After more than fifty years passed, Sidney Lumet’s Twelve Angry Men (1957) still seems to be a milestone in the genre of courtroom drama. Within these years, popular culture transformed, and more people wanted to watch and read thrillers which Hollywood has shown great interest on. However, the characteristic of other works, like forensic mysteries, have settings outside the courtyard, the thrill is easier to evoke if the characters are in action. Twelve Angry Men differs in this respect. Twelve “white and male” jurors sitting in a hot room sweating and prejudiced; trying to decide upon whether a young boy from the slums should live or die, by trying to solve if he murdered his father or not. While it is worthy of recognition that the film is shot mostly in only one room, it is also remarkable that the film is enlarging the perspective of the audience about the “truth” while dealing with the notions of “justice” and “prejudice”, and at the same time evaluating the American legal system which is dependant on jury system. However, the film has its discrepancies and defects regarding the legal issues.
The film puts the audience in the same shoes as a juror who has not followed the trial with attention. While in the room with the other jurors talking to each other, the audience gets affected by the arguments of the jurors, since the court is a complete unknown to the audience. The tendency of the jurors inside the room affects the audience through the film, it may almost be seen as a social/psychological experiment that the film performed unknowingly.
The film appears to have a deductive logic. There is an assumption that the boy is guilty at first, the events are quite clear, and the people who find the boy “guilty” have not thought about it much. However, with the arguments and the points which Juror #8 (Henry Fonda) draws attention on, slowly, the hasty decision of sending a boy to his death starts to wear off. A device used to metaphorically enhance this change may be the change of weather; the sweltering hot weather of the jury’s prejudiced death sentence changes into a refreshing summer rain with the “not guilty” votes. Juror #8, therefore, acts as collective common sense for the jury.
The film handles prejudice in such different perspectives; peer pressure, class struggles, and social order are some of them. It is hard to assert that the film used visual symbols in the movie; while the film heavily depended on dialogues and the script. The ideas of the jurors are acting as symbols which can be seen on larger scales among society. Juror #2 is a significant character in the film regarding prejudice. One of the most effective dialogues in the script is formed with the help of his temper concerning the accused. He has problems with his own son, and he had not seen him for two years. He says that he told his son "I'm gonna make a man out of you if I have to break you in two trying" when he run away from a fight at nine years old, and after he succeeds to make a man out of him, they had a fight. It is understandable that the Juror #2 is taking the case personally, for he thinks himself at the same spot with the deceased father. When he is called a sadist by Juror #8, because he advocates the boy’s death more than anyone, he yells “I’ll kill him!” and this is the breaking point of the jury in a way, for one of the witnesses heard the boy saying “I’m gonna kill you”, and Juror #8 was trying to prove that this sentence could be used anywhere, in any context, without actually ending up with a real murder. Thus, Juror #2 creates an anti-thesis for the rest of the jury, unknowingly. His antagonistic behavior is based on past experiences that mutilated his emotions, thus he is bitter and negative.
Juror #7, who is a baseball fan, is another key character. He wants to end the meeting with the jury soon, just to catch a baseball game on time, and he finds the boy guilty. When he talks with Juror #8, he tells that the meeting and the ball game has no difference at all. According to the film, it is true; it is like gambling whether the boy is guilty or not. When more and more people started to vote “not guilty” he changes his vote too . When Juror #11 asks why he has done it, he has no explanation, because for that man, the whole trial is just a game, just a transitory phase to something important. This man can be read as the negative side of the democratic elections, he has no idea about the trial whatsoever, but he is willing to choose wrong (or right) for his own purposes.
Juror #10 represents the prejudiced and narrow-minded attitude in democracies. He is depicted as a sweaty businessman, who does not like any minorities (the accused boy is a Latino) and people living in slums and thinks that they are capable of committing any kind of offence. He is “prejudice” incarnate. After several attempts to refute him, he starts his rant about how the minorities and slum residents are untrustworthy and evil, and most importantly, it is in their blood. The only thing the other Jurors do is to walk away from him, and ignore him. This ignorance is meaningful, for the old Juror #9 talked about a witness who is an old man, could have distorted the evidence just because he wants to draw attention; for a man wants to be heard, listened and cared. Juror #9 understands how it feels to be unheard and gradually lowers his voice and secludes himself to a corner. The film may be giving advice on how people should deal with mindless prejudice, shunning it off and ignoring.
