24 Angry Men
Why we should keep returning to this American fable.
The American judicial system has many ridiculous aspects, and our reliance on juries isn’t without scrutiny. As Twitter user soul nate noted, “jury duty is a wild concept. whenever the government wants, they can just be like, ‘call off work bestie, we need you to solve a murder 🥰 here’s fifteen dollars.”
But juries also appeal to a sense of duty and reason. We put criminal trials in the hands of average citizens in the hope that if they converse straightforwardly about the case, they can use their vast array of experiences, rationality, and connection with their fellow citizens to push past their petty grievances, personal resentments, and shallow desires.
The 1957 Sidney Lumet film 12 Angry Men and William Friedkin’s 1997 remake were on my mind this past week after this week’s election results, where a majority of Americans decided to (and this is the kindest way I know how to put it) make a controversial choice for the Presidency as well as majorities of the Senate and House. Any democratic system only works if people come to it as informed citizens seeking to make a fair and just decision. It’s easy to lose faith in the democratic process after last week since a quirk of democracy is that the people can choose to end that system of government.
The conflict in 12 Angry Men is not about innocent versus guilty; it’s about idealism about American citizens versus the hard realities of individual prejudices and frailty. It’s a fable because idealism and moral fortitude win out. And like all good fables, it should be told and retold so its instructiveness is never lost.
For those that haven’t seen either movie, the premise is straightforward: 12 jurors must decide the fate of a young man accused of murder. On their first vote, 11 of the jurors vote to convict, with a lone holdout thinking the case is worth more discussion. Through the process of deliberation, we see the other jurors start to change their votes based on various rationales, some relating to the case but others based on their prejudices.
After this past week, it’s easy to sink into depression and believe that better things aren’t possible. That there’s no way to convince anyone of anything. I’m certainly not on the other side of my grief, sadness, fear, and anger about America and how we’ve come to this. But I also know that Americans—in particular, Americans who were not born white, male, heterosexual, and cis-gendered—never had the option of checking out. John Lewis didn’t march over the Edmund Pettis Bridge in Selma, Alabama, and get his head kicked in for funsies. Suffragettes didn’t fight for the vote because they lacked anything else to fill their time. People protest and organize because even though they’re outmatched by a hardened status quo and powerful actors, they believe better things are possible. Pragmatism bereft of idealism is mercenary and sociopathic.
Idealism powers 12 Angry Men. It has to. The particulars of the murder case are well-made and useful, but all the dramatic tension comes from the characters and the underlying belief that an impassioned, well-reasoned argument can change hearts and minds. When we look around, we may not feel like that’s true anymore. Clint Eastwood’s latest, Juror #2, is a bleaker take on the jury process as it argues that any claim for leniency must arise from personal benefit rather than reasonable doubt and that no matter what, there will be those whose minds can never be changed. We also live in a world where we thought we’d have access to limitless information and instead find ourselves imprisoned in algorithmically determined bubbles, deluges of misinformation, and relentless solipsism. Democracy, which has always teetered between the collaborative and the competitive, now falls firmly into the latter, with any argument, no matter how fallacious, being used to “defeat” a contrary point of view. How could any jury function under such circumstances?
Perhaps it can’t, but aspiring to something better is not inherently propagandistic or mendacious. People enjoy Star Wars not because they think the good guys always topple the evil empire but because it’s inspiring to think that they can. Is it a false hope? Maybe, but nihilism takes us nowhere. The same follows with 12 Angry Men, which asks us to believe that a man who feels so thoroughly betrayed by his son could somehow be turned to a not guilty verdict for a case of a son who has murdered his father. This is not a true story but an argument for the audience: you are better than your basest desire. You don’t have to inflict pain on another because of something that you carried with you into that jury room. You can, if you like, do your best by your fellow man and your country, not by automatically granting a not guilty verdict, but by saying, “We’re in this project together, and I don’t have to step on your neck to keep my head above water.”
A majority of Americans offered a different view this week, and we’ll all pay the price for it in the years to come. It’s certainly possible that American democracy cannot withstand the capitalistic and technological forces at work in the 21st century. That democracy, no matter how well-intentioned, will fall to the urges of a citizenry that puts short-term individual gain ahead of their neighbor’s wellbeing. But if we give into our cynicism, then there’s not much left but smarm, a way to look down at the possibility of Eden while reclining on a pile of garbage.
That’s why we need 12 Angry Men, and we need it more than once every 40 years. The 1957 movie is perfect, and Friedkin was right to try his hand at it in 1997 with a different cast. Some of the choices are obvious, like aiming for a racially diverse jury as opposed to the white guys of the original. Others don’t work as well, like opting for elderly actors to play almost half the jurors despite the prestige Oscar-winners Jack Lemmon and George C. Scott bring to the picture. But the most important thing is to keep telling this story again and again because we’re a part of this democracy. Like anyone called for jury duty, we’re in this whether we want to be or not.
12 Angry Men is a story of civic duty and what we owe to each other past our baser instincts. It is a story that should be remade every decade with a different cast comprised of not only men but also women and non-binary people (call it “12 Angry Jurors” or something). It should come from different filmmakers who see our country differently than Sidney Lumet and William Friedkin did. The story is instructive, but it is also hopeful and timeless in the way the best stories are. 12 Angry Men isn’t merely about the importance of justice, but that if we have hard conversations and put in the work, we can arrive somewhere better than we started. We can do what’s right instead of what’s easy. Can we make this a better country for a majority of citizens rather than a privileged handful? When it comes to that question, I’d like to believe the jury’s still out.