Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of figures
- List of tables
- Acknowledgments
- Introduction: Knowing O.J.
- Part I Theory
- Part II News construction
- Part III Audience reception
- Part IV Conclusions
- 9 O.J. and reality
- Appendix 1 Page-one narratives, Los Angeles Times, January 25–October 4, 1995
- Appendix 2 Page-one O.J. narratives, Los Angeles Sentinel, January 25–October 5, 1995
- Appendix 3 Emerging discussion themes, by group, March 30, 1995
- Appendix 4 Emerging discussion themes, by group, August 1, 1995
- Appendix 5 Transcript of Primetime text
- Appendix 6 Transcript of KTLA text
- Appendix 7 Logistic regression of perceptions about Simpson's innocence or guilt on race, gender, education, family income, interviewer race, and perceptions of criminal justice system bias
- Notes
- References
- Index
9 - O.J. and reality
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 22 September 2009
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of figures
- List of tables
- Acknowledgments
- Introduction: Knowing O.J.
- Part I Theory
- Part II News construction
- Part III Audience reception
- Part IV Conclusions
- 9 O.J. and reality
- Appendix 1 Page-one narratives, Los Angeles Times, January 25–October 4, 1995
- Appendix 2 Page-one O.J. narratives, Los Angeles Sentinel, January 25–October 5, 1995
- Appendix 3 Emerging discussion themes, by group, March 30, 1995
- Appendix 4 Emerging discussion themes, by group, August 1, 1995
- Appendix 5 Transcript of Primetime text
- Appendix 6 Transcript of KTLA text
- Appendix 7 Logistic regression of perceptions about Simpson's innocence or guilt on race, gender, education, family income, interviewer race, and perceptions of criminal justice system bias
- Notes
- References
- Index
Summary
What we refer to as “reality” is really a maplike mental image, the end product of a process that begins with light refraction in the environment and ends in the intricate and complex dynamics of the mind.
(Seward Barry 1997, p. 15)The “reality” we see is rich with narrative possibilities. For example, I find it strangely apropos that Simpson's slow-speed waltz with the law, which was greeted by cheering crowds along the Interstate 405, featured the distraught celebrity stretched out in the back of a white Ford Bronco, while his somber return to taunts and jeers outside a Santa Monica courthouse, to judgment day, found him sitting in the front of a black Chevrolet Suburban. Black. White. My mind – because it is shaped by particular concerns and kinds of knowledge – could use these contrasting images to construct an O.J. narrative that is quite different from yours.
This realization, of course, is the point. For I have argued throughout this book that the Simpson case involved much more than just the murder of two individuals, a police investigation, and the subsequent legal proceedings. Guilty or innocent, Orenthal James Simpson became the focal point of a first-order media event, a societal-wide celebration and contestation of dominant knowledge about reality. In chapter 1, you will recall, I proposed a theoretical model that outlined the process by which the case inflamed public passions and became known as the “Trial of the Century.”
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- O. J. Simpson Facts and FictionsNews Rituals in the Construction of Reality, pp. 249 - 274Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 1999