Tragedy Plus Time by Philip Scepanski

Author:Philip Scepanski
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: University of Texas Press
Published: 2021-07-15T00:00:00+00:00

Victimhood mocked on In Living Color.

The first post-riots In Living Color episode surprised with its rejection of network television’s sentimentality and its general refusal to participate in the orthodox scripts of binarist good/bad constructions expected of African American and other television programming of the period. However, later in the season after other shows largely forgot about the riots and their immediate causes, In Living Color returned to these issues as the trial over whether police had violated King’s civil rights got under way. A February 1993 sketch depicts Stacey Koon, the ranking officer at the scene of the King beating, as a racist cop guilty of abusing his power.36 In that sense, it presents a clear, expected critique of the most notable symbol of police abuse, though in a literal sense it shows Koon as a lone bad actor. However, the second sketch to explicitly critique Koon takes a systemic view of the problem, imagining a police academy training session led by the sergeant wherein he demonstrates technique by sadistically beating, macing, biting, and choking his recruits.37 Even more significant than training police to abuse their power, however, is the way that this sketch implicates viewers in their role as witnesses through mass media.

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