Netflix Battle: The Kalief Browder Story v. American Vandal
SPOILER ALERT: This post reveals significant plot information about both shows!
In a true, six-part mini-series called TIME: The Kalief Browder Story, we are given the tortuous story of a 16-year-old black child from the Bronx who, in a despicable violation of both human and civil rights, is imprisoned three years at Rikers Island for allegedly attempting to steal a backpack. When he cannot make bail, Kalief Browder ends up stuck at Rikers. As the district attorney’s office repeatedly asks multiple judges for more time to build their case, Browder is brutalized by other inmates and corrections officers (per video evidence obtained by The New Yorker).
More despicable is that Browder does over two years in solitary confinement, a stretch of time that, by all recognized standards of human rights, is deliberate torture. It’s true that Browder could have ‘taken a plea’ and, maybe, gotten out of Rikers Island earlier, but as he said in a post-imprisonment interview (shown in the first episode of the miniseries): “I felt like I was done wrong. I felt like something needed to be done about this. If I just say that I did it, nothing’s going to be done about it. I didn’t do it. No justice is served. Nobody hears nothing at all. I had to fight.”
“I felt like I was done wrong…I didn’t do it. No justice is served.” — Kalief Browder
TIME: The Kalief Browder Story reveals, in ‘binge-watching’ format, the application of justice to a black body as unforgiving, brutal, and faceless. Is it justice for any innocent human being to be imprisoned for three years when there is — quite literally — no evidence of a crime? Of course not; this is something every American can and should agree with.
During Browder’s imprisonment, the DA never had sufficient evidence to convict him, and his accuser (also the lone witness) fled to Mexico.
In contrast, American Vandal, an eight-part mockumentary (yes, this show is fiction!) about a mysterious act of vandalism at a school in Oceanside, California, looks at justice with both humor and irreverence. It’s a satirical play off popular crime documentaries like Serial, The Jinx, and Making a Murderer. In American Vandal, a white high school senior named Dylan Maxwell is accused of spray painting phallic images on twenty-seven faculty cars; the total damages exceed $100,000.
Unlike Kalief Browder, who was arrested and imprisoned under suspicion of stealing a backpack, Dylan Maxwell is expelled from school after a laughable tribunal and may face felony charges. Like Browder, Maxwell — it turns out — is wrongly accused of the crime, but Maxwell does not find himself in solitary confinement at one of the world’s toughest prisons.
In Maxwell’s case, a fellow teenager in his media class — intrepid reporter Peter Maldonado — decides to find the truth behind the vandalism. Hilarious investigative reportage ensues. Maldonado manages to piss off teachers and administrators while deconstructing questionable claims of a hand job received at a summer camp.
Though we see two teenage boys falsely accused of criminal activity in these binge-worthy programs, we see far different applications of justice and responses to that application.
Maxwell, a known practical joker, is expelled from school and his stepfather ‘forces’ him to get a job working as a food delivery driver. In the first episode, Peter Maldonado asks who he is and Maxwell says, “My name is Dylan Maxwell and I’m…I don’t know, dude. I’m just Dylan. What do you mean, ‘who am I?’ That’s a stupid question.”
“I don’t know, dude. I’m just Dylan. What do you mean, ‘who am I?’” — Dylan Maxwell
Pretty aloof response given the ‘seriousness’ of the situation. To be sure, Maxwell is punished in a ‘bummer, dude’ kind of way, but it’s unlikely he’ll face imprisonment. He even remarks at one point, without so much as flinching, that he may have to pay $100,000.
American Vandal continues as a humorous procedural and eventually another student is revealed as the vandal (though not punished). The application of justice here is a revocation of certain privileges for Maxwell. Oh, and he is denied college admission to CU-Boulder.
Bummer, dude!
In looking at these two perspectives on justice, and how justice is portrayed and applied, we can see many immoral disparities. One might argue the mockumentary is fake — that may be, but I’d argue American Vandal displays a common assurance in white America that young people may make mistakes, and there are those who will work on their behalf to amend those mistakes.
In Kalief Browder’s case, until he was released and garnered significant press coverage, the opposite is true. For Browder, justice is a shadow hanging over his life. For Maxwell, justice is unfair and ridiculous, but it doesn’t threaten his personhood. After a couple years out of prison, Kalief Browder committed suicide. He was driven to this action, in part, after being deposed for a civil case he brought against the New York City legal system. The deposition, along with the mental illness he developed in solitary confinement, led to his death.
Here’s the horrible thing: Kalief Browder’s story is true, and he ends up dead. Not even the writers of American Vandal could prosecute their main character in such a way — too unfathomable!
Both these ‘binge-worthy’ series explore the concept of time. In the Browder documentary, the filmmakers use a clock motif and reveal sound bites of a detective interrogating the young teenager. Little does Browder know that, after questioning, time for him will slow to an excruciating pace on Rikers Island. In American Vandal, Peter Maldonado recreates a series of events surrounding the vandalism. He tries to find out if, based on location and duration, Dylan Maxwell could have done the deed (a clever ode to Serial).
After his release, Kalief Browder laments all the time he lost. What is it law enforcement officers say? Oh, right: ’Do the crime, do the time.’ Browder’s refusal to take a plea deal is related to his sense of time — he understands that a felony on his record makes him a delinquent for all time.
In his book Discipline & Punish, Michel Foucault makes clear how delinquency transcends all else when he writes, “The introduction of the ‘biographical’ is important in the history of penality. Because it establishes the ‘criminal’ as existing before the crime and even outside it.” This is the target of Browder’s courage; he is willing to sacrifice three years of his life in exchange for an eternity of innocence.
Kalief Browder had a true understanding and sense of time.
TIME: The Kalief Browder Story and American Vandal are both available on Netflix.
