Discrimination In 12 Angry Men

It is a natural human instinct to want to be acknowledge by your peers, yet it is also important to be a critical thinker. Irving Janis in 1972 created the term groupthink. He believed groupthink occurs inside a group of similar people that want to keep from being different, resulting in incoherent decision-making. The 1957 film "12 Angry Men," uses groupthink, which influenced the verdict vote in the case of a teenager accused of murdering his father. The purpose of this essay is to examine groupthink and to represent Dr. Irving Janis’ symptoms of groupthink in the film.

The Film 12 Angry Men, written by Reginald Rose, is a film written about the American jury system. In the film, as in any part in life, emotions are a tricky thing; This is especially true for the 3rd, 7th, and 8th jurors. One of the main themes in the film questions that of the emotions of the jurors. That question is: Is it possible to keep personal prejudice and emotions out of a trial? Is this even a good or bad thing? The film is all about this issue, and the question remains until the end of the play.

"Don 't judge a book by its cover" is a famous saying that some of us heard it before and some of us experienced it. 12 jurors were experiencing this quote when they gathered to decide whether a young boy is guilty by killing his father or not. Juror 2 stated, "Well, anyway, I think he was guilty" (6). Juror 2 represent most of us, as sometimes we judge from what we hear and not from what we see. The 12 jurors are from various backgrounds and each one has a distinctive personality.

In these two critically-acclaimed movies, government ignorance is explored in distinct ways. In 12 Angry Men, a jury of 12 men is sent to determine the fate of an 18-year-old slum-raised Latino boy accused of stabbing his father to death. A guilty verdict means an automatic death sentence. In Beasts of the Southern Wild we are taken on an adventure alongside Hushpuppy, an African-American six-year old, who lives on a poverty-stricken island called the Bathtub and whose father’s tough love prepares her for a harsh world. As completely opposite as these two perspectives seem, each represents opposing sides of social injustice and ultimately deliver similar messages.

People act upon what they think. Within “12 Angry Men”, all of the jurors have an opinion but some voice their more than others. One juror in particular, Juror Ten, voices his opinion about the boy in question. Repeatedly throughout the play, Juror Ten makes many thoughtless and hurtful comments about a certain kind of people. It is clear that Juror Ten’s uncompromising belief that the accused is guilty is because of his dislike for the boy’s race.

The main priority is to discuss the defendant’s innocence or guilt. By keeping the subject of discussion on the boy, Juror Eight, has an easier time convincing the rest of the jury that he is not guilty of the murder of his father. Juror Three, the main antagonist of Twelve Angry Men, doesn’t possess the perseverance that Juror Eight does. Juror Three doesn’t have a reasonable cause, which in turn weakens his argument. His bottled up emotions over his son become a problem later in the play when

William Jennings Bryan once said, “Never be afraid to stand with the minority when the minority is right, for the minority which is right will one day be the majority”. Standing up to the majority is vital, it gives individuals the opportunity to express their individual, unique opinions and experiences. It allows the majority to become open to diversity and the cultures that come along with it. This has been shown throughout history, Martin Luther King Jr’s “I Have a Dream” speech, is an instance of this. This speech encapsulated all that he was fighting for, for the African American minority in America and their rights. MLK standing up to the majority of white people was a significant piece of American and African American history and was

The Power of Three Perspectives One can be easily mislead or persuade in a direction they do not agree with. However this is not the case with Juror 8 (Mr. Davis) in the film 12 Angry Men. In this film, twelve jurors try to identify whether or not the convicted eighteen year-old boy is guilty of murdering his father with a switchblade knife. If the puerto-rican boy is found guilty, he will be sent to the electric chair and sentenced to death.

While all of the other men have changed their vote to a not guilty verdict, the third jurors remains with his original belief. Even in the very end of the play, he acts hostile against the others trying to change his mind, in saying “Do you think I’m an idiot or something?” (Rose 72). One juror that seems almost impervious to argumentative fallacies and peer pressure is Juror 8. Juror almost displays the ideal juror, and the rest tend to mimic the flaws of the system.

Why should the color of someone’s skin effect a crime that was committed? In the vignette of “Twelve Angry Men” the author, Reginald Rose addresses racism. According to act three on page 27 the Jurors are coming to a vote on whether or not the boy was guilty or not. The boy claimed that he wasn’t guilty of committing a premeditated murder but Juror number ten said otherwise. The evidence that is shown to prove this point is when all the jurors are all at the table and they all go to the window and turn their backs towards juror number ten, specifically juror numbers three and four. This happened while the vote was nine to three, nine voted innocent and three voted guilty. Three and four turned their backs towards number ten because they disagreed on why they thought the boy was guilty.

The script introduces the viewers to the typical behavior and the state of mind of these jurors, who surprisingly turn out to be the last to change their opinions from “guilty” to “not guilty”. Juror#3 the frustrated father whose personal conflicts and experiences influence his view of the accused’s crime is very desperate to make it clear that his mind is already made up before the deliberations even start. Similar

Twelve Angry Men is in many ways a love letter to the American legal justice system. We find here eleven men, swayed to conclusions by prejudices, past experience, and short-sightedness, challenged by one man who holds himself and his peers to a higher standard of justice, demanding that this marginalized member of society be given his due process. We see the jurors struggle between the two, seemingly conflicting, purposes of a jury, to punish the guilty and to protect the innocent. It proves, however, that the logic of the American trial-by-jury system does work.

He displays the tendency of an introverted Pragmatist with the Thinker preferences. Therefore, it takes him very long and requires several opinions laid out by other Jurors to change his mind from ‘guilty’ to ‘not guilty’. At the same time, he was firm and unafraid to stand up for himself once he changed his vote. He is sympathetic towards the boy as he grew up in the slum himself which caused him to disagree with Juror 3 numerous time. Therefore, his own upbringing in the slum makes him more knowledgeable about how the boy could have handled the switchblades and also the traits of living in the slum in

In "twelve angry men," we can see how prejudice has its own way with the cloak of justice. Personal prejudice is most strongly evident in the characters of Juror #3 and Juror #10. At the beginning of story, Juror #3 immediately claimed that the case was simple and the defendant’s guilt was obvious. Although he was not a new juror and ought to be experienced

The play “Twelve Angry Men” shows that relying on twelve people for a life sentencing situation could be bad for the justice system. The justice system could be bad in at least three ways by people being biased, fighting for the wrong side, and people having no common sense.