Assignment #2:
O.J. Simpson and the Trial of America
Semiotic Analysis of Verdict Article
Assignment #2: Semiotic Analysis of Verdict Article
Part One:
Article Citations (MLA Format) (Not included in this version)
Alter, Jonathan. “White and Blue.” Newsweek 16 October 1995: 66+.
I decided to use Jonathan Alter’s article, “White and Blue,” for my semiotic
analysis because it clearly illustrates examples of both “Narratives” and “Political
Projects” as defined by Darnell Hunt in his book, O.J. Simpson Facts & Fictions:
New Rituals in the Construction of Reality (Cambridge University Press, 1999). As
elaborated on below, “White and Blue” specifically supplies a Narrative example of
“Incompetence,” and Political Project examples of “Black Other,” “Domestic
Violence” and “Celebrity Defendant.” I found these Narratives and Political
Projects to be the most intriguing, so I stuck with analyzing this article. Plus,
Alter’s “White and Blue” was rich in semiotic meaning, so that made it a sensible
choice.
Part Two A:
Narratives
Alter’s article, “White and Blue,” primarily uses Hunt’s Narrative of
“Incompetence.” Throughout the article, Alter makes it abundantly clear to the
reader that O.J. Simpson’s jury was incompetent. He doesn’t need to say the word
explicitly, his analysis of the jury’s reasoning makes his opinion crystal clear,
“…anyone who closely followed the trial would have to acknowledge that the jury
seemed in deep denial about many prosecution arguments.” Later, Alter uses
quantitative information to further his evidence of the jury’s incompetence, Alter
goes on to point out that, “…the jurors talked about the case with each other for a
far shorter time than the 100 million other Americans talked about it with each
other.” Here, Alter is attempting to prove to his audience that since the
supposedly did not spend as much time as the rest of America analyzing the
arguments of the case, clearly their verdict is the result of incompetence.
Alter mainly focuses on the incompetence of the jury, but he also mentions
the mistake made by the prosecution that led to his appraisal of their
incompetence in trying Simpson’s case. To prove his point, Alter mentions the
infamous Mark Fuhrman, corrupt cop of the LAPD, “Yes, Fuhrman is vermin, and
the prosecution should never have tried to prop him up.” Here, Alter suggesting
that using Fuhrman as a witness was an obviously damaging move exemplifying
the prosecution’s incompetence.
Part Two B:
Political Projects
Alter’s support of Hunt’s Incompetence Narrative directly ties in with his
usage of Hunt’s “Black Other” Political Project. As the title of his article suggests,
Alter is writing “White and Blue” from the perspective of a white man. In fact, the
article is regarding the white reaction to the black reaction of the Simpson non-
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guilty verdict. Alter clearly comes across as in support of the “Black Other”
Political Project with remarks such as, “We (whites) expected more blacks to look
beyond race to facts, as thousands of whites had during the Rodney King trial.
When so many blacks didn’t, it shocked us—and hardened us in ways that
shocked us even more” (Parentheses mine). Not only does this example serve as
evidence of Alter’s obvious belief that blacks are completely different from, and
“shocking” to, whites, it also reiterates Alter’s ideology of jury Incompetence. He is
trying to prove that black people, though “by no means all, it’s important to note”
as he ineffectively asserts earlier, are not like white people because they “do not
look beyond race to facts.” Embracing this reasoning, it would follow that ignoring
facts would make black people incompetent jurors. Alter also debunks the
Narrative of Conspiracy to further examine the notion of “Black Other,” “So why
the white rage? The flash point was less the non-guilty verdict itself than the
continued (black) insistence that the man is genuinely innocent. When you repeat
a lie long enough and loud enough it lives. To have framed Simpson, the level of
conspiracy required by detectives other than Mark Fuhrman is virtually impossible
logistically…” (Parentheses mine). This statement further perpetrates the “Black
Other” ideology by assuming that all white people thought Simpson was guilty,
and are thus righteously enraged by the fact that all black people believe a
ridiculous conspiracy theory.
Towards the end of the article, Alter briefly raises the issues of the
“Celebrity Defendant” and “Domestic Violence” Political Projects. He writes, “…the
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basic white frustration remains: that race trumps spousal abuse, factual
consistency and just about anything else. As early as the first poles, the Simpson
case was perceived as racial—and perceptions became reality. But the truer
subtext was always about money and celebrity and the sale of “reasonable doubt”
to any defendant who can afford to plant it.” Thus, Alter concludes that the real
reason Simpson was acquitted, despite being a spouse abuser, was the fact that he
was rich and famous. However, interestingly enough, this Political Project only
gets a paragraph’s worth of attention, while racial issues dominate the entire
article. It seems that Alter is using the “Celebrity Defendant” and “Domestic
Violence” Political Projects to reinforce his strong belief in the “Incompetence”
Narrative and “Black Other” Political Project.” For him, it is clear that whites are
angry because blacks brought race into the issue, thus taking away from the simple
analysis: O.J. Simpson got off because he is a celebrity. Based on the rest of Alter’s
article, his final argument is not very convincing.
