parsing newspapers, and watching television. Audiences gather on the street to listen to Nicole Simpson Brown’s 911 tapes. Delivery trucks distribute bundles of magazines. CNN plays in offices. Press conferences and interviews are strategized. Lawyers watch other lawyers on Larry King Live. Consumers yank magazines off newsstands.
Unable to control the content onslaught, Robert Shapiro goes completely bonkers, pounding his fists on tabloids:
The media churn begins in the very first scene. It’s Father’s Day, so Robert Kardashian takes his kids — Kim, Kourtney, Khloe, Rob — out for brunch at the L.A. staple, Chin Chin. A queue winds out the restaurant, but daddy’s newfound fame instantly scores them a sweet table. Before launching into a tirade about celebrity (“Fame is fleeting, it is hollow”), papa Kardashian proudly beams about an upcoming interview with Barbara Walters. As eyes bounce around the restaurant toward the family, the daughters seem to bathe in the glances.
The second scene celebrates one of the greatest acts of media manipulation — photoshopping. Editors at Time are shown making alterations to O.J.’s booking photo for the magazine’s cover. “I could add a bit of chiaroscuro,” says a photo editor. “Heavy shadow, like Rembrandt.” (It’s a modern mystery how Rembrandt never become an Instagram filter.)
A few scenes later, a crowd congregates around a newsstand, reacting to side-by-side covers of Time and Newsweek, the same photo shaded with different meaning. “Pretty crazy, huh?” says the newsstand owner. “They made him blacker.”
In many ways, the above images — which are the same image, manipulated and framed for different meaning — had the most lasting effect of the entire Simpson saga. Even more than the iconic white Bronco or the shot of Simpson wiggling on a glove, the doctored Time cover and the unmanipulated Newsweek cover were deliriously debated by the entire populace — media ethicists, racial theorists, celebrities, talk show hosts, and the general public. (It’s almost impossible to imagine how this would have played out in the age of Twitter.) It was an awakening moment in 1994, a sign that distrust in the tyranny of mainstream media, and suspicion of its manipulative power, would become commonplace.
It was also a moment of awakening for Robert Shapiro, who after perusing Time, suddenly realizes his defense strategy. He instantly calls a spurned New Yorker writer — Jeffrey Toobin, who wrote the story that became the book from which this show is adapted. The New Yorker story appeared in an issue of the magazine that is used as a delirious fetish object throughout this episode. It’s fun to see a print rag passed around with such vigor, from scene to scene, through the hands of nearly every character involved in the case.
The magazine travels through a series of scenes:
Hard cut. Wielding the magazine, defense attorney F. Lee Bailey proclaims to his colleague, “What you’ve laid out here — this! [waves magazine] — is an entire case strategy. Spectacular. This is masterful.” Shapiro beams.
Hard cut. The prosecution team, reading the same magazine, denounces the story as “desperate.” Marcia Clark deems the article a “declaration of war.”
Hard cut. Robert Kardashian reads the magazine aloud to O.J. in prison. The story is used as a rationale to bring in another attorney, Johnnie Cochran, the final superstar needed to round out the Dream Team.
For anyone who grew up with magazines, these scenes will makes you nostalgic. For anyone who didn’t, let me say: It was all downhill from here. Right around this time, the end of 1994, the first modern web browser, Netscape Navigator, would be launched. Just as magazines would start their slow decline, Advertising Age awarded O.J. its “Cover Story Crown” on the strength of 54 magazine covers. (Oprah finished in a distant second, with 21.)
The episode ends with Marcia Clark in her backyard, doing what people did in the ’90s: reading a newspaper.
Miscellaneous Historical Notes:
- During the restaurant scene with the Kardashian family, a Michael Bolton song is playing in the background — “Said I Loved You… But I Lied.” This is a very clever soundtrack moment, because O.J.’s last girlfriend, Paula Barbieri, dumped him for Michael Bolton. On the morning of the murders, she left Simpson a half-hour answering machine message, breaking off their relationship, saying she was meeting Bolton in Vegas. Barbieri is also the girl-next-door in Bolton’s “Completely” video.
- While the Time cover was monstrously stupid, if not wildly racist, O.J. also complicates the matter when he says, “I’m not black, I’m O.J.” (In the show, he says this in jail, but he also said it long before this murder trial.) Marcia Clark’s jab also hits: “Doesn’t Simpson deserve a jury of his peers? You know, rich, middle-aged white men?”
- FOX created a TV movie in 1995 called The O.J. Simpson Story. It was the network’s highest-rated original movie ever.
- CBS created a miniseries in 2000 called American Tragedy, with Ving Rhames as defense attorney Johnnie Cochran. Directed by Lawrence Schiller, the screenplay was adapted by Norman Mailer from Schiller’s book. The film was nominated for a Golden Globe Award.
- “Fame’s complicated.” —Kato Kaelin, getting the best lines.
- OMG, reservations at Spago!
Next week: Episode 4: 100% Not Guilty!
Rex Sorgatz pleads the fifth @fimoculous.
