Chauvin Murder Trial

[Rev. Rye]

I think I've mentioned before that I'm a big fan of Matt Orchard's content. He's got a new video specifically about the George Floyd case. While he normally tends to focus on police interrogations (just like Jim Can't Swim), in this case, that's not really an option, so he focuses on the trial as well as the event himself. And, yes, he not only shows the footage, but, in his words, "the most upsetting portions of that footage will not just be played in the time to come, they will be played repeatedly, they will sometimes be rewound, slowed down, zoomed in on, and annotated. Not for the purpose of exploiting a tragedy by gratuitously emphasising its most shocking aspects, but to best give viewers the best opportunity to make up their own mind as to the level of Derek Chauvin's level of legal culpability that has been debated in media and recently decided upon by a jury of his peers." As a result, I've put it in hide tags.

---

---

It's also worth noting that I recently finished re-reading Grendel, and, at times, rewatching the footage of George Floyd's death reminds me of Beowulf's beatdown of Grendel at the end.

Grendel, Grendel! You make the world by whispers, second by second. Are you blind to that? Whether you make it a grave or a garden of roses is not the point. Feel the wall: is it not hard? He smashes me against it, breaks open my forehead. Hard, yes! Observe the hardness, write it down in careful runes. Now sing of walls! Sing!
I howl.
Sing!
“I’m singing!”
Sing words! Sing raving hymns!
“You’re crazy. Ow!”
Sing!
“I sing of walls,” I howl. “Hooray for the hardness of walls!”
Terrible, he whispers. Terrible. He laughs and lets out fire.

Now watching it takes on a new level of horror as I imagine Chauvin demanding George Floyd sing of the hardness of tarmac.