Juror #8, the reasonable man, first brings the jurors most obviously not of the dominant group –who are dominant in every aspect of life with their racial and sexual identities; white males- to his side: the old man, the man from the slums, the immigrant, and the effeminate. Juror #3 calls the group "these old ladies." But, in the end, even he comes around. Reason is justified by first aligning the others with Juror #8 as representative of what is best about the dominant group, and then by demonstrating that the apparently most masculine representative (#3) of the group's reason is actually driven by suppressed emotion.
The film mostly leads the audience to think positively about other people. It indicates that individual good will towards all people would be to the benefit of society. Excessive strictness should not necessarily be beneficial, similarly to the methodic “guilty” vote of Juror #4 who is a broker. He represents the side of the society which had to be persuaded with logic and evidences. While he has the strongest argument about why the boy is guilty, he also has a relatively open mind compared to the others, and he was willing to listen. Thus, it has been possible to persuade him with facts, and to create a reasonable doubt in him.
The social issues are also addressed in the film, such as Juror #6 who lived in a slum in his whole life and this makes him bitter about the case. The old witness, who may have distorted the story of murder to receive attention for the first time in his life, the woman, who says that she saw the murder, is trying to look younger with make-up and clothes. Also, the boy who is accused with murdering his father lived in the slums for eighteen years, endured physical pain, and maybe being trialed for a crime he did not commit. The film does not bring any solution to any of these issues, but addressing them to be acknowledged or make people aware of them .
The film may be criticized in some aspects. One of them is while the film is sending explicit messages about the rights of minorities; the court has an all-white jury. In practice where a Latino or African-American is tried, the court tends to have an all-white jury. The jury selection is susceptible to manipulation and excluding members of minority groups is an abused and common practice . The film therefore may seem hypocritical at some point. There is only one immigrant in the jury, who has a European descendant, which is not really enough to say that the jury is diverse. The accused is a Latino, possibly Puerto Rican, and there is no in the jury that is a minority that can sympathize with him, be it a black person or a Latino. Also there are no women in the film or in the jury, and as a film which has its main theme as having no prejudice whatsoever, the film’s message seems a bit hollow. What is needed to be said here that the whole society cannot be represented by the selected Jury of Twelve Angry Men. American legal system based on juries is an effective but historically flawed formation. The society cannot be represented by twelve white males, while they are privileged already as being white Anglo males, (apart from the European immigrant) they are also deciding a suppressed and undermined young man’s life. They are therefore privileged in court too. The least privileged one, the one coming from slums, is in better condition than a woman, or a non-white.
However, what can contemporarily seen as defects can be also read as further criticisms in the film. The film clearly shows that the legal structure is important but the public conscience also matters. In the film, with the representation of the jury, the measure is the public conscience. The film shows the fragility of this structure, by depicting a case that can be affected by many prejudices. An intriguing thought is, in another case, where the person found not guilty and predefined values of the jury dictates them to execute him, an innocent people may go to death because of the personal interests and preconceptions of the jury. This may serve as a criticism and even warning to the American legal system which is constructed with jury system, showing how it can malfunction.
The film, Twelve Angry Men, is a remarkable production, not only for how it has been directed, its script, or the acting; but for its illuminative narrative that shows the audience how prejudice affects our judgments, and why it should be changed for good. It also rekindles a belief for democracy, where people can talk and decide on important matters equally and where everyone has the right to speak up. All jurors represent some behavioral pattern that can be attributed to the society in general, but at the end, all of them acknowledge the importance of having a “reasonable doubt” where necessary. Twelve Angry Men states the best case for keeping the jury system as it is. Juries can serve as the conscience of the community, as one final protection against the risk that the criminal law machine may falsely accuse an innocent person. As Time review on this film says, “the law is no better than the people who enforce it, and the people who enforce it are all too human” .
Works Cited
Abramson, Jeffrey. “Anger at Angry Jurors.” Chicago-Kent Law Review 82.2 (2007): 591-600. Web. 25 Oct. 2010.
Asimow M, Bergman P. “Reel Justice: The Courtroom Goes to the Movies.” Andrews and McMeel Pres. 1996. 265-269
“Cinema: New Picture”. Time. Apr. 29, 1957: 94.
Denvir, John. “Legal Reelism: Movies as Legal Texts.” University of Illinois Press. 1996. 244-259.
DiPerna, Paula. “All-White Juries are no Accident.” The Nation Jan. 21 (1984): 45-48. Web. 22 Oct. 2010.
Greenfield, S, Osborn, G and Robson, P. “Film and the Law.” Cavendish Publishing Limited. 2001.
Lumet, Sidney. “Twelve Angry Men.” Perf. Henry Fonda. Orion-Nova Productions, 1957.
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