Film Review: Once Upon a Time in. . . Hollywood

Once Upon a Time in Hollywood

I just came out of a screening of Quentin Tarantino’s new movie Once Upon a Time in. . . Hollywood, which I somewhat dreaded watching as an expert on the cases. My own forthcoming book about the Manson family, Yesterday’s Monsters: The Manson Family Cases and the Illusion of Parole, has made me somewhat leery of Mansonsploitation, of which there is plenty as far as the eye can see. Because of the tendency to turn the tragedy of the murders (and the tragedy of five decades of incarceration that followed) into a spectacle, I decided early on I don’t want to make a cent off of the book – all royalties are going to an organization that provides parole representation for indigent lifers – and commercial enterprises centered on the story of the murders give me the creeps.

But Tarantino’s movie is not a spectacular recreation of the murders; in fact, it is a wise, almost lyrical, reflection on their cultural legacy. The main protagonists of his story, actor Rick Dalton and his stuntman Cliff Booth, live a reality adjacent to that of Polanski and Tate, Dalton’s next-door neighbors We see both men confronted with turning points in their professional lives: aging out of acting, aging out of stunts, the importance of career, what does excelling in one’s trade/art mean, big questions for thoughtful and flawed people. DiCaprio and Pitt are at the top of their game, both painting human, sympathetic, charismatic characters, and the movie is full of poignant, moving, and important glimpses into their inner worlds without becoming heavyhanded. The gentleness and nuance with which the two act their roles, and with which Tarantino paints their inner feelings, stands in contrast to the Spaghetti Western world that Tarantino has picked as a foil for the story. Truly a masterpiece.

But I watched the movie not just as a movie, but as an American phenomenon – a commentary on events that changed the course of American history, politics, and criminal justice. The movie is set around two axes of real history: the weekend in February in which Manson stops by the Polanski/Tate residence looking for Terry Melcher (the previous occupant) and the infamous weekend in August. Because we all know what happened in real life, a sense of malaise and foreboding accompanies our glimpses of Sharon Tate, wonderfully portrayed by Margot Robbie, as she lives out a hopeful, sunny existence expecting her child.

Much has been made of Robbie’s few speaking lines; I don’t see her role as diminished because she is not fully fleshed out as a character. Rather, her portrayal looks at her as the symbol she would come to embody – the quintessential California victim: a beautiful, famous, white woman about to give birth to a beautiful, famous, white child. Her joie-de-vivre around town–buying a book for her husband, watching herself on film and enjoying the joy she inspires in her fellow moviegoers, her delight in her friends–is palpable. Even Steve McQueen’s commentary about her and Sebring–their enduring friendship after their breakup–does not taint her wholesomeness. We watch and dread, because we know the only thing that can kill pure, untainted good is pure, uncompromising evil. And we brace ourselves.

In Yesterday’s Monsters I go into the way the narrative of the murders has shaped the California correctional landscape: because the crimes came to be seen as sui generis evil, they were the catalyst for the return of the death penalty; for the creation of life without parole; and for the dramatic changes in parole proceedings, including the gubernatorial veto right. In doing so, California fashioned what I call in the book the “extreme punishment trifecta” – its three most extreme punishments have come to be virtually indistinguishable from each other, creating a regime of interminable incarceration.

The reason these crimes were so instrumental as a rhetorical device in these developments is that the narrative around them was largely shaped by Vincent Bugliosi in his classic book Helter Skelter. As many of Bugliosi’s readers will attest, the book very intently and aggressively promotes a narrative of the crimes as bizarre and apocalyptic, focusing on Manson’s indoctrination of his followers into believing in a race war and helping jump-start it. While this story is not wrong, it is a truth that obscures other truths. The Manson family was a cult, though it was not understood as such until the mid-1970s, when our awareness of brainwashing and cults arose in the context of similar groups. And as a cult, it exploited–physically, psychologically, and sexually–its members, most of them adolescent girls. The crime also had the markings of an “ordinary criminals” crime, with a drug-deal-gone-wrong background (the narrative that Jeff Guinn exposes in his excellent Manson biography). For legal reasons, Bugliosi had to highlight the bizarre and obscure the ordinary. It’s quite possible that a similar crime tried today, through the prism of #metoo sensibilities, would see the girls as victims, not as perpetrators.

