An oversized white t-shirt worn for bed; lots of AAA maps of California; red Sharpies; neon yellow highlighters. My dad wears holey gray sweats, a casual summertime uniform people in their 30s can still get away with. My mom is anxious, always anxious. The house buzzes with energy. Usual bedtime rituals are not adhered to. I remember light coming in from the windows in our Ridgefield, Connecticut, rental, but facts I know today tell me this couldn’t have been possible.
The chaotic excitement stands out most. We had recently left Buffalo, New York, where my parents enjoyed four years of losing Super Bowls and fundraiser events featuring OJ and Nicole. There’s no way! They tensely exclaim at each other, pouring Scotch, clutching the maps. The maps: I remember how they smell and the creases in them and how critical it is we not step on them so we don’t lose track of where OJ is going. Even as a child, I could sense something big was happening— something important to all of us.
Memory is uniquely imperfect. What we remember, and how we remember, are largely influenced by our emotions at the time of the event. Nobody remembers anything with absolute accuracy. The grandiosity, the largesse, the overwhelming significance of the event faded away, as time dictates.
Last April 95 million Americans again stopped to enjoy the downfall of another man. The circumstances surrounding the Boston Marathon Bombing and its aftermath were very different from those surrounding OJ, but our reactions to them were not. And as the media zeroed in on that Watertown, Massachusetts, boat, and we realized we got our guy (such heroes, we are), all I could wonder was what the young 19-year old must have been feeling the last few days in that boat.
It made me think of OJ, who survived another pressure cooker, with the same 65 million Americans, so many years earlier. To be clear: I don’t doubt OJ is responsible for the unforgivably heinous murders of his ex-wife and her friend. But OJ did not suddenly become the person who snapped the night of June 12, 1994. The events of his life—like the events of anyone’s life—did not exist in a vacuum, and our role in his life story is notable.
What must OJ remember about that afternoon in Los Angeles? Could he feel 65 million Americans tuned in to watch the Juice on the loose? His mind must have been racing; we know he was at least vaguely suicidal. Was he negotiating with a higher power, willing against all reason to move back in time so he could retrace his steps? Does he have panic attacks? Did he have panic attacks? Who was he most angry at? Was he honest with himself about what had happened? Did he know the upward trajectory of his life had reached its peak? Could he sense that he was losing us? That it was all crashing down around him? Was his entire past sitting next to him in that Bronco, mocking him?
Or is he just a sociopath? Was he only angry at the thought of spending the rest of his life in jail for double homicide after everything he had accomplished? OJ does have agency, and OJ is responsible for his actions. But why were we so quick to celebrate his downfall? The murders of Nicole Brown and Ron Goldman didn’t affect our lives directly; why were we so insistent on taking part?
In considering the experiences of OJ Simpson and Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, it is clear our national addiction to extreme people-watching says more about us than about these individuals and their actions. We, modern day, post-Empire Americans, are so tightly wound that it doesn’t take much to trigger the WASPy emotional projection our nation was founded on. We are dedicated to our roles as spectators, because they protect us from the realities of our own pressure cookers.
When we are emotionally distant from emotional events (murder, acts of terror), it chips away at our ability to empathize as individuals in our private lives, which makes us all collateral damage. We don’t ask the questions about what it must have been like to be OJ that day because it’s easier not to— and because for most of white America, what happened to OJ that afternoon was just the inevitable conclusion of another black man’s life.
Maybe they’ll take a few pit stops in athletic heroism, but at the end of the day, they’re just another threat— no matter how beloved they become by corporate sponsors. The trappings of white patriarchal fame didn’t help the foundation that had been laid for OJ: when you’re America’s football hero, after all, you can do no wrong. OJ had to reconcile two worlds: a world that shaped his personality and ability to problem-solve, and a world that told him, keep running, OJ, and you can do whatever you want.
OJ sold us shoes long before Michael Jordan, but quickly and deftly, we replace one black hero with another. OJ filled our diversity quota until he didn’t, and we moved on. We were disappointed because we felt he squandered a gift we gave him, and we never stopped to consider the economics of that transaction. When we become too afraid to consider what makes us who we are as individuals, we all become complicit in the system.
We so frequently take for granted the power Los Angeles and the media have, and we fool ourselves into believing we are cogs of a brave new world – we’re the good guys. We’ve got Clooney, and Clinton; they have O’Reilly, and Bush. But we’re no better than any Republican in Washington if we continue to play a leadership role in a system that only serves to create OJs and Dzhokhars across the spectrum of success. We express outrage and disgust that the Kardashians command international star power and primetime headlines, as though we had no part in the creation of the modern world.
I was ten years old when OJ took the precarious course of his life completely over the edge. But I am no less responsible for the world I operate in that allows OJ to happen over and over and over. We should try to understand the life experience of OJ Simpson, because what happened to him isn’t fair (or what happened to the people whose lives he directly affected), and it isn’t fair that the bedrock of our society is dependent on suffering. We should try to understand because with empathy comes breakthrough.
What does it take for the media to admit that we are missing our potential by 100 yards? For our culture to demand we do better? How many beautifully slaughtered people does it take before we realize that we live in a fractured society, unequal, and dispassionate?
And what does it take for us to care?
THE OJ EXPERIENCE is a one-day exhibit at Solar Studios in Glendale, California, running from 2 PM to 10 PM on Tuesday, June 17, 2014. For details, please visit: june17twothousand14.tumblr.com
