Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: FRIDAY, July 14, 1995 TAG: 9507140040
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: 2 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: TOM SHALES
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
``Shock Video: The Show Business of Crime and Punishment,'' a new HBO documentary, includes extremely graphic footage used to demonstrate how the television camera has insinuated itself into all stages of due process.
``Shock Video'' premieres on HBO Saturday at 10:15 p.m. and will be repeated July 18, 21, 24 and 27.
The camera, it seems, is everywhere. Interrogations and confessions are recorded on videotape. Crime scenes, as in the O.J. Simpson trial, are routinely taped. TV cameras have invaded courtrooms in 47 states. And sometimes, even the crime itself is captured on video.
By far the most shocking footage in ``Shock Video'' is of a brutal rape. The rapist himself sets up a camera to make the recording. Electronic blurring obscures the woman's face and her name is not given. After the jury in the case saw the footage, it found the rapist guilty and sentenced him to life without parole.
Fenton Bailey, co-producer of the program (with Randy Barbato), says from Los Angeles that he knows some will charge him with sensationalism for including such video images.
``Perhaps inevitably, that will happen,'' Bailey says. ``The challenge is how you discuss something, the context in which you put it. We wanted to illustrate the process of crime and punishment from beginning to end, and that includes sometimes showing the crime. The issues we examine exist in the world of television, and we think the most powerful forum for debate of those issues is the medium in which they exist.
``We could discuss the same footage in print, but it wouldn't be as effective. Television is a visual medium, and it's impossible to talk about something without showing it.''
The rape footage is brief but harrowing. Also included among the examples of real-life, real-crime video on the program: part of a confession on tape by a woman who decapitated another woman she saw as a rival for her boyfriend's affections; a crazed man who laughs as he describes, in Spanish, how he stabbed a friend to death; a dreadful double murder of a man and woman; and seemingly more footage than has previously been shown in public of the helicopter crash that killed actor Vic Morrow and two child actors during the filming of ``Twilight Zone: The Movie.''
Not everything is horrifying. One piece of video that was later used in a minor court case shows a man urinating in a co-worker's coffee pot when he thought no one was looking. What could the urinator do but plead guilty after the jury saw the evidence, shot with a hidden surveillance camera?
``The camcorder now is the eyes and ears of the jury,'' says a police officer from Alameda, Calif.
If we have entered a new age of video justice, however, it may not last long. For one thing, the first trial of the L.A. cops who beat Rodney King showed that even when the video evidence seems irrefutable, a wayward or perverse jury can close its eyes to it. And as ``Shock Video'' points out, advances in digital technology are making it possible to alter and manipulate video footage in ways that mean seeing can no longer be believing.
Benign examples of this kind of manipulation include the way images were altered for the movie ``Forrest Gump'': Tom Hanks was inserted into newsreel scenes that made it appear he was interacting with President Kennedy and other historical figures. And, as shown in ``Shock Video,'' filmmakers were able to manipulate images of actor Brandon Lee in the movie ``The Crow'' so that he could do new scenes even after he died.
``Shock Video'' includes sound bites from experts like Dr. George Gerbner of the University of Pennsylvania and would-be experts like Phil Donahue, who believes that America should witness a live, televised execution. But nothing speaks louder than the images themselves. They underline what we should have already known: We are television, and television is us, and ever the twain shall meet.
by CNB