What is unique about Tarantino’s portrayal of the Manson family is that he manages to pack into the movie complexity and ambiguity. Manson appears in a brief scene in the middle of the movie, and is unremarkable, almost pathetic. We meet the rest of the family through the eyes of Cliff, the stuntman, who gives one of the girls a ride to Spahn Ranch. There, he encounters a scene that is at once pathetic and menacing. That not all is well at the ranch is obvious to Cliff, and he proceeds to check whether his old friend from his moviemaking days, George Spahn, is well. He is not entirely convinced that is the case, and has some disturbing run-ins with the scrawny, suspicious teenagers around him. The only violent incident happens with “Clem” (Steve Grogan), who is portrayed as small change. Tex Watson is portrayed as menacing and dangerous, but strikes out with Cliff. And throughout the whole scene, Tarantino creates a wonderful sense of duality between the young hippies’ quasi-military readiness and guardedness against the stranger and the obvious squalor in which they live. You are left with the feeling that Tarantino, as opposed to Bugliosi, knows that you are an adult, and let’s you form your own mind about these people and the danger they portend.

Even the eventual depiction of the disturbing night packs some surprises. It’s hard to fully describe them without ruining some classic Tarantino moments, which I might get to at a later time, after many more of you will have seen the film. But I will mention that, even in the most threatening and scary moments leading up to the home invasion, there are moments of “ordinary criminals”, moments of “cult”, and moments of “Helter Skelter”, though the latter are subdued and barely hinted at. Again, the viewers are treated with respect, left with autonomy to form their own impressions of the group, and free to comprehend the murders through the eyes of complex, adult fictional characters. Laudable choices all around.

Finally, Tarantino and the entire crew is to be congratulated for making a movie that creates a perfect sense of time and place. The songs, the design, the cars, the atomsphere, are so alive around the characters that they provide a solid presence for understanding the crimes. The chaos of the sixties, the class clashes, the unrealness of the movie industry and its dark underbelly, do not, of course, justify violence, but they place it in the context of the late sixties–a time and place so fundamental to the real and fictional events and so lacking from the parole hearings I analyze in Yesterday’s Monsters. As I explain in the book, any effort by the inmates (by now people in their sixties, seventies, and eighties, very different from the squalid teenagers in the movie) to place their actions in the context of time and place is disparaged by the parole board as an effort to “minimize” accountability and as “lack of insight” about their culpability; Tarantino’s movie is a reminder that these particular crimes could only have happened in this particular time and place. It is not an excuse; it is a deep understanding that matters for a culture still obsessed with the crimes and their aftermath.

In his book about the cultural impact of the Manson murders, Jeffrey Melnick critically analyzes the assertion that Manson “killed the Sixties”. Tarantino has brought the Sixties back to life as never before, and you will not know exactly how until you watch this gem of a movie. And after you see it, let’s talk about it.

