O.J. Simpson Is Dead. To Understand His Life, Watch These Two Shows

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O.J. Simpson, who died this week at the age of 76, was a pop-cultural fixture long before he became America's most infamous alleged murderer. But in 2016, more than two decades after his acquittal, Simpson and the story of his rise and fall were once again at the center of the conversation, thanks to two remarkable television shows—a five-part ESPN documentary, O.J.: Made in America, directed by Ezra Edelman, and a dramatic miniseries, Scott Alexander and Larry Karaszewski's The People Vs. O.J. Simpson. Made in America was a sprawling, kaleidoscopic, relevatory meditation on race, class, fame, and American justice, an early-21st-century television event as significant as the Sopranos finale it shared a title with; The People Vs.—executive-produced by Ryan Murphy, with Cuba Gooding Jr. as O.J., David Schwimmer as a hapless Robert Kardashian, and John Travolta as a wildly meme-able Robert Shapiro—was significantly pulpier, but in its camp-edged hyperrealness it captured the wild emotional energy the real-life O.J. trial threw off.

As a news event, the O.J. saga changed modern media forever; among other things, it ushered in the age of televised police chases and gavel-to-gavel court coverage as entertainment. But looking back, Made in America and People Vs. were also the beginning of something—the age of pop history going where journalism couldn't, reckoning with injustices often abetted by a feckless media. We've spent the ensuing decade-and-counting relitigating the tabloid 1990s through docudrama, putting a 21st-century lens informed by #MeToo and Black Lives Matter on recent history and questioning the conventional wisdom around everything from the life and death of Princess Diana (The Crown, Spencer), the Clinton/Lewinsky affair and the murder of Gianna Versace (Murphy's own Impeachment: American Crime Story and The Assassination of Gianna Versace: American Crime Story), the Pamela Anderson sex-tape scandal (Pam & Tommy), the Lorena Bobbitt case (Lorena), the public struggles of Britney Spears (Framing Britney Spears) and the Sinead O'Connor/SNL controversy (Nothing Compares).

Both shows are available to stream from various outlets; if you want to understand not just O.J. or his trial but the country in which it unfolded, they're both essential. In the meantime, revisit some of GQ's coverage of these television landmarks at the links below.

Why American Crime Story Is Essential Viewing in the Time of #BlackLivesMatter

In this 2016 Q&A with GQ's Joshua Rivera, the actor Courtney B. Vance, who played defense attorney Johnnie Cochran on The People Vs. O.J. Simpson, reflected on the historical significance of the trial, its relevance to the age of #BlackLivesMatter, and Cochran's folk-hero status in the Black community. “Johnnie understood the nature of what the case was about,” Vance said. "He saw the larger vision. From the very beginning—he didn't need a jury consultant to tell him this case was about race, and race alone. He cut his teeth on cases like this, like Leonard Detweiler, whose only crime was driving while black ... Johnnie, that's how he began his journey with police brutality cases, knowing that the deck was stacked. And that's what African Americans knew, that the deck was stacked.

“So knowing that going in, we were anticipating the deck being stacked. When you go into a trial, black lives don't matter, and we were going to end up holding the short end of the stick. So when we looked at our hand and we saw we were holding the long end, we were in shock and that's why we screamed. When you understand the history, you understand that African Americans by and large were not cheering for O.J. Simpson, because O.J. Simpson admittedly said he wasn't black. And even if you didn't hear him say it, you saw his life.  Once he left USC and went pro he never looked back, or he never looked black. So we knew the cheering was for Johnnie Cochran, and how he worked the system in our favor, in the biggest case in history in terms of legalese. And we cheered him for his acumen.”

Why Sarah Paulson Can Finally Watch The People v. O. J. Simpson

Vance won an Emmy for his work on People Vs., and so did Sarah Paulson, who played Cochran's adversary, prosecutor Marcia Clark. In November 2016, just before that year's awards ceremony, Paulson spoke to GQ's Caity Weaver about the role and how sexism may have impacted the outcome of the O.J. trial. “Women, collectively, I feel, were very anti-Marcia," Paulson said. "No one wanted to be that kind of woman because that kind of woman is perceived to not be liked by men, or desired by men, or wanted by men. So therefore we wanted to not be that way. Which I think is such a shame. Because if there’s anyone in the world I could be like, it would be like Marcia Clark.”

ESPN’s New O.J. Doc Has Images That You Can Never Unsee

A few months later, Drew Magary wrote about the gruesome crime-scene photographs brought to light in Edelman's O.J.: Made in America, and praised the documentary for actually living up to the promise of what could have been a boilerplate subtitle.

“It’s about O.J. making himself into a football superstar,” Magary wrote, "and then remaking himself into a TV icon—a fully calculated career trajectory that is common now for the likes of LeBron James but was unprecedented back in Simpson’s time. It’s about how Simpson, a black man, made himself into a member of ‘white’ society, and how white society likewise made him into one of them (indeed, the series posits that Simpson’s fall from grace was really a fall from whiteness). It’s about a murder case that Simpson’s defense team wisely made into a referendum on the Los Angeles Police Department and its history of racism, brutality, and sloppiness.

“It’s about the black community making Simpson into a civil rights martyr because he had such a great chance to win, and because you take what you can get, even if it means forcing yourself to cheer for a guy who may be the worst possible face of the cause. It’s about Simpson becoming suicidal after the murders and then refashioning himself into an unrepentant, dishonest, conscience-free villain in order to survive his breakdown, win his trial, and continue his lifelong pursuit of pleasure. It’s about television taking scraps of tragedy and making them into a valuable commodity, to the point of farce. And in every one of these instances, the series is about how people and institutions can reinvent themselves so fully that whatever was there originally is either lost or left to rot.”

The Trickiest Part of Making ESPN's O.J.: Made in America

And in this Q&A with Scott Meslow, published a little over a week later, Made in America producer Caroline Waterlow reflected on the reaction to the documentary and its resonance for contemporary viewers. “I find it fascinating that we just forget,” Waterlow told GQ. " A little bit of time goes by, and you have generations of people who don't know these things. You don't necessarily learn recent history in school. I'm amazed that 25-year-olds will watch this and say, "God, I didn't even understand why the trial was a big deal." They know it's this thing, and he's this person, but they don’t know the level of media penetration he had. People know about Rodney King, but there's a whole list of examples leading up to that. I’m always kind of stunned that you think these things are done—and then you realize they keep repeating over time."

Originally Appeared on GQ