*I realize I overlapped Narratives and Political Projects a great deal in Part Two B,
but they were so intricately tied together that it was hard not to.
Part Three A:
Personal Subject Position
I am a white, heterosexual, agnostic, formerly clinically depressed, 21 year
old female college student with back problems, born in Palmer, Alaska, but raised
in Seattle, Washington by my working class single mother who somehow managed
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to put my two brothers and I through private education. Thus, most of friends
come from upper middle to upper class two-parent households and attend schools
such as Yale and Boston College. This discrepancy between my upbringing and my
peers’ has caused me to always try to see all sides to an issue because even though I
was accepted by my friends, I always felt different from them. My friends went to
private school because attending college was a must. I attended private school
because my mom wanted me to have good influences. My going to college was a
pleasant surprise. Since I always felt like an outsider, I tend to sympathize with
others who feel the same way. I began college resenting the fact that I had to pay
my own tuition while my friends don’t even think about it. Because of these
experiences, and many more, I am passionate about social change. I am keenly
aware of the inequality in opportunities between classes and races. Consequently,
I am a cynical radical liberal. If it benefits our society, especially those who are
underrepresented, I am all for it. My biases include, but are not limited to: Our
political leaders are dishonest and corrupt, most people (particularly Americans)
are greedy, and people fear change and differences, if you’re not part of the
solution, then you’re part of the problem. Oh yeah, despite my cynicism, I’m
awfully idealistic. I am currently somewhat out of the loop because I no longer
have cable and I used to get my news from the Daily Show.
Part Three B:
Semiotic Analysis
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As I began reading Alter’s “White and Blue,” I had to laugh out loud. The
first paragraph immediately alerted me to the fact that I had struck semiotic gold.
Alter being by stating,
“I felt whiter last week than I have ever felt before, and I didn’t like it.
Sometimes feeling self-consciously white can be uncomfortable but
illuminating; for instance, I understand the value of those times when I’ve
been the only white person in a room or neighborhood.”
From this point on, it became clear to me that Alter was an author that I would not
agree with. For Alter, the above statement shows his compassion for blacks. He is
not racist. He understands how it must feel to be different. However, what his
statement clarifies for me is how ignorant he truly is. Being able to turn feelings of
difference into an “illuminating” experience is a privilege of white people. Sure,
every once in a while Alter feels out of place. But what he doesn’t realize is that
black Americans deal with this reality on a daily basis.
Later, in the same paragraph, Alter jumps into the issue at hand, whites,
Alter included, are angry at the black reaction to the Simpson acquittal. Alter puts
it best when he writes,
“…I was plenty upset all the same, especially at the jubilation that many
blacks (by no means all, it’s important to note) expressed after O.J. walked.
And I don’t buy the argument that it’s socially useful to learn just how
divided we are on race. I wish we’d left that scab unpicked.”
For me, that is a loaded statement. First of all, he is plowing straight ahead
into he territory of Hunt’s “Black Other” Political Project. He is saying that
all white people are angry at the reaction of many, “but not all, ” black
people. Thus, according to Alter, all white people think Simpson is guilty.
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But, “it is important to note” that not all black people think Simpson is
innocent. It is as though, in Alter’s mind, assuming that all blacks think
Simpson is innocent would be an insult. Why? Because it is stupid to
believe that Simpson is innocent. According to Alter, most blacks believe
something stupid. However, claiming that all blacks believe that would be
racist, so he throws in the token “but not all.”
In the last half of his statement, Alter shifts gears. He declares that
discussing racial divisions in our country is something he doesn’t want to
deal with. As he says, it’s not “socially useful.” This assertion goes hand in
hand with his later claim that the Simpson trial was not inherently about
race,
“The truer subtext was always about money and celebrity and the
sale of “reasonable doubt…if the same case had been brought against
a defendant who wasn’t rich and famous, it wouldn’t matter whether
he -or the jury- was black or white. He’d be on death row.”
Despite the majority of the article discussing the differences between white
and black reactions, Alter attempts to convince his reader that the real issue
at hand is, as Hunt would call it, the “Celebrity Defendant” Political Project.
However, I was not convinced. It seemed to me that Alter was using
the “Celebrity Defendant” ideology to push something more insidious, the
“Incompetence” Narrative. Throughout the article, Alter emphasizes how
the jury ignored “voluminous unrefuted blood and motive evidence…” and
that this was “unreasonable.” Alter does not truly believe that Simpson was
acquitted because he was a celebrity. Alter believes Simpson was acquitted
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because the jury was incompetent. Furthermore, he believed the jury was
incompetent because it was predominantly made up of the “Black Other”
and thus, operating under a completely different mind frame than
reasonable whites. I would argue that Alter believes Simpson was acquitted
not only because he is a celebrity, but also because he is a black celebrity.