Film Review: Ant-Man

Future posts will definitely feature some of these interesting things, but today I want to talk about the movie I saw on the flight to DC: Marvel Comics’ Ant-Man. This is not an indie documentary for bleeding-heart progressives who can wax poetic about the prison industrial complex. It’s a mainstream movie, featuring CGI animation, superpowers, gloom, doom, and beautiful people, and as such it is remarkable, because it represents what the filmmakers think the mainstream is open to seeing and accepting onscreen. And what it shows them is a skewed and flawed, and yet refreshing, slice of incarceration and reentry in the Bay Area.
Set in San Francisco, the film’s hero, Scott Lang, starts his journey in prison—notably, not a generic, imagined institution, but an imagined version of the very real San Quentin. And it’s a very different cinematic San Quentin than the one in which Oscar Grant spends an important scene in Fruitvale Station; one that resembles Justice Scalia’s dark fantasies more than it resembles the actual prison we know. Scott’s first scene in Ant-Man sees him engage in a violent fight with another inmate. The many spectators, as well as Scott’s adversary, are large, black, muscular men. But then, the tension breaks, and it becomes obvious that Scott is on friendly terms with his adversary; we are told that this is some sort of rite of passage in honor of Scott’s impending release. Smiling, Scott says to his fellow inmates, “you have strange rituals.”
“You”, not “us”; because early on it is fairly clear that Scott is a special sort of inmate, one for which filmgoers will feel sympathy: he is a conventionally good-looking white man, armed with graduate education (a master’s degree in electric engineering), and his criminal history is that of a high-level hack for the morally allowable purpose of redistributing wealth. In short, Scott is a non-non-non if there ever was one, and we all root for him as he is released—be it because he terms out or because of Realignment.
But even with this relatively privileged starting point, Scott finds it difficult to cope outside. We see him shack up with friends, all of whom are formally incarcerated, and expressing hope of finding a suitable job soon. But his hopes are shattered: he manages to obtain an entry-level job at Baskin Robbins, where he is summarily fired by an unfeeling boss. Not for smart-mouthing a client (which he does, and which would be unthinkable to, say, an uneducated man of color competing for unskilled labor positions); for having a criminal history. Ban the Box, apparently, only gets one through the door; it doesn’t keep him there. And this is a crisis for Scott, who has to provide for, and win back the right to visit, his young daughter. His ex-wife is engaged to a cop, and both of them think of Scott as the deadbeat dad he is. We, however, know better; we’re rooting for Scott, and that’s partly because we haven’t been exposed to his ex-wife’s travails through his trial and incarceration. But we also learn a lesson: when someone is saddled with a criminal record and a history of incarceration, all the whiteness and the education in the world won’t help. It almost goes without saying that this message is deeply flawed. Race, class, and education make a big difference in reentry—as does another thing Scott has going for him, a supportive family. But it drives home the heavy penalty of incarceration and a criminal history with regard to someone with whom some middle-class moviegoers might identify.
It is this economic desperation, rather than a personality flaw, that leads Scott back into crime with his housemates—all of whom, except for him, are either men of color or immigrants with heavy accents. The film plays fast and loose with stereotypes, which is par for the course for sidekicks in a comic book. They are capable men, but they are capable in limited ways, and only as assistants to Scott, whose competence and ability are played up in the sophisticated heist they plan. The film occasionally takes pleasure in breaking these stereotypes; Luis’s unfocused chatter and confused narratives include references to his visits to a museum and enjoyment of Mark Rothko oils. But even when doing so, the Bay Area scenes that fly before our eyes as Luis describes the potential heist place him squarely within the imagined East Bay working class colorful subculture of dive bars, bikers, chicks and shady contacts. Luis has the info and the contacts, but he is not the brain of the operation.
The scenes depicting the heist planning elevate Scott and his accomplices to the coveted status of garage startup techies, and it is this subtle analogy that portrays them at their most competent and heroic. This nod to Silicon Valley reminded me of The Last Mile and other programs encouraging the involvement of folks of low income and education in the tech world upon their release. The film makes it clear, though, that reentry is not kind to any of our heroes, and if they are to make their way in the world, they must do so themselves. And so, their entrepreneurship is modeled after the “innovate first, ask questions later” model of South Bay, and sold as admirable and competent.
As viewers of the film know, the heist goes awry, and a chain of events is set in motion that sets Scott up to becoming “ant man”: a superhero capable of shrinking to the size of an ant. The adventure, villains, goals, and betrayals, are fairly predictable for the genre. What is less predictable, and surprisingly touching, is the ant metaphor, and how it connects to the incarceration and reentry theme from the movie.
Ants are eusocial insects. They are indistinguishable from each other. The inventor who employs Scott refers to them by numbers, not by names. When Scott complains, the inventor explains, “they are just numbers; do you have any idea how many ants they are?” We treat ants, apparently, the way we treat people in total institutions; we see them as a population, not as individuals deserving of life, health, and happiness. But Scott, reduced to the size of an ant, sees them as individuals, and names one of them Anthony. He learns from the inventor’s daughter how to control the ants with his mind by becoming part of the eusocial structure. Thus, the ants’ impersonality and collective organization is their great advantage. When one is struck down, ten rise in its stead (in fact, Anthony is struck in one of the final raids; Scott regrets it, but hops over and rides another ant in its stead). And together, because of their commitment to the collective wellbeing of the community, they are invincible.
It is notable that the penultimate scene in the movie marshals some of the laughable stereotypes for the beginning to marshal the ant metaphor of community and apply it to the formerly incarcerated. Luis tells a convoluted story yet again; but the bottom line of the story is that an indirect contact wants Scott to join the Avengers: “We need a guy that shrinks”. It is through this informal Bay Area network that an opportunity awaits our superhero. Because, like ants, the people who exit our prisons may look to policymakers, jailers, and employers all the same, and it might be easy to discount them—but when they look out for each other and act collectively, that is the source of their strength.

