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A Bloodstained Banner
Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in Twilight: Los Angeles, 1992, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Police Brutality, Corruption, and Systemic Racism
Healing, Progress, and Collective Consciousness
Justice, Perspective, and Ambiguity
Individuals vs. Institutions
Action vs. Symbolic Gesture
Summary
Analysis
Smith interviews Angela King, Rodney King’s aunt. They’re sitting in the back of Angela King’s boutique in Pasadena. King, “a powerful looking woman with a direct gaze,” smokes a cigarette as she speaks to Deavere Smith. King compares her life to the Dorothy Daindridge film Carmen, which is about a sex worker who meets a man in the Air Force, and his conservative lifestyle clashes with her wildness. King describes her father as conservative like the man in the Air Force. Once, King’s mother drank too much at the NCO club and stabbed her father. The incident sent her mother to jail.
Angela King’s brief description of her seemingly tumultuous childhood provides the reader with context about what Rodney King’s childhood years might have been like. King’s insight into her nephew as a child offers a personal look into a man whose identity, in the public realm, has been completely overtaken by his attack, trial, and the ensuing riots.
Themes
After King’s mother’s imprisonment, her family split up. Only King and her brother—Rodney’s father— stayed together. She remembers fishing along the Sacramento River with Rodney and some others. Once, when Rodney was 16 or 17, she saw him catch a big trout with his bare hands. Angela told Rodney he might have some “wild African[]” in him. She still hasn’t seen anyone else fish with their hands. Rodney had explained, “I ain’t got time to wait,” which makes Angela consider him “greedy.”
Angela King’s anecdote about Rodney King catching a fish portrays the young man as possessing a zeal for life, a little drive to grab at opportunities with his bare hands. This image of a young person with agency, drive, and a youthful impatience further humanizes Rodney King. That a person close to him conveys these details contributes additional poignance to the scene.
Themes
Angela transitions to talking about Rodney’s assault. She recalls how he had to go to three plastic surgeons to look like himself again. When Angela heard about the assault, she turned on the TV and saw Rodney’s car, and then Rodney. She remembers thinking he looked just like his father. Angela begins to cry as she remembers Rodney in the immediate aftermath of his assault; he could barely speak and looked “like hell.”
Angela King’s abrupt shift from remembering Rodney as a child to an account of his attack by police officers underscores the dehumanizing characteristic of the attack. The boy she just described catching fish in the river is now an adult man, who’s been beaten to look “like hell.” This, combined with Angela’s sudden tears, creates an emotional resonance that emphasizes the sheer brutality of the police’s attack.
Themes
Angela explains how, as children, they weren’t raised to think about Black and white—they had all kinds of friends, of all races and ethnicities. For this reason, it’s difficult to understand why Rodney’s assault happened to them. She remembers how the media came to talk to her after Rodney’s mother, Odessa, refused to talk to them. While Odessa didn’t want to get involved in politics, Angela was determined to seek justice for Rodney and put the real story out there. She admonishes the audacity of the officer who showed no remorse throughout the entire trial.
Despite Angela, Rodney, and the rest of their family not being raised to consider race to be relevant to their identities or relationships with others, none of this matters if the institutions in power—in this case, a corrupt police department—decide that race is relevant. Angela’s response to Rodney’s attack mirrors Zinzun’s response to his own experience with police brutality. Both repurpose their anguish to aid in the fight for justice.
Themes
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Angela remembers telling Rodney how the police were determined to present him in a negative light, determined to discredit him after the videotape of his assault had publicly embarrassed them. They even bugged his car, attaching a small device the size of a screw to the bumper to monitor him. She admits to using profanity when people call her to find out information about Rodney. She wants to be calm. But it’s impossible to “talk comfortable” in her situation.
A man named George Holliday recorded King’s beating on video and forwarded it to a local news station, resulting in widespread condemnation of what many saw as police officers’ excessive use of force. Angela King’s inability to “talk comfortable” and be calm in the aftermath of her nephew’s arrest, attack, and public defamation highlights her inability to escape systems of oppression.
Themes