Sample Excellent Response to Assignment #2, Parts 3 A & B
For the article “The Bitter Legacy of O.J.” US News and World Report (discussed in
class)
A. I am a Vietnamese American male born and raised in the same city, Lynnwood,
and still living there. Socially, I tend to have mainly other Vietnamese friends
because I am close to my family and church, a Vietnamese Christian church. With
a mainly, but not all, Vietnamese/Asian social group, I tend to pay attention to
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race, but I’m not a person that believes people have a radar on me because of my
race like my parents because I was raised in the United States and have lived in an
area that accepts all races and is fairly peaceful in that area. However, I can
sometimes be w ry that people judge me on my race. I do have a cousin who lives
in Tacoma and is a member of a gang (although he says its mostly to protect each
other and isn't involved in crime), and he feels that the police hassle him because
of his race. I'm wary of his claims of innocence, but I do know that if you are
Vietnamese and "fit the profile," you will be hassled by the police. Since I don't
dress or act in a certain way, however, I haven't experienced that problem. Being a
dedicated Christian, many of my views tend to be more conservative in view, but
I’m in no way an extreme conservative. My parents have a very strong relationship
and almost never fight; I've never known anyone in my community to be a victim
of domestic violence, although it may be happening without my knowing it. I tend
to think of it happening to "other" cultures.
B.
When I first read the editorial in US News and World Report, I had a mixed
reaction. On one hand, I agreed with his points about the mistake made by the
jury, and the inappropriateness of the black people who were celebrating about the
verdict. I associated the comparison of "9 months of complex and detailed
evidence" and four hours of deliberation with lack of caring, and even a lack of
intelligence. I pretty easily slipped into agreement with the "Black Other project"
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when it came to relating the incompetence of the jury with what seemed to me the
callousness of the blacks who were celebrating. When the article discussed
Simpson as a wife beater and someone who wasn't part of the Civil Rights
movement, my association was to see him as a part of a culture I didn't
understand, one that thought wife beating was OK and that supported a guy who
had turned his back on his community. My own community is pretty tight, and
this didn't seem like rational behavior, again supporting the "black Other" project.
I also tended to be pretty negative towards the jury, and black juries in
general, when the editorial discussed the problem of black crime and juries that let
black defendants go free. The statistic that 1 in 3 black men go to jail seemed
extraordinary, and suggested to me that something was wrong in their community,
although I wasn't at all willing to think that black people in general were morally
depraved. But I was struck that the same rate of black men going to jail was the
same as the rate of black defendants being set free. The connotative meaning for
me was that blacks were unwilling to send even more black men to jail, and that
this furthered the "black Other project" in my mind. On further reflection, I
realize I don't actually know if the Bronx juries were all or mostly black, and if the
acquittals had something to do with police or prosecutor's incompetence, but that
didn't come to mind until I started studying the piece more closely.
On the other hand, there were parts of the editorial that I didn't agree with
or made me reread a few times to see if I was misunderstanding it. The discussion
about "six out of 10 white Americans" feeling they were watching a different trial
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was insulting to me. Why did the writer only care about whites? Did Americans
who were neither white nor black not agree with these whites, so the statistics
wouldn't work out so well? The phrase "white Americans" and "black Americans"
was particularly annoying to me. It seemed to suggest that only these two groups
"counted" as Americans, something I've seen in other discussions of race, including
at UW Bothell. I think I feel this especially because I am a second generation
immigrant, and I sometimes get people asking me "where were you born," even
though I was born in Lynnwood and speak perfect English! So the ideology I
connected with here was not so much "black Other" but "black/white Other"—
seeing these two groups as part of a conversation I was being kept out of.
I was also disturbed by the way the editorial handled the material on the
police. While I don't think that the police could have framed Simpson with all that
evidence, I know that some police officers, especially in big cities, can act illegally.
I think the phrase "To most whites, Mark Fuhrman was an odious freak" was
particularly troublesome. The connotative meaning of that phrase connected with
the idea that white people were pretty sheltered about problems concerning race.
And since it left someone like me out of the picture (my "black/white Other"
ideology), I was more willing to consider whether there were more problem
officers in the LAPD. Because of Rodney King and movies like Training Day, I tend
to be more suspicious of them. The ideological meaning of this phrase for me
helped reinforce my feeling that while the system basically works, there are also
times when there are problems, and white people shouldn't be so willing to shove
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them under the carpet. I concluded that both blacks and whites were responsible
for the problems in the justice system, and that both needed to be more honest
about the sources of those problems.
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