Copyright 1991
by George Holliday. MultiShoW exclusively
license the footage to All Media Worldwide.
THE
VIDEO THAT SHOCKED THE WORLD
MARCH 3, 1991. THE BRUTAL BEATING BY
POLICE
WILDLY OUT OF CONTROLTHAT
LED TO
1992 LOS ANGELES RIOTS: THE
RODNEY KING UPRISING.
MultiShoW exclusively license George
Holliday´s Rodney King Beating Video. Contact Roby
Massarotto info@rodneykingvideo.com WORLD +1(818)583-6838
USA | LATAM +54(911)4471-0825
Argentina
Rodney King Beating Video is a videotape
filmed by George Holliday that turned what
would otherwise have been a violent, but
soon forgotten, encounter between Los
Angeles police and Rodney King into the most
widely watched and discussed incidents of
its kind. The 1992 Los Angeles Riots,
also known as the Rodney King Riots
are mostly associated with this beating by LAPD.
Before there
was YouTube, before
anyone had ever heard the words "Viral
Video" there was Rodney King
Beating Video. Rodney
King would have lived and died
complete unknown, were it not for the
most famous home-video ever made
Rodney King Beating Video. First
Ever Viral Video.
¨George Holliday (1959-2021) inspired us on how everyday people have the power to document an historic event that might otherwise be overlooked. His famous King's Video was an early example of the citizen journalism to come. It seared into the national consciousness and still remains as one of the most widely watched of its kind.¨
FROM
RODNEY KING TO GEORGE FLOYD BLM
RELATED
EVENTS
1991 RODNEY KING
beating by LAPD. The murder of
Latasha Harlins. 1992 LOS
ANGELES RIOTS known as the
Rodney King Uprising. 1995 O.J
SIMPSON verdict given racial
tension and mistrust in the
police. 2020 GEORGE FLOYD´s
murder echoes the memories of
Rodney King Beating are still
raw.
30
YEARS AND NOTHING HAS CHANGED
¨ THE OTHER BEATING ¨
The
story of George Holliday´s First
Ever Viral Video
This is the
story of little known maker of the First Ever Viral
Video. George
Holliday, the man who pioneered citizen
journalism, captured the history-making
video that changed television news forever.
The major networks shocked Americans showing
LAPD officers beating King more than 50
times with wooden batons and shocked him
with an electric stun gun. Before the local
TV station paid him a cent, it aired the
tape on its evening news show. From there,
it went viral on the national cable and news
networks and became the most famous home
video of all time. But Was King and what we
saw on that videotape the whole
story?Watch
the VIDEO
¨ THE WITNESS VIDEO CAMERA¨
This is the video camera used by George Holliday on 3 March 1991 to record the Los Angeles Police Department beating Rodney King. With this camera, George inspired us on how everyday people have the power to document an historic event that might otherwise be overlooked. His famous King's Video was an early example of the citizen journalism to come. It seared into the national consciousness and still remains as one of the most widely watched of its kind. The Sony Video8 Handycam model CCD-F77, a visual example of the pre-smart phone video cameras in use during the 1990s. Witness of the brutal beating it was retained by
the fbi as part of the evidence used in
court and then returned to him in 2015.
¨ THE OTHER BEATING ¨
The
story of George Holliday´s First
Ever Viral Video
¨Something
Happens between
the weddings birthday
parties, it´s
called the
rest of your
life¨, Sony´s
commercial for
the nifty new
technology
proclaimed in
the 90s.
¨That´s why we
created
America´s most
popular
camcorder, the
Handycam.¨
On those
days, almost thirty years ago,
a unique icon of Los Angeles
police brutality was filmed,
which hadtwo
main protagonists:
George Holliday,an immigrant escaping
from South America who awoke to the sound
of sirens and helicopters, hit
‘record’ on his new Handycam,
and preserved one of the most brutal
racial moments by LAPD wildly out of
control that later triggered the worst
race riots in US history.
