I finished this documentary on the last day of February. Although there are only five episodes, it feels very long to watch the whole movie. With the continuous advancement of the documentary, various themes and thoughts also flashed through my mind, and I took a note.
Ⅰ Elvis and The Simpsons - Between Black and White
At E1, OJSimpson presented me with a white, black image, and in part succeeded more successfully due to the tension between the two races. At the same time, throughout the first episode, another image came to my mind - Elvis Elvis.
In "Ten Days That Changed America", Geelong also portrayed Elvis as a white man, a poor white man, a white man with some black characteristics, a black man among white men.
The time when Elvis became an instant hit was in 1956, and Simpson's story started in the 60s'. The comparison of the two gives me some kind of indescribable hint. While skin color and discrimination are becoming more and more acute, there is also such an undercurrent, which makes Simpson and Elvis such two-colored and contradictory people achieve something different, successful success.
And compared to Elvis, Simpson's story is more ironic. Elvis became an instant hit, and naturally entered the upper class, in that era, returning to the white group. But Simpson's albino looks less normal and more betrayal, at least that's how I felt when I watched it. The success of Elvis is a return; the glory of Simpson is a betrayal.
Tommy Smith raised his fist, Ali spoke up for the black community, and Simpson sat there and smiled at the camera and said, nonono, I don't want you to talk about my skin color, I should be beyond skin color. In fact, there is nothing wrong with it, no one should be drawn into a certain camp because of the color of their skin and have to fight a certain kind of struggle, everyone is free, and no one should be condemned for not doing so. But when you look at this shot, and you see Simpson smiling, emotionally, more or less, it always feels a little bit off.
As the black teacher in the documentary said: "I think each person who is in the limelight has an obligation to make thing better for the last, the lost, the least, the left out, the looked over. And I thought he should have done more."
This is where the stories of Simpson and Elvis are different, and because of this contradiction, Simpson's later stories are more dramatic and tragic.
Ⅱ Sowon and Rodney King - The Eyes of History
E2 and E3 talked about several typical events of that era, the Watts riots in 1965, the Yura Love incident, the Rodney King riots in 1992, and the shooting of the black girl Natasha Harlins. .
While watching the footage from the Rodney King trial, the images that kept flashing through my head were not black and white, but images of Asia, the present.
Especially when the judge pronounced "not guilty" over and over again, when the whole court was in uproar, and when the two groups outside the court were fighting, it really reminded me of Suyuan again and again.
Let’s not mention the truth for the time being, at least as far as the documentary is concerned, the one-punch beating and the repeated “not guilty” are really tearing up my belief in justice since I was a child. Living in this world, of course, each of us knows that justice and injustice exist at the same time, and of course dark places abound. But at least in my long-term understanding, at least in the courts, where the conscience is marked, justice always triumphs. The result is really a resounding slap.
When I watched "Su Yuan", although I knew it was an adaptation of a real event, and I was crying, but there was always a sense of unreality, I always felt that the ruling and the injustice were all illusory dreams, but Rodney King The video, and the subject of the documentary, the Simpson case, slapped me completely and told me that this is the real world.
I did realize it when I watched "The Rabble", when I watched "Modernity and the Holocaust", when I read the words that Stavrianos wrote in the foreword of "Global History", but there has never been a moment like this We are strongly aware that civilization, harmony and justice, these things that seem to constitute the main body of our life and the social framework, are so illusory and vulnerable. Until this moment, I didn't realize the real meaning of studying history to me: not to tell people what a glorious past or a failed past, and then triumphantly sum up a bunch of rules to avoid mistakes and injustices , in fact, history is just a ghost with eyes, let you see that those civilized, harmonious and just things are just sand sculptures constructed by people, and the chaos and extremes hidden under them are real The world is what happens in your life every moment.
And history is only eyes, history has no hands.
Ⅲ The Simpsons Case - The Third Person Who Does Not Exist and the Avoided Reality
After watching the whole documentary, I think the most ironic and funny thing is that everyone seems to know that Simpson is a murderer.
Yes, everyone knows that this is a fact that is etched in everyone's heart, black and white. Because if we really believe Simpson did it, then the focus of the case should be, at least in part after the trial, on finding the real killer.
But no, the case was over, Simpson won, and the whole thing was over. As you all know, Simpson won and it's over, Simpson lost and it's over.
Because everyone knows that there is no third person who should be responsible for what happened between Simpson and Nicole.
Another ironic factor is that Shapiro's lawyer said that racial discrimination should not be involved, which has nothing to do with the whole thing. To me, it's as funny as Simpson saying I don't care what color I am, I want to be no color. To me, this is the reality of being shunned. And you avoid the truth, and obviously the truth avoids you.
But the paradox is that at the time of the trial, racial discrimination was an unavoidable fact, and after the trial, the whole thing had nothing to do with the black community and returned to Simpson's personal life. What an indescribable world.
Ⅳ Others
The entire documentary, Simpson's entire life trajectory, is simply an excellent novel, especially his life after the 1994 case, and his re-incarceration, which is the magic of the novel. Life is like a play, play is like life, the ancients did not deceive me.
This documentary also provides a more complete understanding of such a period in American history. I still remember that when I was reading a magazine in junior high school, I was very puzzled when I saw that black people should avoid white people when they took the bus. At that time, I thought that everything would disappear after 1865. As a result, history gave me another slap:
In 1875, Tennessee passed a statute requiring racial segregation on trains and other public transportation vehicles, the first time in the United States that state law provided for racial segregation. Later, the state passed a decree stipulating that black carriages should be dedicated to train passengers, and blacks and whites were not allowed to share carriages.
The BBC's documentary about Lincoln also made me re-examine this history. As a result, I realized once again that the meaning of learning history is to peel off the skin that builds history and see the flesh and blood beneath the skin.
By the way, the end of February seems to have a special relationship with the topic of racial discrimination. Before watching The Simpsons, I didn't know that this incident was related to the black community. I didn't know that the "Light of August" was written about this topic before that. Looking back It's time to make up for the detailed process of the American Civil War.
Finally, there is an Easter egg of Rick and Morty. I watched the episode of Jerry and Beth using VR glasses together. Someone mentioned in the barrage that the police's super slow pursuit of Jerry was real in American history. I checked it out. Arrived, and only after reading it did I know it was the Simpson case (here I strongly express my grief and anger at the suspension of the fourth season, Ծ^Ծ,,)
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