Years ago when he was at the pinnacle of his success, OJ Simpson famously declared, “I’m not black, I’m OJ.” The greatest irony – in a narrative riddled with ironies – of the OJ Simpson story is how the man who deliberately dissociated himself from the African American community eventually needed to play the race card to avoid getting convicted for double murder. More than two decades after the infamous verdict at The People Versus OJ Simpson, filmmaker Ezra Edelman’s stunning five-part documentary, entitled OJ: Made in America, seems particularly relevant in the light of recent incidents of police brutality against African Americans.
The mini-series chronicles not only the rise and fall of Simpson but also race relations in America, particularly in Los Angeles. It’s a commentary on the Los Angeles Police Department and the American criminal justice system as much as it is on Simpson.
Back in 1994, when Simpson’s estranged wife Nicole Brown and her friend Ron Goldman were found brutally murdered, I had no idea who OJ Simpson was. American football was not a sport I had any interest in. I vaguely remembered images of OJ’s stony profile during the trial and of a slow-speed chase through the freeways of LA. I was unaware of the incredible fame that Simpson enjoyed prior to the murders and the subsequent events that led to his current imprisonment. Incredulous as the series of events sounds, it is, in many ways, a quintessential American tragedy.
The documentary begins with Simpson’s rise as a star for the University of Southern California football team. From the very beginning, the film is also about Los Angeles, split as it was into affluent and white and underprivileged and black neighborhoods. Edelman combines original video footage of football games with scenes from the civil rights movement of the 1960s to show the contrast between the larger historical context of African American life and the privileged existence that Simpson increasingly enjoyed, actively distancing himself from the political protests of other black athletes like Muhammed Ali and Jim Brown.
As his childhood friend Joe Bell put it, Simpson appeared to have been “seduced” by the life of rich white people.
The colour of success
The first two parts of the documentary highlight Simpson’s surreal stardom and incredible talent as a football player. The film also slowly begins to chip away at this persona by showing us the flaws. He cheated on his African American first wife with a younger, white, blond woman whom he eventually married, surrounded himself with wealthy, influential, white “friends,” cheated at golf, apparently did little to give back or help anyone in the community, and lived a mostly hedonistic, narcissistic life. By the third part of the series, his pattern of domestic violence, womanising, and increasingly entitled behavior, threaten to knock him far from his high pedestal. Even before we get to the murders, Simpson’s guilt is not left in much doubt.
The third and fourth parts of the documentary focus on the trial that gripped the popular imagination. Edelman includes graphic photographs of the crime scene, and interviews with a wide range of people including some of the jurors, members of the prosecution and defense teams, relatives of the victims, Simpson’s former agent, friends, and sponsors, as well as civil rights activists and clergymen.
The narrative of the trial is framed by longstanding racial tension involving the LAPD, such as the Rodney King beatings of 1991 and the subsequent acquittal of all the police officers involved. The “trial of the century” that followed a few years later, is meticulously chronicled by Edelman, and presented as a carefully curated project by Simpson’s Dream Team of high profile lawyers who were able to successfully weaken the prosecution’s case and manipulate the jury. The documentary, despite its length (7 hours 30 minutes) and attention to detail, creates such narrative tension that even though we all know the outcome, I found myself wishing that the verdict would turn out differently. Footage of key moments such as Simpson trying on the pair of gloves found on the crime scene, heighten the drama. As jurors and attorneys looks back on what happened in that courtroom, the flaws of the legal system are weighted against the unavoidable racial narrative that was a result of decades of what was perceived as skewed justice for African Americans.
Flawed, all-too-human characters
One of the biggest achievements of the film is that even though Simpson’s guilt is clearly indicated, all the characters involved in the drama seem complex and vulnerable. LAPD officer Mark Fuhrman, whose damning comments about African Americans caught on tape may have single-handedly influenced the jurors’ verdict, says at one point, “For you it’s a documentary. For me it’s the end of my life.”
Fred Goldman, father of Ron Goldman, who relentlessly pursued Simpson to get the money owed to him from a successful civil suit following the criminal trial, comes across as a little mercenary. But the final image of Simpson is the most complicated. His story did not end with the pumped fists at the end of the trial or the return to a comfortable life in Brentwood. It ends with him in the courtroom at Nevada, silently receiving his 33-year prison sentence in 2008 for multiple felonies including armed robbery and kidnapping. The last part seems almost farcical, as we watch Simpson spiral into a life of strip clubs, drugs, and petty crime. It’s hard to believe that after possibly getting away with double murder, Simpson could get into this kind of trouble again. As nearly everyone including his fellow defendants who testified against him point out, the Nevada sentencing was probably too harsh, and mean to serve as a delayed payback for his previous acquittal. Like in any Greek tragedy, it’s hard to watch a man fall this far without feeling both revulsion and pity.
In the end, we are reminded of the title of the documentary series. OJ’s rise and fall were made in and by American forces. As Reverend Cecil Murray put it in the film, the OJ Simpson saga was so much “bigger than OJ Simpson”. And that is what makes this series so profound and universal.