12 Angry Men
The movie 12 Angry Men depicts a typical scene today: twelve jury members meeting to discuss a case presented to them and determine guilt or innocence of a young man accused of killing his own father. Usually the jury room is a place for discussion and debate, but the evidence has swayed all but one of the jurors into voting guilty. The one juror, Henry Fonda, is unsure of the defendant's guilt or innocence himself, even though his fellow jury members all disagree with him. The movie proceeds to tell the tale of how Henry Fonda uses excellent communication skills to sway the jury into actually thinking for themselves instead of thinking in the group's best interest and effectively voting that the young man was innocent. It is quite obvious that the jury members are in agreement as they have all eight symptoms of an afflicted group. The first symptom that the group has is the illusion of invulnerability. At the beginning of the movie, all the jurors really did not care that the defendant was going to be put to death. In fact, the garage owner and the messenger service owner seemed to think it was very fair that the boy was going to be killed. The first point that Henry Fonda worked on trying to break down was the fact that
Despite all this pressure, Fonda still continues to determine if there is a reasonable doubt. So take that however it pleases you. It shows the power and flaws of the judicial system. Another thought is that the government is on the same side as the lower class and will be there to help them out. The kid was also stereotyped as being young and immature, "just like all the kids out there today". Peter Biskind, who wrote Seeing Is Believing states that: Fonda, an architect by profession, constructs the alliance of moderates. The director or the writer might have hade some tension with their father and wanted to display a character on screen that was so upset at his son, that instead of trying to talk to him, he takes it out on a boy that is close to his son's age. Not only do they show society, they actually correspond to clearly defined political types. This film as a whole is trying to tell the audience how not perfect a jury can be. Well, that's that I hope you enjoyed reading this essay as much as I enjoyed typing it (But if your hand starts to cramp while reading this, you have a serious problem). Self-censorship also takes place in the hot, sweaty room. He used tactics of sympathy and placed the other juror's in the defendant's shoes and reminded them of their children. The jury also believed that they were acting as a moral group. He is always portrayed in good light, and is automatically considered the "good guy" of the film and is never relieved of this role. It shows people in a situation of high power arguing and showing their differences, many of the jury members are voting for their own personal benefit, and makes each jury member take on a level of personal responsibility.
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