Rodney King,whose life was a roller
coaster of drug and alcohol abuse and
multiple arrests, his videotaped beating
by the Los Angeles police in 1991 became a
symbol of the national's continuing racial
tensions. His pleaded for calm during the
1992 riots in a phrase that became part of
American culture: Can we all get
along? Then he became a celebrity.
A few years ago he was found dead in the
swimming pool at the home he shared with
his fiance.
Today George
Holliday is
the only protagonistof the Rodney King
Beating with an unknown story to tell:
¨The Other Beating¨. The man who pioneered
citizen journalism, captured the
history-making video that changed
television news forever. His videotaped
images rocked this nation's consciousness
and remains as one of the most widely
watched and discussed incidents of its
kind and are still continually required by
worldwide media.
The video was a trigger for so many
political, artistic and cultural
phenomena that the Rodney King Beating
is not the only story to tell. Watch
the VIDEO
The
Other Beating.
A story of an Argentine
plumber who immigrated to the US escaping
from a turbulent country, Argentina in the
80s with military governments, looking for
the American dream, and suddenly gets
involved in a case of police brutality,
human rights leaders, the media pressure
who took advantage of him, court rooms,
millionaire demands, unfaithful lawyers
and covered settlements.
After
KTLA and CNN aired the video
television stations around the world
quickly picked it up
"My phone blew up.
Everybody wanted to interview me and get
a copy of the tape". There was a sea
of reporters every day, George recalled.
My wife Maria didn't even want to leave
the house. He may have pioneered citizen
journalism,but he was swallowed up and
spit out by CNN, gave him little credit
and no compensation for his contribution
to history.
Without
a doubt, this accidental
citizen journalist was
exploited by CNN and the rest
of the media
The Los Angeles riots
were modern America's deadliest, with 53
killed. Damages exceeded $1 billion.
Coming as they did in the spring of 1992,
the riots derailed Bush's re-election
campaign and boosted Bill Clinton's
election efforts. As a result, one could
say that George Holliday may have ended
one presidency, launched another, and
helped ensure that today's leading
Democratic contender, Hillary Clinton,
would have an eight-year head start to her
political career. Not bad for plumber
using his new toy.
¨People
have blamed me for the
disturbances. What is on the
tape caused them, not the
tape¨
You are the guy who
caused the riots. George received
death threats and was constantly hounded
by the media "Be careful when you start
your car.
Rodney
King wins a $3.8 Million
settlement from the City of
Los Angeles
However, one person later
thanked him. In late 1991 Holliday stopped
at a gas station and a young black man in
a new sports car pulled up at the same
pump: "Hey, George Holliday," the
man said. "You do not recognize me,
do you?" Suddenly, he realized it was
Rodney King. "I just wanted to
thank you. You saved my life." They
shook hands and said goodbye.
The images of the Rodney
King Beating Video were seared into the
American consciousness: A black man
struggling on the ground while Los Angeles
police officers stood in a semicircle
around savagely kicking and shocking him
with an electric stun gun, landing 56
baton blows to his body, battering and
bloodying him. Black leaders rallied
behind Rodney King immediately. They say, "Seeing the Rodney King beating was
like seeing history repeated again and
again."
the influence of the video in
the American society
A prosecutor who was
absolutely convinced that it was an
open-and-shut case based on the George
Holliday video, which showed King being
beaten by the police. Little did he
realize that by re-editing the images, the
attorneys defending the L.A. police
officers, in the first criminal case,
totally changed the story. Ever since, the
beating of Rodney King and the ensuing
riots have formed a somber backdrop to
America's "dialogue" on race. The beating
itself, and the initial exoneration of
LAPD officers by a suburban Simi Valley
jury, supported the notion that America
remained a deeply racist society.
movies,
music,
TV The powerful echoes of
which we see on display in American TV and
Cinema which uses actual footage from the
King video such as: Natural Born
Killers, Strange
Days, Mace, Malcom-X, Dark
Blue, Straight Outta Compton, Wu-Tang:
An American Saga, and the American Crime
Story/O.J. Simpson Trial,¨Fox
producers decided to open with the Rodney
King beating and the 1992 Los Angeles
riots, laying the groundwork for Mr.
