LA 92 by Daniel Lindsay, T. J. Martin, and: Let It Fall: Los Angeles 1982–1992 by John Ridley, and: L.A. Burning: The Riots 25 Years Later by One9, Erik Parker (review)

The spring of 2017 marked the 25th anniversary of the upheaval that beset the city of Los Angeles for several days, making that disorder the worst of its kind since the Watts revolt of 1965. LA 92, Let It Fall: Los Angeles 1982–1992, and L.A. Burning: The Riots 25 Years Laterare three such documentaries that sought to capitalize on this tragic event. For those who are familiar with the violence that swept across the city that year these films offer little that is new. For those who were not yet born or were perhaps too young to remember the upheaval, these films will serve as a primer of sorts.

What’s surprising about all three projects is that 25 years later the directors, producers, and other media personnel are still incorrectly referring to that outbreak of violence as a riot. A riot is a spontaneous act of group violence that lacks a political purpose; it is frivolous and without substance. What unfolded in Los Angeles during that spring can hardly be considered a riot. More appropriate terms might include revolt, rebellion, and insurrection, even, but not riot. In 1993 the Chicago Bulls defeated the Phoenix Suns for the NBA championship. Some Windy City residents could hardly contain themselves. Rather than celebrating the Bulls’ victory in the way that most sports fans do, groups of diehard fans, inexplicably, took to the streets vandalizing stores, turning over cars, and engaging in other destructive behaviors until members of the Chicago Police Department were called out to restore order. What occurred that night was a riot, nothing more. It was silly, spontaneous, and inconsequential, politically, that is. What unfolded in Los Angeles the year before was the culmination of years of stifling oppression that included high rates of unemployment, persistent patterns of segregation, a historically unfair justice system, overcrowding in the public school system, inaccessible quality health care, and, of course, intense police repression. The acquittal of the four LAPD officers of the savage beating of Rodney King was merely the catalyst, the straw that broke the camel’s back. For many, “enough was enough.” Both films failed to make this important distinction.

Why is this important? By continually referring to the violence as a riot one unwittingly or deliberately undermines the idea that there existed in Los Angeles longstanding problems that had been left to fester since 1965. By using the word riot one could frame those Los Angelinos who harbored legitimate grievances, in the words of Chief William Parker, as “Monkeys in a Zoo.” In other words, the reason these people took to the streets was to secure a new television set, a radio, or a case of liquor or beer. In the eyes of many Whites they are a form of subhuman species, a monkey; an animal that lacks the capacity for reason. Legitimate concerns, what legitimate concerns? All these creatures were looking for was an opportunity to get something for nothing by looting their neighborhood stores and businesses. By couching those who participated in the revolt in that manner, the media and city elites are able to dehumanize these residents so that White Los Angelinos will see them as the problem and not the decrepit system under which the insurrectionists are forced to live. The result: tax payers do not feel compelled to pressure their local, state, and national representatives to ameliorate the insufferable conditions that poor people and minorities have been forced to endure because they have been programmed to believe that all is well, that the problem lies with those who took to the streets not with the way the city is run; and certainly not with the...