Film Review: The Black Panthers: Vanguard of the Revolution

The new documentary The Black Panthers: Vanguard of the Revolution opens with the renown story of the blind men touching an elephant, and the rest of the movie shows the party, like the proverbial elephant, to be as multifaceted and enigmatic as the people involved in it.

Narrated by many members of the Black Panther party, historians, police officers, FBI agents, and informants, the movie offers a kaleidoscope of perspectives on the history of the party since its inception, through Huey Newton’s incarceration, Eldridge Cleaver’s escape to Algeria, the infiltrations and struggles, the social programming, the collaboration with other social movements, the internal strife, and the last days. It is a mesmerizing, mature, and complex portrayal of a movement that embraced both revolution and reform; gender progress and traditional gender roles; inclusivity and exclusivity.

While the best part of all is the focus on individual narratives, the historical footage, mostly of Oakland in the 1960s, is stunning and extensive. The Panthers light up the screen with their distinctive appearance–the afros, the jackets, the berets, the weapons–and with their powerful display of black freedom and independence. The movie ingeniously moves from images of prominent Party members to interviews with the same members, many years later, in which they offer mature, reflective commentary about the explosive events. Many Panthers have remained on the public scene as activists; we recently covered Elaine Brown’s reentry farm project. Their honesty in describing their experiences in the movement–being watched by the police, conflicted about the aims of the movement, and, for the women–pushed out by Huey Newton’s later years, in which he was erratic and abusive–make the movie an unforgettable experience.

The film provoked me to think about two angles. The first is the prominence of the criminal process, and especially police-citizen interactions, with both the formation and the eventual destruction of the movement. One of the main points in the Black Panther platform was the fight against police brutality–and it is that very brutality that is evinced in police reactions to the party, starting with J. Edgar Hoover’s institutional plan to “neutralize” the party and prevent a “messiah” from rising (via, as is convincingly argued, the assassination of Fred Hampton. Moreover, the intense and oppressive use of the criminal process against the Panthers, especially the “New York 21” trials, makes the point the Panthers themselves wished to make. In one of the trials covered in the documentary, Bobby Seale (later to unsuccessfully run for Mayor of Oakland) is gagged and bound at his own trial, making the comparison between the old and new Jim Crow painfully evident.

The second angle is the provision of much-needed historical context for the current Black Lives Matter protest movement. First, it is always useful to inform young joiners of the protest that the problems between police and communities of color are not new and run deep. And second, I think the current movement would do well to learn from the Panthers’ willingness to reach a hand to other social movements and find common themes in different struggles for justice. It is possible to have a strong voice stemming from one’s identity AND to involve allies and partners beyond merely asking them to “shut up” or “check their privilege”. It is possible to highlight distinctive experiences AND appeal to a common ember of the human experience and to empathy. Sadly, the Panthers, like other social movements, were not immune to the left’s destructive tendency to eat its own. While their internal struggles, such as the strife between Newton and Cleaver, were initially exploited by the FBI, toward the end, all the FBI needed was to watch from the sidelines as the movement destroyed itself.

