Over 8.2 million viewers tune in weekly to watch Scandal, a political drama starring Kerry Washington as a crisis manager with ties to the White House. On Thursday, March 5th, ABC Network aired an emotional episode that displayed a fictional version of a heart-wrenching reality. Eight months after Michael Brown’s death in Ferguson, Missouri, writer and producer Shonda Rhimes scripted a powerfully similar portrayal of an unarmed African American youth shot and killed by a white police officer. Needless to say, Rhimes touched hearts well beyond the heart of our nation’s capital, where the drama is set. But Rhimes may have accomplished much more than this. Raising awareness is a feat in itself, but did “The Lawn Chair” demonstrate a resolution to this type of racially sensitive tragedy?
The episode of Scandal opens with a crime scene; 17-year-old Brandon Parker is lying dead on his own street, shot and killed by Officer Jeffrey Newton. Olivia Pope (Kerry Washington) approaches and orders white police officers to stop meddling with the boy’s body in order to preserve the evidence. Neighbors and onlookers have already begun to gather at the site, murmuring and looking on in horror. Brandon’s enraged father, Clarence, arrives on the scene with a shotgun and begins demanding that the police force reveal the officer that shot his son. Marcus Walker, a political activist, appears a scene later and gives Brandon’s father a lawn chair – the namesake for the episode (“The Lawn Chair”) – which Clarence places over his son’s body and sits in to protect him from the surrounding police officers. The community’s growing crowd – which Pope later joins – swells around the crime scene, chanting: “Stand up! Fight back! No more black men under attack!”
This image itself is enough to move an audience to tears, but the stark similarities between the television scenes and the Ferguson shooting leave viewers struggling with the knowledge that the storyline is not complete fantasy. Both Michael Brown and Scandal’s Brandon Parker were unarmed African American youths, shot down by local white officers a few blocks away from stores where they were suspected of stealing. In both cases, the white officers who fired stated that their decision to use lethal force was justified because they felt in danger of their lives. Officer Newton from Scandal reported that Brandon pulled a knife, and Officer Wilson claims that Michael Brown struggled with him to obtain the officer’s gun and proceeded to charge at him after failing to do so.
Forensic evidence suggests that Officer Wilson’s statement was correct, however, multiple eyewitnesses claim that Brown was shot as he surrendered. Some witnesses even state that Brown’s hands were in the air, signaling obedience, but the claims have proven inconsistent over time. Officer Newton reported seeing Brandon pull a knife, but after listening to Brandon’s father insist that his son would never carry one, Olivia Pope discovered through video and testimony that the weapon was in fact planted by Newton.
In the reality of Ferguson and the fiction of Scandal, the United States Department of Justice opened independent investigations into the respective police departments. Prior to his arrest, Scandal’s Newton erupts into a rant about Brandon Parker and “those people” – how he consistently referred to African Americans in the neighborhood – not having respect for police authority. Newton spits in Olivia’s face as he yells: “Brandon parker is dead because he didn’t have respect… He didn’t respect me. He didn’t respect my badge. Questioning my authority was not his right! His blood is not on my hands!” Shortly after, Newton is handcuffed and escorted into the back of a police car. Officer Wilson, on the other hand, gave a statement two months after the incident that Brown was aggressive and charged towards him. Wilson was not indicted by the St. Louis grand jury due to lack of evidence, an outcome that led to further rioting in Ferguson.
The real question therein lies: how can the solution to the situation in Scandal – one nearly parallel to the Ferguson shooting – serve as a model? The crowds of neighbors and activists in Scandal who gathered around Brandon Parker’s dead body spent days chanting and supporting Clarence’s stakeout, but did not proceed to rioting as the Ferguson community did. The Washington DC police force prepared to tear-gas the crowd, as the Ferguson force ultimately did, until Olivia Pope reminded the head officer that “the fact that they stand in groups and say things you do not like does not make them a mob, it makes them Americans.” Pope proceeded to join the chanting crowd. While the details of the on-screen and off-screen tragedies differ, there are tactics Rhimes used in her script that police enforcement and the American public should be adapting.
Olivia Pope’s position as an influential crisis manager was useful in demonstrating areas of necessary improvement in the world of law enforcement. Pope had an extremely difficult time receiving a subpoena for the video footage of the shooting, getting police officers to cooperate with her investigation, and persuading police forces to avoid tear-gassing and bullying a crowd of upset neighbors. Pope’s choice to listen to Brandon’s father and relentlessly pursue the police department were the two reasons that justice could be served, no one in the police force or White House were taking steps to assist her in solving the shooting.
The reason for this incredible resistance is due to a national (and worldwide) problem far more basic than our legal system: fundamentally inaccurate African American stereotypes. Rhimes epitomizes the heartrending acceptance of stereotype in a line spoken by Brandon’s father; he tells Pope that “even though [Brandon] wasn’t going to college, I put a University of Maryland sticker on my truck anyway so if he ever got pulled over the cops wouldn’t think he was just a thug.” There is a depressing truth behind this statement that no amount of television can solve, but Scandal’s Rhimes took a bold move in addressing it.
In Scandal, the initial issue was the opposition of police force to cooperate with Olivia Pope, a person whose occupation and task demanded her to retrieve evidence that was being withheld from her. Once the video footage was retrieved and the truth was out, the underlying problem of racism and inflated authority in the police force reared its ugly head. If these problems could have been dealt with in the Ferguson case, where would it be? Is it even possible to avoid racism in a community where 67% of its members are African American, but only 3 of the 56 police officers are? With such drastic numbers, overcoming stereotypes becomes that much more important.
Shonda Rhimes captured an emotionally and legally difficult human conflict in “The Lawn Chair,” representing the incredulously tragic occurrence of the Ferguson shooting with new faces and details. Her script moved viewers nationwide to tears, but if she moved citizens nationwide to action, could this brutal battle of stereotypes and law enforcement come to an end?
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