1.
The umpire’s view is blocked by the fielder. Has to listen for the pop of ball in glove. The slap of batter’s foot on first. The ump calls the batter safe. TV cuts to replay. Slowed to a near-stop. A different angle than the ump’s. Then another angle. And another. You want to get these calls right, the announcer says. // The call is reviewed. The angles refract in the collision. Derive new meaning. The call is overturned. The batter is out. The game continues. //
2.
Video is incontrovertible. Unassailable. That’s what we hear. The video can’t lie. // One angle shows the runner beating the throw. Another shows the ball beating him. One angle shows a knife. A gun. A threat. Another shows retreat. // Video helped convict a Minneapolis cop for killing a Black man. Helps cops every day identify suspects. Is supposed to be viewed without suspicion. Without skepticism. // On Facebook, a meme attributed to a Black cop with a social media following, asks: “What good did body cams do for police when people can clearly see the facts but elect to believe emotionally charged lies?” As if the video projects “the truth.” As if video and our response to its images are somehow exempt from our biases. Free of the failings of point of view. //
3.
Andrew Brown. Adam Toledo. M’Khia Bryant. Daunte Wright. // This keeps happening. Over and over. A commonplace. Brown is shot by deputies. Serving a warrant. In North Carolina. Cops “fired at Brown when he started to drive away.” Saw him leaving as a threat. Saw him as a threat. // He had a warrant. Convictions for drugs. “Our training and our policies indicate under such circumstances there is a high risk of danger,” police said. // A gun for a traffic stop. For a warrant arrest. These are the questions being asked. In North Carolina. Across the country. By Blacks and Whites. “He didn’t do anything so bad,” his grandmother said. “They shot my grandson like he was a bear.” //
4.
Sheriff’s deputies were “justified,” the state of North Carolina says. The investigation took less than a month. // Officers “reasonably believed” deadly force was required, that Andrew Brown posed a threat. That they had to kill him “to protect themselves and others.” // Brown backs up, pulls forward. Attempts to drive off. Five shots from behind. “To say this shooting was justified, despite known facts, is both an insult and a slap in the face to Andrew’s family,” say attorneys for the family. // “History of criminal charges,” police say. Assault. Resisting arrest. “Officers were duty-bound to stand their ground, carry on the performance of their duties and take Andrew Brown into custody,” officials said. // One story. Many narratives. A multiplicity of truths and a single truth. Brown is dead. Shot in the back. //
5.
Rain falls in ancient Japan, on the Rashomon gate. Woodcutter and priest in shock. “I just don’t understand,” the woodcutter repeats. // I just don’t understand, say Brown’s family members. Say Toledo’s. Bryant’s. // The story is tragic, the woodcutter tells a man who has ducked under the gate to escape the rains. The man, listed only as the commoner, is dismissive. Sees nothing but corruption and failure in man. The priest demure. They recount the stories, the testimony. The woodcutter finding the dead samurai. Running to the police. The capture of the bandit, who tells the first version of the murder. Of the rape of the samurai’s wife. One story. Many stories. Each told from a particular angle of vision. From a sense of self-interest. // The bandit, the maiden, the ghost of the samurai. Narratives in conflict. The woodcutter holds his back, pretends to know little. Tells the fourth story, perhaps the true story. // For us, the audience, the truth evolves in multiple narratives, competing tales. //
6.
“(T)he concept of truth,” Neil Postman writes, “is intimately linked to the biases of forms of expression.” Images without context lack substance. Are open to multiple interpretations. // Video in the absence of its history, without our understanding of the means through which it was produced, the reasons for its production, is just video. Images moving on a screen. // Truth, Postman writes, “must appear in its proper clothing or it is not acknowledged, which is a way of saying that the ‘truth’ is a kind of cultural prejudice” (pp. 22-23). //
7.
The truth in Rashomon is collective. The sum of parts, of tainted actions, of social mores. Of pride and vengeance and opportunism. // The truth in America is also collective. Built from decades, centuries of racism, of repression. The law used as control, as blue line separating the rich from the rabble. Blacks from Whites. (I wrote about the thin blue line here.)
8.
George Floyd is on the ground. Pinned by an officer’s knee. He can’t breath. Says so. Calls for his mother as he loses consciousness. Loses his life. Another Black Death at the hands of police. Another murder by an officer charged with protecting the community. Captured on video. For nine minutes 29 seconds. // Derek Chauvin kneels on Floyd’s neck. Tucks his hands in pockets. Stares off into the distance with what looks like a smirk. // The video was the star of the trial, the news reporters say. The video is what led to conviction. No one could watch it without reacting. No one could contradict the narrative it offers. // But they tried. To tear Floyd down. To put him on trial. To salvage the stories they’ve been telling America since before its founding. A narrative described by Allissa Richardson as one of “inherent black criminality.” Of inherent blame. Unworthiness. //
9.
