The People v. O.J. Simpson: American Crime Story opens aggressively, reusing stock footage to remind us viewers of a social wound we thought maybe had healed, before jumping us ahead several years in its cultural narrative.  The show uses news clips of the LA riots surrounding the beating of Rodney King by the LAPD and the subsequent trial to call to mind the violent, barely soothed anger that served as the backdrop for the trial of the century, before using a jarring “2 Years Later” transition text to move us ahead in the narrative of 90s LA.  It’s effective and, strangely, reminiscent of the opening of Ghostbusters 2.  That these two works share an opening is not just coincidence, though; their themes dovetail as well.  The series about post-prime O.J., like the film about ghosts, seeks to explore how our society copes with the unwanted and painful exposure of suppressed trauma.