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harlando 's review for:
Twelve Angry Men
by Reginald Rose
This is a good story, but I don't think it has aged well.
I've been reading a lot of fiction from the 50s-70s recently and I am interested in how some stories age well and some do not. I feel that this play did not. First, it's 12 angry men. An all male jury seems unlikely in contemporary america and probably wasn't always the case even in the 50s. They also seem to be a racially homogeneous group. That might still happen, but would be odd enough to remark upon. They are also an overtly racist bunch. The script doesn't specifically identify anyone by race, thought the defendant is clearly part of some identifiable low status racial/ethnic group, and the general ill-will towards that group is open and obvious. One juror's obsession with baseball could easily be replaced with football. The physical aggression between jurors is from another time. Americans do still get in each other's faces, but among the older, employed, white-guy crowd in the play I don't think that happens very often.
The jurors seem less fragmented than a contemporary jury might be. If this were a contemporary jury room I think a democrat-republican political and ideological fault line would appear to internally divide the jury. I also think that political identification would make it more difficult for the jurors to change their minds.
Is this a metaphor for the changing American attitudes towards race? Initially, one man in twelve doubts the defendants guilt. Gradually a few more are won over through arguments and facts and in the end the final racist holdout concedes to vote not guilty not out of a genuine change of heart, but to form a consensus with he others and to go home.
I've been reading a lot of fiction from the 50s-70s recently and I am interested in how some stories age well and some do not. I feel that this play did not. First, it's 12 angry men. An all male jury seems unlikely in contemporary america and probably wasn't always the case even in the 50s. They also seem to be a racially homogeneous group. That might still happen, but would be odd enough to remark upon. They are also an overtly racist bunch. The script doesn't specifically identify anyone by race, thought the defendant is clearly part of some identifiable low status racial/ethnic group, and the general ill-will towards that group is open and obvious. One juror's obsession with baseball could easily be replaced with football. The physical aggression between jurors is from another time. Americans do still get in each other's faces, but among the older, employed, white-guy crowd in the play I don't think that happens very often.
The jurors seem less fragmented than a contemporary jury might be. If this were a contemporary jury room I think a democrat-republican political and ideological fault line would appear to internally divide the jury. I also think that political identification would make it more difficult for the jurors to change their minds.
Is this a metaphor for the changing American attitudes towards race? Initially, one man in twelve doubts the defendants guilt. Gradually a few more are won over through arguments and facts and in the end the final racist holdout concedes to vote not guilty not out of a genuine change of heart, but to form a consensus with he others and to go home.