Difference between revisions of "Rodney King (2017)"

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This is a no-frills filmed record of a 2014 one-man stage show about King by the actor and writer Roger Guenveur Smith, shot in front of a live audience who are mostly silent, except for a ripple of bleak laughter at one line about Condoleezza Rice. Smith delivers a stark, spare, breathless blast of prose-poetry which seems to inhabit both King himself and the persona of some aghast, sympathetic chorus. He is bathed in sweat, like a traumatized bystander. His performance is delivered on what is essentially a single liltingly impassioned note of horror: at times almost ululating with suppressed pain. This is a tough watch in some ways, making no concession to tonal light and shade, and (understandably) no concession to comedy, except for the driest, darkest sort. There is some acid wordplay on the phrase “Ronald Reagan Presidential Library”, which is received in such silence.  
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This is a one-man stage show about the life and times of Rodney King by the actor and writer Roger Guenveur Smith. Smith delivers a stark, spare, breathless blast of prose-poetry which seems to inhabit both King himself and the persona of some aghast, sympathetic chorus.  
  
Smith takes us through King's adult life, including his two-year prison stint (in a cell block with Ike Turner, strangely) and his post-beating experience as a celebrity who never wanted to be famous, at least not for that. Most of the time Smith is the omniscient narrator, but occasionally he'll slip into King's psyche, or into the head of another character, such as a hypothetical black conservative who goes on the Internet to warn against canonizing King. <ref> https://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/rodney-king-2017 </ref>
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== Plot ==
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Smith takes us through King's adult life, including his two-year prison stint (in a cell block with Ike Turner, strangely) and his post-beating experience as a celebrity who never wanted to be famous, at least not for that. Most of the time Smith is the omniscient narrator, but occasionally he'll slip into King's psyche, or into the head of another character, such as a hypothetical black conservative who goes on the Internet to warn against canonizing King. <ref>Seitz, Matt Zoller. [https://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/rodney-king-2017 Rodney King]. Roger Ebert. 29 April 2017. Retrieved January 15 2021</ref>
  
 
== Racial bias and discrimination ==
 
== Racial bias and discrimination ==
The show is a preacher’s howl of anger and frustration at the personal and political forces which crushed King – racism, alcoholism, depression, crime, poverty, alienation and his own poignant unpreparedness for a media maelstrom – as well as his rejection from some following his well-intended plea for everyone to “get along”.<ref>https://www.theguardian.com/film/2017/apr/27/rodney-king-review-spike-lee-netflix-la-riots</ref>
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The show is a preacher’s howl of anger and frustration at the personal and political forces which crushed King – racism, alcoholism, depression, crime, poverty, alienation and his own poignant unpreparedness for a media maelstrom – as well as his rejection from some following his well-intended plea for everyone to “get along”.
  
Smith’s interpretive angle on those days of violence and their aftermath, focused on King himself, is by definition narrower than the perspective of those journalistic films. But like the other filmmakers, Lee and Smith shine a damning, sorrowful light on American racism, through the shattered prism of spring 1992 in Los Angeles. With its dazzling wordplay and densely layered profusion of history and biography, Rodney King is an experience as cerebral as it is visceral. Smith’s powerfully crafted performance does nothing less than restore the humanity to a man who has, over a quarter-century, been reduced to a talking point and a symbol. <ref>https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/review/rodney-king-998623#:~:text=With%20its%20dazzling%20wordplay%20and,talking%20point%20and%20a%20symbol.</ref>
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Smith's explaining the Racism and Police Brutality that Rodney King went through, on those days and their aftermath. With its dazzling wordplay and densely layered profusion of history and biography, Rodney King is an experience as cerebral as it is visceral. Smith’s powerfully crafted performance does nothing less than restore the humanity to a man who has, over a quarter-century, been reduced to a talking point and a symbol. <ref>Linden, Sheri [https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/review/rodney-king-998623#:~:text=With%20its%20dazzling%20wordplay%20and,talking%20point%20and%20a%20symbol. ‘Rodney King’: TV Review]. The Hollywood Reporter. Retrieved January 15 2021.</ref>
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Smith offers a sharp insight when he says that Rodney King was history’s first reality TV star. His celebrity predated the smartphone and social media age, and he went viral before such a term existed. But the show tacitly underscores a larger truth: people realised it was the “accidental” recording of the incident that was extraordinary, not the beating itself. This sort of legally deniable thing was happening all the time – it just hadn’t been filmed before. And then, King became a more conventional type of reality TV star: a fallible, vulnerable, bewildered soul, burning through the payout he got from the civil suit and taking cash for appearing on shows that only extended his lonely ordeal. <ref>[https://www.theguardian.com/film/2017/apr/27/rodney-king-review-spike-lee-netflix-la-riots
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Rodney King review – Spike Lee's Netflix special is a bleakly poetic howl of rage]. The Guardian. Retrieved January 15 2021.</ref>

Revision as of 11:10, 15 January 2021

This is a one-man stage show about the life and times of Rodney King by the actor and writer Roger Guenveur Smith. Smith delivers a stark, spare, breathless blast of prose-poetry which seems to inhabit both King himself and the persona of some aghast, sympathetic chorus.

Plot

Smith takes us through King's adult life, including his two-year prison stint (in a cell block with Ike Turner, strangely) and his post-beating experience as a celebrity who never wanted to be famous, at least not for that. Most of the time Smith is the omniscient narrator, but occasionally he'll slip into King's psyche, or into the head of another character, such as a hypothetical black conservative who goes on the Internet to warn against canonizing King. [1]

Racial bias and discrimination

The show is a preacher’s howl of anger and frustration at the personal and political forces which crushed King – racism, alcoholism, depression, crime, poverty, alienation and his own poignant unpreparedness for a media maelstrom – as well as his rejection from some following his well-intended plea for everyone to “get along”.

Smith's explaining the Racism and Police Brutality that Rodney King went through, on those days and their aftermath. With its dazzling wordplay and densely layered profusion of history and biography, Rodney King is an experience as cerebral as it is visceral. Smith’s powerfully crafted performance does nothing less than restore the humanity to a man who has, over a quarter-century, been reduced to a talking point and a symbol. [2]

Smith offers a sharp insight when he says that Rodney King was history’s first reality TV star. His celebrity predated the smartphone and social media age, and he went viral before such a term existed. But the show tacitly underscores a larger truth: people realised it was the “accidental” recording of the incident that was extraordinary, not the beating itself. This sort of legally deniable thing was happening all the time – it just hadn’t been filmed before. And then, King became a more conventional type of reality TV star: a fallible, vulnerable, bewildered soul, burning through the payout he got from the civil suit and taking cash for appearing on shows that only extended his lonely ordeal. [3]

  1. Seitz, Matt Zoller. Rodney King. Roger Ebert. 29 April 2017. Retrieved January 15 2021
  2. Linden, Sheri ‘Rodney King’: TV Review. The Hollywood Reporter. Retrieved January 15 2021.
  3. [https://www.theguardian.com/film/2017/apr/27/rodney-king-review-spike-lee-netflix-la-riots Rodney King review – Spike Lee's Netflix special is a bleakly poetic howl of rage]. The Guardian. Retrieved January 15 2021.