Execution Of Justice Analysis

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Execution of Justice by Emily Mann used media and stage angles to make us feel we were directly witnessing the evidence and events as a contemporary citizen within the docudrama. Before seeing Execution of Justice, I subconsciously labelled the Moscone-Milk assassinations as a hate crime, but the performance thrust me into a world where my perspective started from square one. Consequently, as I was watching I was completely torn between condemning Dan White’s horrid crime as one of ignorant passion or cold-hearted prejudice. The beginning starts with a shoddy but homely film of Dan and his wife being a picture-perfect couple. This paints a charming portrait of Dan and his family, conveying how people thought of him and kicking off the process …show more content…

But unlike the jury, we see the examiners too. Alone, this video might not sway some to sympathize with Dan’s, but the compassionate pity from his questioners finished the job. We can hear and see them genuinely trust Dan pleading that he was in an ignorant state of mind, and that helps us believe him too. During the trial, we were forced to be deliberators. The prosecution and defense had tables and body language almost completely directed at us, as if we were the jury instead of the actors behind the lawyers on stage. Core witness testimonies were our main dish, placed in the middle-front of stage. But we had various ancillary first-hand accounts to chew on, and these testimonies were done on the left and right of the audience, in the back corners of stage, or other places that made them seem like small but unavoidable bits of information in our head. There were segments that split the enormous centerpiece in two, opening the doors to a different scene. Harvey’s political speech was an important one; inspirational music and patriotic images made me feel almost as excited as his supporters. Later, images of candles and sorrowful music made me feel the heartbreak of San Francisco’s homosexuals. Segments like these were balanced, not giving us the satisfaction of leaning one way and helping us ascertain the nature of Dan’s

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