Case Study: The Rodney King Case
Significance of Video:
The Rodney King videotape and its subsequent importance to our society is a testimony to the power that visual images potentially possess. Through its widespread showing on the news, the George Holliday video of King�s encounter with the Los Angeles Police directly led to the worst riots ever in the United States. The full effect of Holliday�s video is not fully realized until one considers an alternative situation in which the incident is not captured on video. Even supposing newspapers in Los Angeles reported the story of a black man having been beaten excessively, which in itself is unlikely, the public reaction, if existent, would have been much less spirited. After considering such information, the statement made by George Holliday�s lawyer James Jordan, in which he said that the "�videotape is the most viewed and I daresay the most important videotape of the twentieth century," seems very accurate (Tomasulo 75).
Unlike other famous visual footage from American History, the emotion resulting from the Rodney King videotape results less from the actual event as it does from the visual image of the actual event. Other famous visual images shown to us through television news include catastrophes such as Abraham Zapruder�s famous film of president John F. Kennedy�s head being blown apart during a 1963 motorcade in Dallas, as well as monumental events such as the crew of Apollo I landing on the moon in 1969. Though both events also caused a significant emotional response in those who saw the footage, the emotion stemmed more from the actual event than it did actually seeing the event. Americans reading about the assassination of their president likely would feel nearly as strongly about the subject as they did after seeing the videotape. Similarly, the mere fact that a man had walked on the moon would have been enough to inspire Americans even if they had not seen the footage of it on the television. The significance of the Rodney King video is that the image alone incited an incredibly strong emotional response from an entire nation.