Each view, each angle creates its own meaning. Each provides its own narrative. Multiple angles. Multiple points of view. Multiple assumptions. Biases. The meaning comes in the collision. The conflict. // Black and white footage. Fast cuts. Battleship Potemkin. A celebration turns to bloodshed. Under assault by the Czar. Quick cuts from image to image. A woman turns. A child screams. The crowd stampedes down the famed Potemkin Steps. // The individual shots carry one meaning, Eisenstein would say. The combination creates “a value of another dimension, another degree” (91). // We see the woman in closeup. The child. The woman’s eyes grow. The child falls. Suddenly inert. The woman screams. The stampede continues. Others falling. Shot. Run through by sabers. // We react. Revulsion. Anger. Revolution. // Each shot stands alone, but lacks context. Meaning. “The shot,” says Eisenstein, “is a montage cell” (97), and only derives its meaning through montage. “By collision. By the conflict of two pieces in opposition.” //
9.
The girl has a knife. The girl lunges. Police fire. She dies. One cell. One image in larger narrative. // “As soon as he got out of the car, he had the gun ready to shoot somebody,” Kiara Yakita, founder and president of the grass-roots group Black Liberation Movement Central Ohio, told The Post. “Law enforcement and city officials are rushing to make excuses because she had a knife. Those excuses are not valid to me.” //
10.
One death. And another. And still another. Shot by police. Choked. Tased. // The video shows Rodney King from afar. On the ground. Police kicking him. // The video shows Eric Garner pleading for air. Shows Walter. Scott running, then falling. Shot in the back. // These are not isolated incidents. These are cells in collision. Their meaning derives from the collision. The repetition. // Our understanding derives from our history. Our angle of vision. // A collection of inferences and instincts in collision bang against what our eyes tell us. Our ears. // The speedy runner gets the benefit of the call. The pitching star the benefit of a widening strike zone. The Black woman followed as she shops. The White kid given a warning at a traffic stop. The Black man in uniform pepper sprayed and assaulted. // The collision is how we understand what we see. What we believe. Carry deep inside. The cultural cues. Biases. // “We only see what we look at,” writes John Berger (8). “To look is an act of choice.” Can we then say that what we see is an act of choice? // Derek Chauvin is convicted of killing George Floyd. A surprise, even with a nine-minute, 29-second video of Floyd’s murder. A surprise because it rarely happens. Because police are given the benefit of all doubt. Because Black men continue to be seen as a threat. Black children seen as adults. Naturally threatening. Because Black girls are assumed to be bad. Don’t get “the benefits of being viewed as innocent,” Rebecca Epstein, the executive director of the Georgetown Law Center on Poverty and Inequality, told Vox.
11.
The video catches Chauvin almost straight on, Floyd only in prone position, barely visible. The video captures Chauvin’s face. His hands. Captures the nine-plus minutes. Makes the officer’s disregard clear. But imagine this: Imagine the video shot from a different angle. Lit differently. Not capturing Chauvin’s face. Or showing Floyd, a large man, towering over Chauvin. // How might the world have reacted? How much sympathy might Chauvin had received. // “They’re looking for proof that that person did not deserve their demise,” Richardson told Dahlia Lithwick, “that they were a perfect victim, so to speak.” // It is an unfathomable weight to place on a victim, she says. To say to them that, if they are to be killed by police, if your life is to be snuffed out, you must prove your innocence. This is the narrative contained in all of these videos, she says. “What we’re saying is ‘I’m going to reserve my sympathy unless you can prove to me that you were truly blameless in this. If there’s any inkling that you look like you may have deserved this kind of treatment from police, then I’m going to remain silent.” //
12.
Angles of vision. Choice of image. Language. Eisenstein. Potemkin. // The video shows stores on fire. Police in riot gear. Angry faces. Merchants bereft. Mayors calling for calm. The video has an audience. The choice of shots creates a narrative. Imposes an emotional response. Shifts the anger onto protesters, lumps them into a single violent horde. // History is left on the cutting room floor. State violence. Repression. The inherent danger experienced by African Americans with each traffic stop. Each small-scale interaction. What’s excluded is forgotten. //
13.
Philando Castile. Shot by police. Terence Crutcher. Shot by police. Walter Scott shot by police. All on video. All officers exonerated. // “People, not just here in Tulsa, but across the country, believe what they saw was murder,” Trymaine Lee says of Crutcher. // Americans saw the videos from Tulsa. Captured by dash cam and helicopter. From a distance. Angles that are inconclusive. // Prosecutors used the videos. Still photos. Innuendo. The officer was acquitted. “The same playbook,” Crutcher’s twin-sister Tiffany Crutcher tells Lee. Demonize. Dehumanize. Put the victim on trial. Frame the video as proof of Crutcher’s innate guilt. Reset the angle of vision. Situate the viewer. Force her to see through the White man’s gaze. //
14.
