I feel like I need to start by saying that this is some controversial subject matter. People have differing opinions on the guilt or innocence of the “Central Park 5”, and those opinions don’t even necessarily correlate to opinions as to whether law enforcement treated them fairly or not. There are extremes cases in the world where controversial issues shouldn’t be controversial at all in the first place and I oppose giving anti-vaxxers or climate change deniers any sort of forum. However, in general, I try to look at both sides of an issue.
To that end, I will share this riveting post on a website I previously didn’t know existed (it compares true story adaptions to the actual facts) but think I will really, really love!
With that out of the way, I am going to review the merits of When They See Us purely as a miniseries. I’ll leave aside any issues of factual accuracy and, for the sake of clarity and focus, simply tell you how well what I saw engrossed me.
TREMENDOUSLY!
The beginning was a bit rushed. For a miniseries already close to five hours, an extra 15 minutes allowing us to better learn who these teens were would have made that first of the four episodes more captivating.
Still, that’s literally my only minor quibble even.
I had previously watched, at the 2012 LA Film Festival, the Central Park 5 documentary from the legendary Ken Burns, his daughter, and his son-in-law. That was my one major exposure to the story and it was outstanding. Considering I went to the festival 13 straight years (and am heartbroken that it has now been discontinued) it’s really saying something that it’s one of the 10 films I most remember out of all I ever watched there.
This gripped me even more. A dramatization can show things, such as the horrifying interrogations of the teens and the agony overcoming their parents, that we could only hear described in a documentary. It’s sickening the way they were denied food, bathroom breaks, and parental accompaniment, lied to on several levels, and beaten in order to coerce the confessions without which there couldn’t have possibly been convictions against them.
That’s all in the first episode. The second is about the trial, which infuriates and appalls you in its own way. Your anger is especially directed at Elizabeth Lederer, the assistant prosecutor on the case, and Linda Fairstein, the lead prosecutor who also heads New York’s sex crimes unit. The latter makes it her personal mission to ensure SOMEONE suffers for the violent sexual assault on the victim – and she’s also a racist.
Her portrayal seemed a bit over-the-top, to the point where I had to wonder whether it was true. Then I realized I was looking at it from a position of privilege.* All the news reports of black males being gunned down by police because their skin color scared them show what we see in this miniseries is prejudice that, on some level, blacks are used to daily in this country.
This episode made me realize just what an incredible cast the miniseries amassed. Besides Vera Farmiga as the lesser of those two evils and Felicity Huffman as the greater one, we’ve got Famke Janssen as a more morally upstanding attorney in the DA’s office, John Leguizamo as the father of the Hispanic defendant, Blair Underwood as the father of one of the black ones, and Joshua Jackson as the lawyer for one of the defendants.
The third episode time jumps and we see the lives of the defendants years later. The amount of time each one gets devoted to him as an adult is directly proportional to how much the case negatively affects his life. Three of them do fine after getting released but the fourth really struggles. It’s unsurprising, as our country, with its for-profit prisons, is really geared towards getting convicts back behind bars, instead of allowing them to become productive members of society. That’s especially heartbreaking when it’s someone who was innocent of the crime in the first place, and furthermore let’s remember how much more likely minorities are to be sent to jail initially**. There are FAR too many cases of white male teens who commit sexual assault and get off with little or no sentence because the white male judges don’t want to ruin their futures. I saw an infuriating and depressing but highly accurate meme last year saying “Brock Turners grow up to become Brett Kavanaughs who preside over the cases of Brock Turners.”
Notice I only mentioned four of the show’s defendants. The early part of the last episode of the series focuses on the fifth one, who was already 16 at the time of the crime and thus the only one tried as an adult. When the others are out of jail and (sometimes successfully) putting their lives back together he’s continuing to do hard time, seemingly developing mental health issues along the way. It’s particularly tragic when you consider WHY he even got interrogated in the very first place.
That’s just the early part of the last episode though. The later part deals with their exoneration, which you probably already know about if you’re familiar enough with this case to want to watch the show. It’s moving, heartwarming, and uplifting, yet it still wasn’t enough for me. I specifically wanted to see Linda Fairstein punished so I Googled her. I found out that, although she faced no consequences at the time, and thus nothing is shown in this miniseries, its release led to an outcry about her. SUCH an outcry that the lawyer-turned-bestselling-crime-novelist has been dropped by her publisher and her agent, as well as being forced to step down from the boards of her alma matter and some nonprofits. My Google search did also show me that she has defenders who attack When They See Us for historical inaccuracy and say Fairstein is being unfairly smeared.
Are they correct? You can be the judge. But you’re here because you want me to be a judge of how well When They See Us tells the story that IT chooses to tell.
Said story is incredible and told absolutely fantastically.
Agree? Disagree? Feel free to comment.
Bottom line: If you’re not a friend or family member of the prosecution I think you’ll love it!
Up Next: A counterpart from another generation.
*From my name and picture you can tell I’m not white but I’ve wondered whether white privilege in this country is, to some extent, non-black privilege. At least when it comes to police. Although I tend to drive very carefully, there have been times I’ve been pulled over for a traffic violation and those times I’ve usually gotten off with a warning. You could argue that I’ve spent my whole adult life in very liberal areas, but even one time I was visiting the deep south (the Charleston, SC area specifically) the cop was very friendly. I’ve certainly never had an experience where I feared for my life and I hope that in my lifetime we get to a point where African-Americans don’t in such situations either.
**And will continue to be as long as too many people vote for racist political platforms. That includes those who identify as “fiscally conservative but socially liberal”, AKA people who are willing to overlook racist (not to mention sexist and homophobic) policies for the sake of lining their own pocketbooks but don’t want to feel guilty about it.
%
Recent Comments