When They See Us

There’s a glut of true crime documentaries on Netflix. I’ve been a living room juror for a few of them: the sublime Making a Murderer as well as the twisty The Staircase. Although they’re enthralling pieces of television, they can be frustrating views. Filmed at the time of the case, the documentarians have no idea where the story is going; without foresight they’re shooting thousands of hours of footage that they then have to string into narrative. With the need to keep viewers entertained, cliff-hangers are shoehorned into the end of every episode, making it feel emotionally manipulative and artificially hooky,

With Ava DuVernay’s When They See Us this is not the case. The case of The Central Park Five was essentially closed in 2002 when New York City squashed the men’s conviction, exonerating all of criminal charges. The fact DuVernay has the benefit of hindsight, and knows conclusively that her subjects are innocent, allows her to create a work that’s focused in intent, putting the justice system on trial for racial profiling. Because this is not a ‘did-they-didn’t-they-do-it’: the viewer doesn’t have the chance to play settee sleuth. You can put down your notepad – there’s no place for half-thoughts here. Instead the programme reads less like a pulpy page turner and more like an essay, a treatise on what happens when institutions judge someone on the colour of their skin, not on the content of their evidence.

The Central Park Five was a 2012 documentary from Ken Burns, Sarah Burns and David McMahon. It chronicled how five boys’ decision to go the park had life-changing consequences. The date in question was April 19^th, 1989. Kevin, Antron, Yusuf, Raymond and Korey were in the main 7^th and 8^th graders. Boys, not men. Yusuf and Korey were friends; the others strangers. School had just kicked out and the boys celebrated their freedom by joining a quasi-conga line. Unfortunately, the group they followed were up to no good. When they got to the park, they were shocked by the behaviour on show. Reckless ‘wilding’ was occurring all around them. Innocent walkers were being harassed. Cyclists pulled from bikes. Punches were thrown. Purses stolen. The five were on the perimeter of this. When the sirens came calling, the boys made a run from it. Two of the hares escaped the hounds, the others were spat into police cars.

Meanwhile on the other side of the park, Trisha Meili, was being beaten and raped. Sexual assaults were up in New York and Linda Fernstein, Head of Sexual Crimes, needed results. With some young black men in custody for ‘wilding,’ she sent her officers to round up all the other black and Hispanic boys in the park that night. Before the evidence had been analysed, she concluded that the 'wilding' children were the ones guilty of rape. The next day, the police came for Yusuf. They had an ID on him and wanted to take him down to the station. They did not have a match on Korey, his friend. Aware that Yusuf’s mother would kill him if he didn’t have his friend’s back, Korey volunteered to go down the police station with him. This action changed his life.

Now the police had all five boys in custody. All but Korey were under 16; all but Korey should have had an adult in attendance. Korey himself had learning difficulties and needed the same. Either through sweet-talking, coercion or menace, the boys were denied guardianship and legal representation. They were 12-13-year-old boys, unversed in defence, going up against seasoned detectives, educated in examination. Desperate for a quick result, the NYPD constructed a narrative first, then wrote their characters into it. As far as they were concerned, the rape was carried out by all five. All they needed was for the boys to collaborate on the story. The trouble was, other than Yusuf and Korey, the boys didn’t really know each other. They didn’t even know each other’s names. Denied food, sleep and representation, it wasn’t long before they were giving up names hitherto unknown to them. With every police prompt promising, ‘You’ll go home tonight if you talk,’ they parroted back what they were told. Without realising it, they were building their own cages; every word a bar reinforcing their incarceration.

This is the first episode of DuVernay’s dramatisation of The Central Park Five’s conviction and exoneration. With the original documentary being 120 minutes long, this four episode re-telling has the chance to explore the boys’ stories in greater detail. The first few minutes are a masterclass in characterisation. We meet Antron disagreeing with his father on baseball. There’s Kevin dreaming of being ‘first chair’ in the school band. Korey is getting chastised by his girlfriend for skipping school. Raymond slings insults with his buddies. Yusuf is making plans with friends. Soon they are thrown out of the comfort of the stoop into the alien world of police interrogation. The acting on display is sublime, none more so than Antron (Caleel Harris) and Kevin (Asante Black), who show little boys lost as they scrabble to make sense of a situation they do not understand. Comic book kids trapped in a Kafka novel; they're put on trial for a crime they have no notion of. 

In episode two we come up for air. The claustrophobia of the police room is exchanged for the open court. Now the boys have lawyers on their side. Unfortunately, they aren’t necessarily knights of the round table. They’re a miscellaneous posse featuring a divorce attorney that’s never sat on a criminal case, a plea bargainer that favours negotiation over defence, and some pro-bono guys that might actually know how to fight. Somehow all the lawyers come together to make a good case; the trouble though is this is six years before O.J.

You might remember that O.J’s acquittal owed much to the state of race relations in America. Just a few years prior, a black man Rodney King was beaten to death by law enforcers. Black America had had quite enough of white justice and took to the streets. Therefore, when O.J's case went to court, there was a sense of anxiety over what would happen if a white judge convicted a black symbol. In 1989 the hand of history was not on the side of The Central Park Five: truly innocent black men. The Black Movement not yet strong enough to gain traction. The white press still a powerhouse that crushed and suppressed. In fact, Donald Trump, a business tycoon at the time, took out full page ads demanding these boys be put to death, espousing his message on TV, calling on America to embrace hate as a way of ensuring something get done. DuVernay shows these real-life television clips, reminding modern America: ‘this is what you voted for.’ 

At the end of the trial scene there are haunting close ups of the boys. The one that got me most was Kevin, sitting on a chair in the middle of a street, looking directly into camera, blowing a haunting note from his trumpet. Most directors break the fourth wall to take their viewers out of the artifice of reality, to remind them that they’re in a make-believe world. This does the opposite: those boys look say, ‘This isn’t dramatisation. This is me. This actually happened to me. Look at me now. Look what happened to the child me. Make sure you don’t let it happen to any young boy again.’ If a camera shot could educate people on the consequences of racism, this is it.

The third and fourth episodes are split between the incarceration of the younger boys and the older one, Korey. Korey being 16 meant he was taken to full adult prison. His time there is harrowing, redolent of Shawshank Redemption. Only he doesn’t have the Andy DeFrain smarts to out-wit his opponents. Also, we must remember these boys were charged with ‘rape.’ In an Oprah interview with the subject that accompanies the show, Yusuf Salaam says, ‘Rape is only below child molestation.’ When these boys went into juvenile hall and prison, there was a target on their back. Their treatment in prison changes them, causing Antron McCray to maintain today, ‘My life is ruined.’

The five men now. Pic. Own.

When They See Us is a visionary piece of filmmaking. Unlike Making A Murderer and Staircase, there is no uncertainty over guilt. The absence of ambiguity allows for a certainty of conviction. The consequent work is searing and polemical, invoking the Black Lives Matters campaign. For me, it was the best and boldest examination of the intersection between race and institution since David Simon’s The Wire. It’s a programme that you shouldn’t just see, but see. Look deep into the boys lives and remember that for the colour of your skin it could so easily be you, your child. Then think how unfair that is. That instead of seeing a trumpet player, they saw a criminal. Instead of a lovelorn teenager, a criminal. Instead of a baseball nut, a criminal. The thing is they didn’t see; they judged. To see you have to look beyond stereotype, hear the words. Seeing is looking without prejudice. See this. See them.

When They See Us is available on Netflix