Police Brutality, Corruption, and Systemic Racism
Anna Deavere Smith’s work of documentary theater, Twilight: Los Angeles, 1992, consists of a series of monologues derived from interviews she conducted with people who were directly and indirectly impacted by the 1992 Los Angeles riots. The impetus for the 1992 Los Angeles riots was Rodney King’s brutal attack by four Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD) officers. On March 3, 1991, four LAPD officers beat King during his arrest. On April 29…
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Healing, Progress, and Collective Consciousness
One of the central concerns of Twilight: Los Angeles, 1992 is how Los Angeles should move forward in the aftermath of the riots, which occurred in response to the police officers who brutally beat Rodney King being acquitted of all charges. How do oppressed communities begin to heal, Smith asks, and how do racial tensions resolve, when it appears that the city’s (and the nation’s) institutions have no genuine interest in bringing about that change…
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Justice, Perspective, and Ambiguity
In Twilight: Los Angeles, 1992, Smith presents an ambiguous and often unsatisfying view of justice. The play rarely depicts an oppressed group or individual person receiving justice without that justice coming at a cost to another group or person. Instead, Smith offers sequences of differing perspectives stemming from a single instance of injustice. For example, a news reporter, Judith Tur, criticizes and dehumanizes Reginald Denny’s attackers, the LA 4, calling them…
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Individuals vs. Institutions
Many of Smith’s interview subjects harbor resentment for wrongs committed against them, either by an unjust system or by individuals who have turned to violence to air their frustrations against this unjust system. Mrs. Young Soon Han, whose South-Central convenience store was destroyed during the riots, struggles with her feelings of anger toward members of the Black community who participated in the riots that destroyed her store and livelihood. Mrs. Han sees the…
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Action vs. Symbolic Gesture
Many of Smith’s interview subjects talk about the feelings of comradery, purpose, and hopefulness they experienced during and in the immediate aftermath of the 1992 Los Angeles riots. In “Trophies,” Paul Parker speaks of how “good for the soul” it felt to “sp[eak] out on April 29,” to voice outrage over the LAPD officers’ not-guilty verdicts. Parker views the riots as the Black community “puttin’ a race of people on notice.” In “A Jungian…
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