Aquarius, Episode 12 – Spoiler Alerts

These are Hodiak, Shafe, and Walt (Hodiak’s son) sharing a beer in friendship, and toating to America, even though their fragmented and flawed understandings of what America has become pull them apart.

Hodiak, the WW2 cynic veteran, is just trying to do his job. Shafe, an early Vietnam veteran, is “not there yet” with respect to the anti-war movement. An Walt, about to be court-martialed for revealing what he knew, is embracing the movement and feels disenchanted with his country.

Disenchantment abounds in Episode 12. The murderers of the gay victims and the judge’s wife are caught and killed–one by the cops and one by his brother’s hand–and the cover-up of the deaths is truly masterful–the Thin Blue Line strikes again.

Oh, and apparently Mary gives birth to a dead son, and somehow Sadie procures a live one for her to replace him, partly to curry favors with Charlie – another incident that has no bearing on the real chronicles of the Manson family. I liked the aesthetics of juxtaposing the christening with Hodiak’s award of the Medal of Valor, but I’m not sure what was implied. Nor did I particularly appreciate the Ken Karn backstory which, again, tries to make something that in reality was plenty horrible without embellishment into something else.

This concludes our series on Aquarius, and we return to our regular blogging program.

Aquarius, Episode 11: Spoiler Alerts

Plot-thick and sixties-thin, this episode sees Hodiak fighting for the life of his whistle-blower son by bargaining with Ken Karn. We also are exposed to more information on Manson’s deeds and to more animosity between the girls.

Shafe’s remorse about his homophobic reaction to Chris, the murder victim, becomes front and center as he fights to reopen the case with the help of the disgruntled bar owner. And Emma finds herself further alienated from her mother and in prison, with nowhere else to go but back to the Family.

Aquarius, Episode 10: Spoiler Alerts

Episode 10 is a buffet of pop psychology: everyone–Hodiak, Manson, Emma–is confronted with their parents.

In Manson’s case, the mother that had abandoned him as a child returns to propose a business deal, and their problematic relationship is exposed, ending in Manson essentially selling her to the Straight Satans. Like many incidents in the show, this one has no equivalent in what we know about Manson and the Family in the Los Angeles years, and is, in all likelihood, a plot manipulation to demonize Manson and show his capability for callousness and gratuitous violence. I find myself seriously questioning the premise of portraying a real, living man, who (at least theoretically–and probably only theoretically) could be released on parole, in this manner, and I doubt they could do this had it not been for the symbolic association of the main character with evil. While we know of several heinous murders committed by Manson and the family, reality was cruel enough in itself, and the fictional embellishments, if anything, diminish credibility and make it difficult to follow the show. I wonder if, twenty years from now, Aquarius, which is a fictional drama, will be the authoritative go-to story on Manson and the Family; I also wonder how many of the Family members will still be doing time and coming up for parole.

This episode also sees an effort to darken Susan Atkins’ character (in her case, whatever libel argument she might’ve had would be posthumous, and maybe that explains the choice) and to problematize the relationships between the girls.

Hodiak’s father, in his turn, accuses Hodiak of having returned from WW2 “with no soul”. He helps Walt, who is still interested in exposing government actions near the Cambodia border; but the newspapers, who were so eager in Chapter 9 to expose Joe Moran’s ethnicity, are suddenly reluctant to publish.

Finally, in this episode we see Shafe’s undercover gig begin to bear fruit, and we also see him discover what his homophobia, and the police department’s reluctance to investigate the actor’s murder, had wrought; the chatty man who hit on Shafe during the investigation was found murdered, likely by the man with the previous victim’s ring on his fingers. This, and an incidence in which Bunchy’s brother Arthur was murdered, is a reminder that overenforcement and underenforcement went, then and now, hand in hand.

