This short essay was written for a symposium marking the fiftieth anniversary of the classic film's appearance. With a great cast, it remains perhaps the most compelling portrayal of an American jury in action. I begin by noting eight details in Twelve Angry Men which are so obvious that their significance may be difficult to discern. I then discuss the significance of the film's being a drama, indeed, a drama about a drama. I discuss the kind of truth that a dramatic portrayal of the jury can aspire to and what it can add to social scientific accounts. Finally, I identify the six dramatic tensions that define the film's meaning.
Download the entire essay from SSRN here.
[Cross-posted to the Seamless Web].
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1 comment:
Thanks so much for this. When I taught a course in "critical thinking" I used this film to illustrate a fairly large number of informal fallacies in reasoning among the deliberating jurors (without getting into the legal issues as such). It is truly a wonderful film. I can't imagine anything remotely like it being made today.
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