Killing with Power
The media source that I chose to watch is an American Crime Story: The people vs. O.J Simpson. This fits into this post of class and crime excellent because O.J was one of the most well know people in the world. He won the Heisman which is an award that goes to the best college football player and when he got to the NFL he was the first running back to rush for 2,000 yards , he won NFL MVP , Broadcaster , and he was an actor. Now retired he’s on trial for the murder of his ex wife Nicole Brown and her friend Ron Goldman. The producers of the media source that I chose is Scott Alexander and Larry Karaszewski , the release date is February 2 2016. It is a limited series with 10 episodes that takes you inside the O.J Simpson trial with real actors portraying the real life events that happened during that time that you may not even know about.
(https://www.netflix.com/title/80083977)
This series does a great job of showing how even the most famous , rich well known people can be involved in some of the most wicked evil thing like murder and how sometimes you may think you can get away with anything because of the high class structure you got in the world or Another way to look at it is people may wanted O.J locked up because he was black successful man that was accused of murdering his white ex wife and her white friend. This ties into the reading we had the first week of class called The Concept of Social Structure in Sociology (Crossman 2019). In one part of that reading it was saying how usually in the social structure in the US very few people have power and they tend to be white and male and OJ was black and male and that may had led to systematic racism. What I mean by that is that when they first found that Nicole Brown was murdered along wither friend they automatically thought it was O.J and charged him. One of the famous faces of this trial was the face of Johnnie Cochran he is one of the most well known lawyers and is a civil activist. So he even played with the high class wealthy black man card which is seen in episode five of the series. Cochran speaks to the judge and jury and delivers a fiery and real moving rebuttal about and how the jury might perceive O.J or any other black men and what words we cant handle like if someone call us the N word. This heavily ties into our week 2 power point ( race and class as social constructs). That ties into that episode because in one the pages of slide the title is “our location in social structure impact our perceptions of and interaction with the criminal justice system”. That is so true because if you are black in the social structure your interaction and perceptions with the criminal justice system can be horrible sometimes don’t matter if you are a wealthy black male or not and like Cochran way saying they ca have these perceptions of us that is just not true at all. Now to change the tone up a little bit if you know the O.J Simpson trial you know that he was found not guilty of the double murders. I f he was a regular dude and not one of the most famous people of the world at that time would he have gotten away with leading the police on a low speed way chase on the high for that long without getting hurt by the police and would he have even gotten away with the double murder if he was a normal black guy or even normal white guy. So with him being ranked high in the social class structure that led to so much media attention that the judge called it a circus that might’ve helped him get away with it. Also with his wealth he was able to hire a all start team worth a defense attorney’s to defend him. That team consisted of multiple high case lawyers that have one big time cases for celebrities and again they was known for winning and with O.J high social class rank every big time lawyer wanted to take this case
Watching this series it was really interesting watching the two aspects of high social class which is race and wealth and power. To be honest it really open my eyes up more to there is levels to certain stuff and if you have a high social status you can certain things even things like murder and you can get out of by hire high profile lawyers and just by being a certain somebody. With this being based on real life events you can tell this is not made up and this happens a lot with real famous people getting away with stuff.
References
Crossman, A (2019)- The Concept of Social Structure in Sociology
Power Point (Week 2)- Race and Class as Social Constructs
November 24, 2020 @ 1:00 am
I agree with your post. It was very informative. OJ was a rich and powerful man and fortunately for him it worked in his favor. However, situations like the OJ trial shows the downsides of victims not getting any justice. The amount of evidence against it was very obvious however his wealth was able to help him reject his consequences of his horrible behavior. I also liked how you were able to connect it back to our class powerpoint.
December 8, 2020 @ 3:00 pm
the OJ simpson case is always a case found very interesting. it really goes to show that with enough money and fame you can really get away with anything. you have so many other celebrities who attack and even murder people nd they are just able to pay off whoever they need and walk freely. if you ask me celebrities should be held to a much higher standard because they are the people the world looks up to
December 9, 2020 @ 12:31 am
This post is a great example of wealth, power, and status that play a role in CJS. OJ was such a huge influence to people around the world and this trial made him infamous. I think this also showcases that even if you are black in a court system setting it is evident that you may not even win. There will always be some level of bias that affects the true results of the court case.