Aquarius, Episode 9: Spoiler Alerts

Like Episode 8, Episode 9 deals with issues of race and racism within the police force, this time through the story of Joe Moran, who, unbeknownst to his wife, kids, and fellow officers, is Cuban. Having benefitted from the ambiguity in his last name, Moran persuasively convinced his wife that he was Irish, and advanced through the ranks, until… a Latino journalist, Sandoval, found out the truth and decided to “out” Moran as Cuban.

Moran’s fear that his wife will leave him leads him to attempt suicide, and Hodiak, who comes into the room, tries to help. He reveals to Moran that his father was Jewish, a fact that he also does not share widely in the department. It’s understandable why: in both episodes, the idea of affirmative action or of representation of women or “spics” is considered ridiculous. There’s not, I should mention, a black officer in sight.

Moran and, to a lesser degree, Hodiak, are examples of the quiet tragedies of “passing” and living a lie, which are echoed by the series’ exposure of sexual and marital hypocrisies. Moran reminds me a bit of Silk, the hero of Philip Roth’s novel The Human Stain, which is based on the life of Roth’s friend, Melvin Tumin.

Moreover, Moran reminded me of Osagie Obasogie’s recent book Blinded by Sight, in which he problematizes the idea that race is something that is “seen” by interviewing people who have been blind since birth about their experiences of race. The interviewees told Obasogie something fascinating: like seeing people, blind people experience race visually. Race is, therefore, not something that just “is” (Obasogie calls this faulty assumption “‘race’ ipsa loquitur“) but something that is created, manufactured, as presumably visual.

In one of the book’s vignettes, Obasogie tells an incredible, and horrible, tale of a trial for marriage fraud. The story is so astounding that I quote it in its entirety:

Leonard Rhinelander was the socialite son of a wealthy New York family. In the fall of 1921, he met Alice Jones through her sister Grace and the couple quickly became quite fond of each other. On at least two occasions during their first few months together, the couple–Alice was then twenty-two, four years Leonard’s senior–secluded themselves for days in New York City hotels where they were intimate. Over the next few years, Leonard took several extended trips at his father’s request that separated the couple, but they remained in touch through frequent letters proclaiming their love for one another. Leonard returned to New York in May of 1924, and the couple secretly married that October, as Leonard’s family was not fond of the former Ms. Jones. The couple lived in secret with Alice’s family for about a month, until a story appeared in the Standard Star, a local paper in New Rochelle, titled: “Rhinelanders’ Son Marries the Daughter of a Colored Man.” Thus, a wealthy White man from 1920s New York high society was exposed as having committed one of the biggest social faux pas one could imagine at the time: marrying a Black woman.

Alice was the biracial daughter of an English mother and a father described as “a bent, dark complexioned man who is bald, except for a fringe of curly white hair.” A few days after the story broke, Leonard was shown a copy of Alice’s birth certificate that documented her race as Black. Two weeks later, Leonard filed suit for an annulment. The reason? Fraud: Leonard alleged that Alice misrepresented that she was not colored to trick him into marrying her. The stage was now set for what some might characterize as, up until then, the race trial of the century: a legal determination of whether Alice committed fraud by “passing” as White or if Leonard knew Alice’s race before their marriage. Put differently, the question became what did Leonard know and, more importantly, what should he have known?

The strategy developed by Isaac Mills, Leonard’s attorney, portrayed him as mentally challenged and Alice’s physical features as racially ambiguous. The defense from Alice’s counsel, Lee Parsons Davis, was quite simple: there was no fraud as Alice’s blackness was visually obvious. Davis mockingly said to the jury:

I think the issue that Judge Mills should have presented to you was not mental unsoundness but blindness. Blindness . . . [Y] ou are here to determine whether Alice Rhinelander before her marriage told this man Rhinelander that she was white and had no colored blood. You are here to determine next whether or not that fooled him. Whether or not he could not see with his own eyes that he was marrying into a colored family.

