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. 

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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. 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.

FIRST EVER VIRAL VIDEO 
The story behind this dramatic footage narrated by its author GEORGE HOLLIDAY 
Produced and directed by ROBY MASSAROTTO

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. 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?

George Holliday reveals unknown details about the story behind the footage. A story of an Argentine plumber who inmigrated to the U.S. escaping from a turbulent country, Argentina in the 80s, looking for the American dream, and suddenly gets involved in a case of police brutallity, human rights leaders, the media preasure who took advantage of him, court rooms, millionaire demands, unfaithfull lawyers and covered settlements. 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... George Holliday," the man said. "You do not recognize me, do you?" Suddenly, Holliday realized it was Rodney King. "I just wanted to thank you. You saved my life."

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. 

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."