Simpson's defense in a trial that largely
served as a referendum on the Los Angeles
Police Department treatment of blacks.¨ as
NY Times states in its article. The
verdict exonerating him was clearly marked
by the King beating and the riots in a
context of racial tensions and mistrust of
police. Today the Rodney King Beating
Video is still remaining as an unique
reference.
politics
The Riots occurred just
four days after Operation Desert Storm had
ended triumphantly. With a 90 percent
approval rating in the polls,
President George H.W. Bush expected
an easy re-election in 1992. Rodney King
emerged as a great American healer,
demonstrating more effective leadership
than President Bush during the rioting by
pleading: People, I want to say, can
we all get along?
educational
Rodney King Beating Video
is a continuous matter of study in most
schools and universities of the U.S. It
turned what would otherwise have been a
violent, but soon forgotten, encounter
between Los Angeles police and Rodney King
into one of the most widely watched and
discussed incidents of its kind. GH:One day my son came home from
school and said, Dad, you are in
my history book.
Repeated
viewings of those images created within
the American subconscious a particular
code for the representation of racial
conflict. The
Holliday tape is shown so often on world
wide television that one CNN executive
calls it "wallpaper." It
is a continuous matter of study in most
schools and universities of the U.S.
A dramatic encounter with a stranger
and the Los Angeles police. Rodney King was
pulled over by the police in Los Angeles,
had an angry verbal confrontation with the
officers, and was then brutally assaulted by
several of them. Public servants gone wildly
out of control, savagely kicked King, landed
56 baton blows to his body, battering and
bloodying him. The beating was so loud and
raucous, in fact, that it caught the
attention of George Holliday in his nearby
apartment. He got out of his bed and went to
his window, where he witnessed the horrible
scene. Holliday immediately went to get his
video camera, and he captured the whole
awful episode on tape.
Holliday
reflects on how he did not realize how
newsworthy his video of the Rodney King
beating would be. He explains, "Coming from
Argentina, it's different over there.
If a criminal commits a crime, you know, the
police take him in and they take care of
him. For me, that's normal because
that's the way I grew up." But Holliday was
curious about what he had witnessed, so when
the L.A. police would give him no details,
he called local television station KTLA.
Those videotaped images rocked this nation's
consciousness.
The images
of the Rodney King Beating Video were seared
into the American consciousness: a black man
struggling on the ground while Los Angeles
police officers stood in a semicircle around
him, beating him for 19 brutal seconds.
Black leaders rallied behind Rodney King
immediately. They say, "Seeing the Rodney
King beating was, like, seeing history
repeated again and again."
A prosecutor who was absolutely convinced
that it was an open-and-shut case based on
the George Holliday video, which showed King
being beaten by the police. Little did he
realize that by re-editing the images, the
attorneys defending the L.A. police
officers, in the first criminal case,
totally changed the story. One year later,
in the same city, different images: angry
fists and faces, broken glass and flames, 54
dead, 2,000 injured and a city tearing
itself apart before the world. Ever since,
the beating of Rodney King and the ensuing
riots have formed a somber backdrop to
America's "dialogue" on race. The beating
itself, and the initial exoneration of LAPD
officers by a suburban Simi Valley jury,
supported the notion that America remained a
deeply racist society. Today the Rodney King
Beating Video is still remaining as an
unique reference.
The powerful echoes of which we see on
display in American cinema as Natural
Born Killers (which uses actual
footage from the King video), The People v. O.J
Simpson: American Crime Story, Straight
Outta Compton, Strange Days, Mace,
Malcom-X, Dark Blue,
and The Matrix Reloaded, in
which the beating of the main character "Morpheus"
seeks to draw upon its audience's
familiarity with the Rodney King beating.
the codes inherent to the historical
representation of racial conflict.
Due to a recent ruling by the Massachusetts
Supreme Court, Chief Justice stated in her
dissent that, had the King incident occurred
in Massachusetts, "...under today's ruling
Holliday would have been exposed to criminal
indictment rather than lauded for exposing
an injustice."