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? Many interview subjects in Smith’s play struggle to reconcile their idealistic hopes for a racially-just future with the reality of ignorant or indifferent governments, corrupt legal systems, and people too consumed by hopelessness and devastation to uplift themselves and their communities.
The most promising solution to this problem comes in Smith’s final interview, where Twilight Bey, an organizer of the 1992 Watts gang truce, eloquently describes the gap that exists between the self and the outside world. Twilight identifies the self as “darkness” and a knowledge of the outside world as “light.” “In order for me to be a, to be a true human being,” he argues, “I can’t forever dwell in darkness, / I can’t forever dwell in the idea, / of just identifying with people like me and understanding me and mine.” Essentially, he suggests that people must look beyond their insular communities and get to know people who are different from them. While the play suggests that corrupt institutions like the LAPD bear the brunt of perpetuating racial tensions in LA, it also suggests that it’s this inability to look beyond oneself and the suffering of one’s own community that makes it difficult for people of different social or ethnic groups to coexist. Smith suggests that a more purposeful effort to engage with one’s surroundings, practice empathy and understanding, and see outside of one’s own experiences can be the foundation for broader and lasting social and structural changes.
Related Themes from Other Texts
Healing, Progress, and Collective Consciousness ThemeTracker
Healing, Progress, and Collective Consciousness Quotes in Twilight: Los Angeles, 1992
Why do I have to be on a side?
Who’s They?
“No.”
I said, “We have to stay here
and watch
because this is wrong.”
As far as I’m concerned,
nobody is better than me,
I’m not better than anybody else.
People are people.
Black, white, green, or purple, I don’t care,
but what’s happening in South Central now,
I think they’re taking advantage.
This Reginald Denny thing is a joke.
It’s joke.
That’s just a delusion to the real
problem.
If she didn’t caught it in her arm,
me and her would be dead.
See?
So it’s like
open your eyes,
watch what is goin’ on.
Who the hell does he think he is?
Oh, but that was another story.
they lootin’ over here,
but soon they loot this store he went to,
oh, he was all pissed.
No one can hurt us at the Beverly Hills Hotel
‘cause it was like a fortress.
All I can think of…one bottle,
one shear from one bottle in my father’s car,
he will die!
He will die.
riot
is the voice of the unheard.
We spoke out on April 29.
Hoo (real pleasure),
it was flavorful,
it was juicy.
It was, uh,
it was good for the soul.
This is the city we are living in.
It’s our house.
We all live in the same house…
Right, start a fire in the basement
and, you know,
nobody’s gonna be left on the top floor.
It's one house.
And shutting the door in your room,
it doesn’t matter.
After a couple of days
I stopped wearing the collar
and I realize that if there’s any protection I needed
it was just whatever love I had in my heart to share with people that
proved to be enough,
the love that God has taught me to share.
That is what came out in the end for me.
you believed
that it actually could change,
and of course
here we are a year later.
(seven-second pause)
didn’t change.
All
the
language
was there,
and all the big gestures
were there[.]
Is it the truth of Koon and Powell being guilty
or is it the truth of the society
that has to find them
guilty in order to protect itself?
In a way I was happy for them
and I felt glad for them.
At leasteh they got something back, you know.
Just let’s forget Korean victims or other victims
who are destroyed by them.
They have fought
for their rights
(One hit simultaneous with the word “rights”)
over to centuries
(One hit simultaneous with “centuries”)
and I have a lot of sympathy and understanding for them.
I am a dark individual,
and with me stuck in limbo,
I see darkness as myself.
I see the light as knowledge and the wisdom of the world and
understanding others,
in order for me to be a, to be a true human being,
I can’t forever dwell in darkness,
I can’t forever dwell in the idea,
of just identifying with people like me and understanding me and mine.
