Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in Twilight: Los Angeles, 1992, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Police Brutality, Corruption, and Systemic Racism
Healing, Progress, and Collective Consciousness
Justice, Perspective, and Ambiguity
Individuals vs. Institutions
Action vs. Symbolic Gesture
Summary
Analysis
Smith interviews Paula Weinstein, a movie producer, over the phone. Weinstein is in Chicago, shooting on location. Weinstein describes the “odd” and “isolating” sensation of witnessing the riot and wondering what the rioters would do. She remembers assembling a group to hold a press conference on the Warner Brothers lot. Some people continued to take issue with the statement Warner Brothers made, condemning their decision to challenge the verdict.
The issue of corporations making statements on controversial current events is a complex issue that skirts the line between moral obligation and empty symbolic gesture. On the one hand, Warner Brothers may believe that condemning the Simi Valley verdict makes them look good, as they’re calling out what they perceive as injustice. However, public statements are also way for a company to control their brand without becoming actively involved in civic or political struggle—so the statement may be meaningless.
Themes
Weinstein describes feeling pressured to deliver a “paternalistic” response calling for an end to the violence. However, nobody felt comfortable saying they understood the injustice of the verdict and understood the resulting violence. Weinstein recalls how 14 young people employed by Warner Brothers came to live at her house after they deemed their own houses unsafe. They had come to Weinstein’s company because of their politics and the company’s reputation for being “a place to come and talk.” She describes the “Jungian collective unconscious” that overtook the white kids and Black middle-class kids who came to live with her. Watching the news unfold on TV, they connected as “political kids.”
The complexity of the riots put corporations and public figures in a difficult situation, since it wasn’t all that clear on which side justice lay. Much of America was outraged at seeing the Rodney King beating video and even more outraged when the first jury found the officers involved to be not guilty. At the same time, it was difficult to back the violence and destruction of the ensuing riots. Weinstein’s remark about the “Jungian collective unconscious” she witnessed overtake the kids refers to a concept developed by the psychologist Carl Jung. In Jungian psychology, the collective unconscious is a body of unconscious, instinctual knowledge about the world that is thought to be shared by the collective humanity. In other words, it’s not knowledge about the world that one gains from one’s subjective experiences—it’s something innate. When Weinstein claims to have sensed a “collective unconscious” come over the kids, she means that being subjected to crisis inspired kids form otherwise disparate walks of life to take refuge in their shared experiences as people.
Themes
Weinstein describes how people who had lived in Los Angeles their entire lives and had never been to South Central traveled in caravans to distribute food. She notes how strange LA’s racial segregation is, particularly compared to other cities like Chicago. Weinstein describes her trip to this new part of LA as “an extraordinary time.” She and the kids distributed food to people. The people distributing food formed a ”multiracial / and multicultural line of people.” There was a sense of community, and one could “fe[el] the possibility” that real change could happen.
This passage expands on Weinstein’s evocation of the Jungian collective unconscious. The riots inspired everyone to set aside their differences and come together as fellow people to help each other. The “multiracial /and multicultural line of people” distributing food is an explicit nod to how this feeling of collective unconsciousness compelled people to transcend racial, cultural boundaries and do something meaningful for other people.
Themes
And yet, Weinstein laments, nothing changed. In the end, it was all “language” and “big gestures.” What bothered her most was seeing how rich white families guarded their houses and sent their children away “as if / the devil was coming after them.” Ultimately, the biggest outcome of the riots was that the media was exploited to make white people fear Black people.
Ultimately, Weinstein suggests that the Jungian collective unconsciousness can’t just fix racism and class divides—or people’s fear of those they see as fundamentally different. She seems to suggest that unless more people put their fear aside and try to help people (even long after the riots are over), nothing will change.
Themes
Get the entire Twilight: Los Angeles, 1992 LitChart as a printable PDF.
