The Simpson Verdict
2002 - Film & Video (Film & Video)
2:50 minutes (looped)
Kota Ezawa
The Simpson Verdict is a three-minute animation by Kota Ezawa that portrays the reading of the verdict during the OJ Simpson trial, known as the “most publicized” criminal trial in history. In 1995, OJ Simpson—a well-known American football player—was accused of the murders of his ex-wife Nicole Brown Simpson and her friend Ronald Goldman. Based on the courtroom footage, Ezawa uses his signature style to create an abstract and graphically simplified echo of what happened in the room. This re-enactment reflects the uncanny feeling of the trial footage, which was depicted solely through fixed close-up recordings (there was only one camera allowed in the courtroom). Zeroing in on the facial expressions of Simpson and his lawyers, Ezawa makes use of simple facial gestures, such as the movement of eyes and eyebrows, to highlight the emotional intensity of the moment. These expressions are minimal, due in part to the limitations of the artist’s animation technique. As the artist subtracts other visual cues, the most obvious way to distinguish people becomes their skin color, leaving the viewer with a comment on the racial implications of the trial and the unreliable nature of the verdict.
Kota Ezawa borrows images from the news, art history, and pop culture and turns them into cartoon-like stories. He produces flat and two-dimensional imagery via his light-boxes, works on paper, and animations. These works are often inspired by important moments in history, such as the assassinations of John F. Kennedy and Abraham Lincoln, the O.J. Simpson trial, and media coverage of former National Football League (NFL) player Colin Kaepernick kneeling during the national anthem as a symbol of protest. Ezawa’s animations, which he describes as “moving paintings,” make use of a labor-intensive technique that requires the artist to recreate each frame with close attention, producing hundreds of illustrations via digital drawing and animation software. He is best known for a signature style that embraces vibrant colors and simple forms, stripping detail from images to leave only essential attributes and environments. This reductive technique does not diminish the power of the image, as it turns to the familiar historical or cultural context to fill any gaps left by the artist’s erasures. However, the gesture also invites viewers to think about how these erasures might destabilize the reliability of public memories, highlighting the faulty process of collective remembering and what it tends to overlook.
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