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Scenes of Execution: Spectatorship, Political Responsibility, and State Killing in American Film

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  27 December 2018

Austin Sarat ,
Madeline Chan ,
Maia Cole ,
Melissa Lang ,
Nicholas Schcolnik ,
Jasjaap Sidhu  and
Nica Siegel
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Abstract

For as long as there have been motion pictures, scenes of execution have appeared in American film. This article examines those scenes over the course of the twentieth century and suggests that spectatorship, and what it means to watch, is central to scenes of execution in film. We are interested less in the intentions and politics of a filmmaker and more in what those scenes offer viewers. We argue that three central motifs of spectatorship characterized death penalty films during the more than 100‐year period that we studied. First, viewers are often positioned as members of an audience and many scenes of execution are presented in a highly theatrical fashion and, as a result, the line between spectatorship and witnessing is blurred. Second, in many scenes of execution viewers are brought “backstage” and provided chilling, intimate views of the machinery of death, privileged views unavailable outside of film. The third motif shifts the positioning of the viewer such that we stand in the shoes of those who are to be executed. We conclude by asking whether and how scenes of execution in American film provoke in viewers an awareness of the political responsibility inherent in their identities as democratic citizens in a killing state.

Type
Articles
Information
Law & Social Inquiry , Volume 39 , Issue 3 , Summer 2014 , pp. 690 - 719
Copyright
Copyright © American Bar Foundation, 2014 

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