Television newscasters said that the way Clark dressed was a cry for help, and radio hosts asked listeners to call and weigh in on whether Clark was a “bitch or a babe.” Gil Garcetti lands the one-two punch of telling Clark he’s appalled at the sexist things being said about her on television, but that he can also recommend a media consultant. Sarah Paulson plays through these scenes with a mixture of steel-eyed intensity and tender sadness. Clark was a woman stuck in a moment between the second-wave feminist ideals that insisted that she has a right to claim space in this world, and the third-wave feminist movement that would demand it.
Watching Clark morph from a woman with a job to a lightning rod of public scrutiny is one of the most heartbreaking aspects of this episode, second only to the fact that she seems to know she can’t really do anything about it. She smiles her way through a mini-makeover with a hairdresser who insists he can give her a transformative experience. When she emerges with a shorter, curlier haircut, Clark seems to feel powerful and confident. Then she walks into the courtroom. There are obvious snickers when Judge Lance Ito says,
“Good morning, Ms. Clark. I think,” and O. J. himself mocks her by giving a sarcastic thumbs up. Even though her co-counselor, Christopher Darden, encourages her by writing “It’s fantastic, I love it!” on a notepad for her to see, Clark’s smile fades.
Later, at a grocery store, Clark stares down tabloid headlines about her new look — “Curls of Horror,”
“Marcia Hair Verdict: Guilty,” and “Hair-Raising Salon Disaster.” When the clerk at the register picks up the tampons she’s buying and says, “Uh oh, I guess the defense is in for one hell of a week, huh?” Clark just stares at him. She knows the brutal truth: In the court of public opinion, she simply cannot win. Sexism is a poison that seeps into every aspect of her life.
This is also happening the same week they’re putting Mark Fuhrman, their most controversial witness, on the stand. It’s not as though Clark doesn’t have other things to worry about.
Maybe she’d be more stoic if she weren’t also in the middle of a difficult custody battle with an ex-husband, Gordon, who judges her for leaving their children with a babysitter while she works on the most important case of her career. There’s a day when she’s openly mocked in court for telling Judge Ito she can’t stay late because she has child-care concerns; when she ends up having to stay late at the office anyway, Gordon not only petitions for full custody, but gives a news conference about how terrible Clark is at being a mother.
There’s a sweet scene that opens the episode, when Clark’s son Travis wakes up in the middle of the night to give her a hug; her kids seem happy and healthy, leaving you to believe what’s really being judged is the fact that Clark has the audacity to live life on her own terms.
I was bothered rather than heartened by Darden’s treatment of Clark this week. Sure, he called the radio show to cast his vote for Clark as a “babe,” and he tried to make her feel better by dancing with her, singing to her and writing her encouraging notes, but it came across as more paternalistic than supportive. He kept reminding me of that quote about all it takes for evil to triumph is for good men to do nothing: Instead of trying to bolster Clark, why wasn’t he commenting publicly about the sexism she was facing?
Instead of calling into radio shows, why not tell Johnnie Cochran he was out of order for joking about Clark’s child-care issues in court? The problem isn’t that Darden is treating Clark with kindness, but that he’s putting a Band-Aid on the wrong wound. Darden is upset and confronts a journalist about the fact that he’s not on the cover of any papers when Clark wants nothing more than to step out of that spotlight. Darden is complicit in benefiting from the sexism he seems to abhor.
The most revealing moment of how sexism worked against Clark actually featured Cochran. At first, he is flying high — he successfully confronts the detective who took crucial evidence home to Simi Valley for six hours, and maneuvers Judge Ito into changing the rules so he can have a witness, Rosa Lopez, testify five months before she was scheduled to do so. When Lopez tanks on the stand, a journalist confronts Cochran outside about his own history with domestic abuse. Later we see Cochran placing a phone call to his ex-wife, offering her the proceeds from an apartment building he just sold with the underlying message that it would be in exchange for her silence about their domestic abuse issue.
This is all strangely juxtaposed by the way the public perceives the case as pure entertainment. Networks pre-empt soap operas since “O. J. is the best soap we’ve got.” Two mechanics watching the courtroom on a small TV in the garage hope they bring back Kato Kaelin “to the show, he was great.” When F. Lee Bailey cross-examines Fuhrman on his use of a racial epithet, network executives immediately air a prime-time special about it.
Clark finally breaks when her first ex-husband sells naked photos of her to a tabloid. She cries quietly in court, and Judge Ito calls a recess when he finally seems to realize the scrutiny is too much. Later, crying on the floor of her office, she tells Darden: “I’m not a public personality. I don’t know how to do this.”
At the beginning of the episode, Clark asks, “Why should I be penalized for doing my job?” The sad truth is that we still don’t have an answer for her.
Link : http://www.nytimes.com/2016/03/08/arts/television/the-people-v-oj-simpson-episode-6-marcia-clark.html
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