After raising serious doubts about Leonard’s cognitive disability, much of Davis’ defense rested on showing that Alice’s race could be known by simply looking at her body. This became a central theme in Davis’ argument; he repeatedly asked Alice and her sisters to stand up and show the jury their hands and arms. But to hammer home this point, Davis wanted the jury to see all of Alice’s body–not just hands and arms that might darken over time with routine exposure to sunlight. Given the couple’s pre-marital relations, Davis argued that Leonard had seen all of Alice before being married, and that it was crucial for the jury to see the same intimate details of Alice’s body that Leonard did before marrying her. Against objections from Leonard’s attorneys, the judge allowed it. And what transpired was one of the biggest race spectacles of the twentieth century. From the Court record:

The Court, Mr. Mills, Mr. Davis, Mr. Swinburne, the jury, the plaintiff, the defendant, her mother, Mrs. George Jones, and the stenographer left the courtroom and entered the jury room. The defendant and Mrs. Jones then withdrew to the lavatory adjoining the jury room and, after a short time, again entered the jury room. The defendant, who was weeping, had on her underwear and a long coat. At Mr. Davis’ direction she let down her coat, so that the upper portion of her body, as far down as the breast, was exposed. She then, again at Mr.Davis’ direction, covered the upper part of her body and showed to the jury her bare legs, up as far as her knees. The Court, counsel, the jury and the plaintiff then re-entered the court room.

This dramatic revealing of Alice’s body to the jury composed of all White married men was stunning, especially for 1920s sensibilities. Once back in the courtroom, Davis asked Leonard, “Your wife’s body is the same shade as it was when you saw her in the Marie Antoinette [hotel] with all of her clothing removed?”Leonard responded affirmatively, to which Davis said “That is all.” Shortly after this display of Alice’s body to the jury and Leonard’s acknowledgement, the jury returned with a verdict in favor of Alice, finding that there was no fraud. To put a finer point on this: an all White male jury in 1925 ruled against a wealthy White male socialite and in favor of a working class Black woman because her race was found to be so visually obvious that there could have been no deception. The jury found that Alice’s body, and race in general, visually spoke for itself. Alice did not have to take the stand at any point during the trial. Her body, and the jury’s ability to observe it, was all of the evidence that was needed.

Joe Moran’s story is a televised representation of the lives of many people, such as Alice Jones, whose racial identity had to be constructed as “seen”. And it is a sobering reminder that, as late as the late 1960s, there were still people who were embarrassed and terrified to openly acknowledge their racial identities.

Aquarius, Episode 8: Spoiler Alerts

My commentary on Episodes 8 and 9 will focus, if you don’t mind, away from Manson and his antics, and on what I found more interesting: diversity within the police force as a prism for overall racial attitudes and discrimination.

Both episodes focus on “others” within the largely male and white police hierarchy. Episode 8 focuses on the “othering” of Charmain Tully, whom we all know already from previous episodes as a hardworking, talented cop. Charmain gets permission from the captain to go on patrol with the boys, which turns into a parade of sexual harassment and unmerited jokes at her expense at a diner. But as the viewers become more and more indignant on her behalf, a gunman approaches the table and shoots her two colleagues.

Charmain is, understandably, in shock, but Hodiak immediately orders her to compose herself, attempting a primitive version of hypnosis to extract the details. Charmain is certain that the shooter was white. Nonetheless, the captain declares open season on a black neighborhood. Hodiak is only able to dissuade him from that by cutting a deal with Bunchy, his Black Panther acquaintance, who helps him find the true culprit via his car model.

Here’s what happens next: Hodiak and Shafe quickly fall in line with the other officers, out to catch and “fry” the cop shooter. They find someone who matches the description, and there is circumstantial evidence, but no physical evidence. In a display of oppressive peer pressure, Hodiak makes it clear to Charmain that she must change the description she provided to match the culprit, and by doing so, to prove that she is “one of us”. To my disappointment, but unsurprisingly, she conforms to the pressure and the suspect is apprehended.

