The Making of O.J. Simpson: Made in America | Ezra Edelman | Big Think

The Making of O.J. Simpson: Made in America

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How someone views O.J. Simpson depends on who they are, where they come from, and their perspective on race, justice, power, and the media. These elements came together in what can only be called "the trial of the century" when Simpson was tried for committing the double murder of Nicole Brown and Ronald Goldman. The television broadcast of a low-speed chase of Simpson's Ford Bronco, and the dramatic fitting of the bloody gloves found at the scene, remain seared in the collective memory.

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EZRA EDELMAN :

Ezra Edelman is the son of children's rights activist Marian Wright Edelman and Georgetown University law professor Peter B. Edelman. He has two brothers, Joshua, an educational administrator, and Jonah, co-founder and CEO of Stand for Children. Edelman graduated from Sidwell Friends School in Washington D.C. before going on to acquire his baccalaureate from Yale University. He is best known as the director of the 2010 HBO Sports documentary Magic & Bird: A Courtship of Rivals, and the Emmy Award-winning Brooklyn Dodgers: Ghosts of Flatbush. He did a special on the former Big East Conference called Requiem for the Big East. Edelman also wrote and directed the 2016 five-part documentary series, O.J. Simpson: Made in America for ESPN's 30 for 30.

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TRANSCRIPT:

Ezra Edelman:  In some ways when you look at the tale of O.J. Simpson it goes well beyond O.J. Simpson. And it really is a conversation and a story that involves everything in our culture – race, celebrity, power, masculinity, the criminal justice system, the media. Like it goes on and on and on and on. And I think people respond to this story specifically in terms of who they are and where they come from - black, white, young, old, male, female. There’s something in this film that will personally speak to you.

O..J.’s drive I think was very simple. He says it plainly in an interview that’s in the first hour of the documentary. He said when I walk down the street I want people to know me. He had an ambition to be famous from the time he was young. He didn’t an ambition to be the greatest football player ever. He didn’t have an ambition to be rich. He had an ambition to be famous. Now what that means in some ways is O.J. had also an ambition to be loved and loved by everybody. And I think it informs this story in a very powerful way because it speaks to how all of us were seduced by him. And the image that we saw on the screen both frankly as a football player not just because he was wildly successful but that he was so graceful on the football field. So beautiful in a way that when we’re watching as a viewer, as a fan he brought us pleasure. And so we’re connected to this guy even though he’s just an image on the screen. And the same goes for him when we saw him running through the airport in Hertz commercials. I as a young kid adopted that when I was in the airport and I would try to be like see people in front of me I would try to avoid people and run around them like I was O.J. running through the airport.

And so there’s this thing that we feel like we know this person, that we feel connected to this person. And it informs so much of why we were so shocked and it was incomprehensible that someone like that could stand accused of murder when we enjoyed such – and it wasn’t just by the way because oh, he’s a good guy. He’s the guy I knew down the street for me. It’s that he brought us so much pleasure and the celebrity aspect to me is well that helps explain culturally a level of complicitness that we all have in building him into what we built him into. And so it shouldn’t be shocking that we were all sort of taken aback and we all were so emotionally invested in this thing in 1994 and 95 because it was so much more than just about O.J. Simpson and whether or not he was a murderer.

What I already brought to this story as far as my personal knowledge, my knowledge of O.J. as a football player. My knowledge for instance of him going to USC from the projects of Potrero Hill and knowing where USC was geographically located next to Watts. I came to it with a notion of okay, what I knew is that O.J. is this guy who notoriously tried to distance himself from his blackness. O.J. was put on trial I 1994 and he became a referendum on race in America.

He was as a defendant sort of race was primarily used to help acquit him. How do I get from here to there? That’s the irony in...

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