We must not stop teaching children that life is not always fair. We must teach them that neither does justice.
In the process of growth, we are reminded repeatedly that life is not fair. It is not a false warning; after all, sometimes your brother eats ice cream and you don’t, or you lose the trick or treat because you have a throat infection. It is a small life lesson that works, in that it teaches children that life does not always work the way you expect and that balance cannot always be maintained.
But it falls far short in terms of teaching children how unfair life will be. After all, while we teach children that life is not always fair, we also place them in front of an American flag and encourage them to recite an oath of loyalty to the country, tiny men of fashion for a nation that promises freedom and justice for whole.
We must not stop teaching children that life is not always fair. We must teach them that neither does justice.
It’s something I think about a lot while watching a new generation of TV documentaries, where filmmakers avoid the idea of criminal justice in exchange for cultural justice. Even if this is not what storytellers intend to do, it becomes a natural consequence when information that has long been scattered in the wind is collected and presented in an understandable way.
Two of these projects have made headlines in recent weeks for doing just that. At FX, “The New York Times Presents: Framing Britney Spears”, a wider audience was exposed to the subtle tragedy of Spears’ life when the teenage pop star was exploited and embarrassed by the media and spent the last 13 years of her life under the her father’s tutelage, despite being competent enough to release several successful albums, as well as a multi-year concert residency in Las Vegas.
At HBO, “Allen v. Farrow” received critical acclaim before its February 21 debut. The four-part documentation of Oscar nominees Kirby Dick and Amy Ziering is an in-depth look at Dylan Farrow’s sexual assault charges against his father Woody Allen, when Farrow was just seven. What followed was a war of words and tabloid headlines as Allen chose to fight his battles on the front pages of the newspapers, while Dylan’s ex-girlfriend and mother, Mia Farrow, tried to find justice for his daughter through the courts.
But what is justice in matters where the law is insufficient? Cases of sexual assault and abuse are often among the most difficult to successfully litigate, as many of the encounters boil down to the words of one party against the other, with no other witness to what happened.
You will hear many people criticize those who try to try cases in the court of public opinion, but what choice do victims have after the statute of limitations is passed? In a way, the recent wave of post-# MeToo documentary projects has become its own version of cultural justice, trying to fix the mistakes of the past by simply disseminating information.
Take Justin Timberlake, for example. Another ex-teen pop star who has had a successful career in music and beyond, made headlines early in his life while romantically engaging with Spears. Timberlake gleefully reported details of his sexual encounters with Spears, while also representing the victim during the breakup, encouraging the media in his efforts to defame his ex-girlfriend for allegedly breaking his heart.
This is not, of course, an isolated incident for Timberlake, who for years has been criticized for his performance in the Super Bowl with Janet Jackson, during which his actions resulted in the exposure of Jackson’s breast live on TV to 140 million people . As a result, Jackson’s career was overturned, while Timberlake’s remained largely unchanged. In the immediate reckoning of the 2004 event, Jackson was eliminated from the Grammy Awards, where she had previously been invited to perform, while Timberlake was still allowed, not only to attend, but to perform at the event.
“Framing Britney Spears”
FX Network
Some will say that judging Timberlake after the fact is evidence of “canceling the culture” and an excuse to try to limit people’s right to self-expression. But what if the culture is not to be canceled? What if they are mere consequences – although delayed – of actions that have always deserved to be censored? (This week, Timberlake apologized to Spears and Jackson in a note posted on social media.)
We live in an age when disclosure of facts is more important than ever. Kirby and Ziering sifted through thousands of pages of police and legal documents related to the Allen and Farrow case, collecting information that had long been buried or inaccessible to the general public and using it as a view of a conflict that years ago would have been decided exclusively in the headlines from the New York Post.
TV documentary projects, from “Surviving R. Kelly” to “Leaving Neverland”, “Allen v. Farrow ”and“ Framing Britney Spears ”continue to offer information to audiences that they would otherwise never have access to. This is not a reckoning. It is an opportunity. Justice can be done. It might take a while.
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