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To Open a Door and Look Inside: Dead Man Walking as a Prima Facie Case

2010; Taylor & Francis; Volume: 74; Issue: 3 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1080/10570311003767175

1745-1027

George N. Dionisopoulos,

Crime, Deviance, and Social Control

This essay examines the 1996 film Dead Man Walking as a prima facie case, exploring how writer, director, and co-producer Tim Robbins structured the movie so that it would serve as a catalyst to stimulate discussion concerning capital punishment. To explore this idea this essay adopts White's critical perspective of “imaginary participation” to suggest that the interactions of the film's persuasive communities enacted a strategy Rasmussen and Downey termed dialectical disorientation, by creating and exacerbating irresolvable tension between competing and irreconcilable perspectives concerning the death penalty.