ABSTRACT
In the early 1990s, Rudolf Arnheim published his article “The Two Authenticities of the Photographic Media” as a response, of sorts, to the Rodney King trial.1 Many people-intellectuals, laypeople, and rioters alike-were aghast that four Los Angeles police officers could have been acquitted of using excessive force when videotape documenting the seeming brutality was exhibited extensively during the trial. The footage came from George Holliday, who was able to film the beating on his Sony Handycam because he just happened to be awakened at the incident’s precise time (a little after midnight on 3 March 1991) and exact place (on a balcony from across the street).2 Holliday’s presence with his camera at the profilmic event and his arguable status as an unbiased third party made the trial more than just a case of King’s word versus the word of four policemen. Moreover, the very content of the footage seemed to guarantee the lopsidedness of the violence. In the video, King was shown being continually beaten after he was already incapacitated and writhing on the ground, something that perhaps neither testimony nor medical records alone would be able to prove as overtly. When the officers’ acquittal was
handed down from the jury, among the many complaints were cries that the defense had manipulated the content of the footage through the form of its presentation. For example, in an Op-Ed piece for The New York Times, psychology professor Patricia Greenfield and aikido expert Paul Kibbey together claimed that the video footage in the trial was often “distorted or misused.”3 They argued that the defense’s screening of the footage via slow motion and still images mitigated the forcefulness-and even changed the nature-of the content itself, so that the beating looked “less real and more fantastic.”4