We cannot understand what is happening by pretending that these incidents of police violence are isolated. That bad apples are responsible. // This is not about good cops and bad cops. Not about bad apples spoiling the bunch. That’s too easy. This can’t be addressed by recruiting a better breed of officer. The system itself is to blame. Is corrupt. Operates on faulty premises. Good and bad. Us and them. Police as the thin blue line between civilization and anarchy. // This where we place the camera. And where we place the camera determines what we see. // The footage in Ohio. Teen girl shot to death. She had a knife. Then didn’t. Ma’Khia Bryant, 16. Black. We see it unfold from the cop’s body cam. See it from a distance. See her lunge. Fall. A good shoot, the mayor says. Saved some lives. But it feels wrong. Dead Black teen shot four times. Because of a knife. We only have one angle. Only have the word of police. Heated moment. The AP says. Like so many shootings. Split-second decision. // “Did he have to get out of that car ready to shoot?” asks the NAACP. “Something else could have been done differently.” //
15.
We choose the camera’s placement. The angle of vision. We choose to see what we want to see. A White friend sees the teenage Ma’Khia as a violent threat. The cop as the hero. The flash of a knife, the shouts from officers. These are the determining facts. The Black woman sees a different image. Offers a different narrative. Hazel Bryant, the child’s aunt, says “the body cam doesn’t show the truth of what occurred.” Others ask why so quick to shoot. // Camera placement. Point of view. The context of our lives. Whites and Blacks see this differently. Live this differently. See police through different lenses. Judge policing from their own perches. // Whites see each case as independent. “Lumping them together,” a friend says, “is unfair to good cops doing an extremely tough job.” //
16.
Cut to the chase. Literally. Thirteen-year-old fleeing police. He has a gun, we hear. Turns down alley. Turns with hands up. Gun is gone. Officer shoots. Kid goes down. Grainy footage from body cam the only evidence. // Point of view matters. Where we are perched as we watch. Who we are. The retired cop calls this a good shoot. The bystander in the Black neighborhood sees it as murder. The white guy in the suburb asks that we wait. We don’t have all the information. // There is a grainy tape. A single angle of vision. Obscured by nightfall and street lights. By the unsteady bounce of the cop running. By our biases. // We think we know. Why the kid ran. Why the cop shot. What we would do. We don’t. We can’t. We want to treat each of these shootings as separate. Distinct. We can’t. Each influences the other. Each contributes to the momentum that leaves a kid dead in a Chicago alley. That leaves a 16-year-old girl dead on a Columbus street. // George Floyd was murdered in the light of day. On camera. Cop’s knee on his neck. Screaming for his life. “I can’t breath.” Like Eric Garner. Choked by New York cops. “I can’t breath.” Floyd’s killer was convicted. Garner’s walked. Despite the coroner calling Garner’s death a homicide. // Reasonable fear. That’s the standard. A cop’s “perception of a threat.” To the officer. To others. Michael Brown’s size was a mitigating factor. Described by the cop as rising, golem-like. An inhuman threat. A fearsome, supernatural being. // There is history in this. The narrative of the Black brute. A slave myth carried into the present. An animal unable to feel pain. Threatening to his very being. // History. Culture. The biases built from decades, centuries of racism. “That looks like a bad dude.”
17.
A bad dude. A Golem rising. A bear. A thug. Attitude. Sass. Back talk. If he would just have complied. She would have just listened. // “Most people believe the inherent the stereotype of inherent black criminality,” Allissa Richardson says. Most people assume they are guilty. That the cop was right. They need proof that the victim “did not deserve their demise, that they were a perfect victim, so to speak.” An act of choice. A decision on our part to believe one side and not the other. To give one side the benefit of the doubt. To erase the broken systems. To replace them with good cops and bad cops. To blame it all on individual acts of corruption. //
18.
Old story. Same story. Baldwin wrote in 1964 (97) that “White people are endlessly demanding to be reassured that Birmingham is really on Mars.” Birmingham, where civil rights marchers, people asking for equality and dignity, was met with brute force. Whites needed to know that the vicious assaults on Black protesters were consigned to the South. We needed to know — need to know — that we are not racist. That we are not a part of a brutal system of separation. // But, Baldwin writes, “there is not one step, one inch, no distance, morally or actually, between Birmingham and Los Angeles.” //
19.