Some things, clearly, have changed, and some have stayed the same. At around the period portrayed in the episode, Jerome Skolnick first published his book Justice Without Trial, documenting what he referred to as the “blue wall of silence.”Much has been written about this since then, by Skolnick and others. Some are more optimistic than others, with some commenting on the deplorable approach toward whistleblowers and on the spillover effect of police perjury and ‘testilying’. As David Sklansky explains in Not Your Father’s Police Department, the increased diversification of the police force since the setting of Aquarius has not dented police culture. Female officers, GLBT officers, and officers of color, simply become “blue inside” and socialized to police norms. Which explains Charmain’s behavior in this episode.

I have some doubts about the plausibility of the scenario, though. Hodiak’s hypnosis of Charmain has her flash back to the crime, noticing mostly the hand holding the gun. We now know that such eyewitness evidence is very unreliable, due to the effect of weapon focus: it is a human tendency to focus on a weapon, which reduces the reliability of identification from scenarios that involve guns. While the police’s focus on their preferred suspect is a textbook example of attitudinal bias, I’m not at all convinced that Charmain described the right guy.

Aquarius, Episode 7: Spoiler Alerts

Ken Karn is becoming an important muckety-muck in Nixon’s reelection campaign, and as such, he has to put his house in order–including emancipating his wayward daughter, Emma, who is gradually feeling disenchanted with the violence and fear that come with being a member of the Manson family. This episode sees Manson in the process of procuring a music deal, as well as abusing several of his young female disciples.

But again, what’s more interesting is not the Manson angle at all. In the process of trying to locate a prostitute that Manson may have murdered, Hodiak reconnects with an old acquaintance of his–a former sex worker and currently a nurse. “You took part-time nursing school”, he says with astonishment. His new friend’s achievements and respectable profession, however, doesn’t mean she’s treated with dignity; when Karn’s wife comes knocking on the door, she quickly slips back into her uniform, saying, “I’ll give her a minute to leave and then head out through the service door.”

If the show is trying to say something about social approaches to prostitution–and I don’t think it is–the message I take away from this is that the amount of sexual hypocrisy and respectability games has not been reduced.

Aquarius, Episode 6: Spoiler Alerts

Mary Bronner, pregnant in San Francisco, seems to have wizened to Manson’s manipulations; she is pregnant with his child, but is hesitant to join the family in Southern California. Manson had beaten her, and she seems to resent the fact that “Charlie’s girls just get prettier”. Nonetheless, the family is in need of her money, partly to purchase guns, and so the girls come to San Francisco to retrieve her.

But, as usual, the interesting part of the series is not about the Manson family, but about the police department. Hodiak is investigating the murder of Hollywood actor Raymond Novo, staged as a crucifixion; a valuable ring is missing from the victim’s possessions. Soon, Novo’s homosexuality and his secret dalliances with men at the film studios come to light, and Hodiak needs to investigate at a gay bar.

The Stonewall riots have not happened yet, but other important riots for gay rights have already occurred in San Francisco and in Los Angeles. The radical Gay Liberation movement and its legal struggles are yet to be born, but the community is no stranger to activism. Fresh in the mind of bar owners and patrons are the massive police raids of gay bars in the 1950s, so well captured in Katie Gilmartin’s Lambda-winning noir novel Blackmail, My Love. So much so, in fact, that the bar owner recognizes undercover Hodiak as a cop who got all patrons arrested fifteen years earlier.

Hodiak tries to enlist Shafe to help with covert investigations, but apparently Shafe’s openmindedness about feminism and interracial marriage stops at homosexuality, and he expresses views common at the time, referring to the men at the bar as “deviant” and “sick” and recoiling with disgust from one of the bar patrons. Hodiak surprises with an anachronism: “What do you care what they do with each other?” In other news, the Captain is back, but much as Charmain Tully hopes for an opportunity to do real police work, she is summarily pushed back into her file-cabinet folder, dismissed and humiliated.

In the end, the investigation is shut down under pressure from the film studios, and the bar is closed; more frighteningly, the patron who befriended Shafe goes home with a man wearing Novo’s ring. A reminder to the viewers that in the gay community at the time, just as in the black community from Episode 4, overenforcement and underenforcement go hand in hand in marginalizing and destroying disenfranchised groups.