TWELVE ANGRY MEN AND ONE DISMISSED JURORby Daniel PennyI was recently called up by the State of New
TWELVE ANGRY MEN AND ONE DISMISSED JURORby Daniel PennyI was recently called up by the State of New York to serve on a jury. Until then, I’d successfully postponed every previous summons, so I didn’t know what to expect. As a kind of low effort piece of research, I decided to consult a favorite courtroom drama: Twelve Angry Men.When I’m not serving as a juror or scribbling about clothes, I teach creative writing, and Twelve Angry Men is one of my favorite stories to discuss with students. Set in New York in the 1950s, 12 jurors are sent back to the jury room to decide the fate of an offscreen defendant accused of murdering his father. The judge reminds them that “the penalty is death.” Everybody is convinced of the boy’s guilt except for one man, Juror Number 8, played by Henry Fonda. A battle of wits, persuasion, and bluster ensues, as Fonda chips away at the prosecution’s argument and slowly overturns the jurors’ assumptions about what a “poor kid from a slum background” is capable of. Side note: Amy Schumer has updated this classic film to satirize contemporary beauty standards–twelve male jurors must decide if “potato-face” Schumer is hot enough to be on TV. It’s worth watching just to hear Paul Giamatti use the phrase “reasonable chub.”One of the reasons I teach 12 Angry Men (aside from its critical attitude toward the justice system) is because of how distinct Reginald Rose is able to make his characters–despite the fact that none of them have names and we never get to see them outside the courtroom. On paper, Rose does this with dialogue–jurors each have a very particular way of speaking: cracking jokes, talking in short, clipped sentences, or pausing with uncertainty. But in the film version, costume plays just as big a part in telling the viewer what kind of a man each juror is.All of these men begin as a type. A wisecracking guy in a rush to get to a ball game wears a sport coat, open polo, and straw hat. An ad-man off Madison Avenue appears in a suit with a trim white shirt, skinny tie, and slicked back hair. He doodles absent-mindedly during deliberation. Another juror wears an expensive looking structured suit and gold-rimmed glasses, and speaks in highly logical paragraphs. We are meant to think of him as a banker, or perhaps an executive. (Styleforum member “upr_crust” bears an uncanny resemblance.) The jurors’ costumes visually reflect their occupations, their personalities, and worldviews. However, by the end of the film, what each man thought he knew about the others has been complicated or overturned, and the audience is left to ponder the ambiguity of appearances.In real life, I had a much harder time getting a bead on my fellow jurors, perhaps because the year was 2017, and we were all dressed so casually. As in 12 Angry Men, it was a hot day, and most people wore short sleeves–whereas the men in the film had chosen to sweat in dignity. Some of us were nurses, teachers, or retired, but we had each dressed according to our personal tastes rather than attempting to telegraph our station in life. The only people whose jobs I could identify just by looking at them were the police officers and the lawyers; even the judge had chosen to skip her robe for the jury selection process.At the end of the day, I walked out of the courtroom having been dismissed during the voir dire. Next to “yoga” and “walking my dog” I had included my support of the Democratic Socialists of America in my list of hobbies–hoping to set off a red flag no sane attorney could overlook. I was happy to know I wouldn’t be stuck on a wooden bench for three weeks deciding a medical malpractice lawsuit, but I was also a little disappointed in my day in court. Where were the sheets of sweat, the smoking, the hats and the funny ties? The day was less suspenseful and more grindingly boring than I’d anticipated–I spent most of my time waiting around, filling out forms, and listening for my name to be called. Still, things in the criminal justice system have improved since the era of 12 Angry Men. At least this court was air-conditioned.Quality content, like quality clothing, ages well. This post first appeared on the No Man blog in 2018. -- source link