Obama said in 2004 that there are not red states or blue states. Just the United States. Baldwin might agree, though their analyses certainly differed. Where Obama sought to present a positive vision, to set the tone for a future bid for the presidency, Baldwin saw something much darker. Occupation. Separation. In The Nation, in 1966, he wrote that Blacks in Harlem — in the north — had been consigned to “the lowest jobs, the most menial jobs.” To poorer schools and failing services, to the specter of police occupation. “The principle on which one had to operate” — and still has to — “was that the government which can force me to pay my taxes and force me to fight in its defense anywhere in the world does not have the authority to say that it cannot protect my right to vote or my right to earn a living or my right to live anywhere I choose.” //
20.
Across the South, the Midwest, the West, state governments tighten voting rules. Make it harder for Blacks, Latinos, the poor to vote. Pass laws to restrict protest. Attack speech. Dismantle public aid. Women’s bodily autonomy. This is the real “cancel culture.” In Trump states. Red states. In Blue states, too, though we fail to see, to acknowledge this. Racism is not confined to geographic zones. Not embedded in a single demographic. // George Floyd died in Minneapolis. A Blue City in a mostly Blue State. The “storms of persecution,” as Martin Luther King Jr. called them, and the staggering “winds of police brutality” thrived then in Mississippi, Alabama, South Carolina, and the “slums and ghettos of our northern cities.” Still does, and will continue to do so until we re-place our cameras. Reset our angles of vision so that we can see as the victims of this violence see. //
Sources:
Baldwin, James. “The White Problem.” The Cross of Redemption: Uncollected Writings, ed. Randall Kenan, Vintage International, 2020, pp. 88-97.
—. “A Report from Occupied Territory.” The Nation, 11 July 1966, https://www.thenation.com/article/archive/report-occupied-territory/. Accessed 21 May 2021
Battleship Potemkin. Directed by Sergei Eisenstein, Mosfilm, 1925. (Viewed on HBO Max)
Bella, Timothy. “After police kill a Black man in North Carolina, a community calls for authorities to release the body-cam footage.” The Washington Post, 23 April 2021, https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2021/04/23/elizabeth-city-andrew-brown-shooting/ Accessed 23 April 2021.
Benjamin, Walter. “The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction.” One-Way Street and Other Writings, tr. J.A. Underwood, ed. Amit Chaudhuri, Penguin, 2009, pp. 228-239.
Berger, John. Ways of Seeing. British Broadcasting Company and Penguin Books, 1977.
Crutcher, Tiffany, and Trymaine Lee. “A Verdict.” Into America with Trymaine Lee, MSNBC podcast and transcript, 22 April 2021, https://into-america.simplecast.com/episodes/a-verdict Accessed 25 April 2021
Eisenstein, Sergei. “The Cinematic Principle and the Ideograms.” Film Theory and Criticism: Introductory Readings, ed. Gerald Mast and Marshall Cohen, 3rd edition, Oxford University Press, 1985, pp. 90-103.
Epstein, Rebecca, qtd. by P.R. Lockhart. “A new report shows how racism and bias deny black girls their childhoods.” Vox, 16 May 2019, https://www.vox.com/identities/2019/5/16/18624683/black-girls-racism-bias-adultification-discipline-georgetown Accessed 26 April 2021
Ludlow, Randy, et al. “Ma’Khia Bryant’s family remembers her as loving, affectionate: ‘She didn’t even have a chance to live her life.’” The Washington Post, 22 April 2021, https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2021/04/22/makhia-bryant-police-shooting/ Accessed 22 April 2021
Ludlow, et al. “Fatal police shooting of Black teenager in Columbus sparks new outcry.” The Washington Post, 21 April 2021, https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2021/04/21/columbus-police-shooting-16-year-old/ Accessed 22 April 2021
Murdock, Sebastian. “District Attorney Says Police Killing of Andrew Brown Jr. Was ‘Justified.’” The Huffington Post, 18 May 2021, https://www.huffpost.com/entry/district-attorney-police-killing-andrew-brown-jr_n_60a3d863e4b014bd0cb1580a Accessed 21 May 2021
Postman, Neil. Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business,
Penguin, 2005.
Richardson, Allissa, int. Dahlia Lithwick. “The Verdict, the Video, and the Unreasonable Burden of Proof.” Amicus (podcast), 24 April 2021, https://slate.com/podcasts/amicus/2021/04/cost-of-bearing-witness-while-black Accessed 25 April 2021
Rashomon. Directed by Akira Kurosawa, Daiei Film, 1950.
Staples, Brent. “Just Walk on by: A Black Man Ponders His Power to Alter Public Space.” Literary Cavalcade, vol. 50, no. 5, Feb. 1998, p. 38. EBSCOhost, search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=aph&AN=959581&site=ehost-live&scope=site. Accessed 26 April 2021