The Trials Of Oz Analysis

Highlighting the theme of conflicting perspectives throughout Geoffrey Robertson's, 'The Trials Of Oz,' in particular his essays, The Romans in Britain and The Trials of Oz, is the bias nature of Geoffrey Robertson as he attempts to adopt his view of events, personalities and situations, to convince the reader on the validity of his argument. A perspective is a point of view, and a conflicting perspective is where two point of views clash. Similarly to this, is Jason Reitman's film'Thank You For Smoking' which is a satire of the perception of promoting smoking, but not to the level in which it is disregarded, as no character smokes on film.

‘The Trials of Oz’ is a representation of Robertson’s personal argument against a cautious thinking society and Robertson’s personal battle of being “the carrier of the banner of alternative society”. ‘The Trials of Oz’ is Robertson’s perspective of the Crown Prosecution against the Oz editors as a result of the corruption of public morals. He describes the editors of Oz as good and noble men who are about to be concerned with a “miscarriage of justice” through the hands of “Judge Argyle”. Textual form is used in his description of Judge Argyle’s backward actions which is used to place Robertson against Argyle as the man in right. This is clear in Robertson’s description of Argyle’s “three year sentences to three youths who vandalised telephone boxes” as Argyle witnessed these youths as “delinquents who represented the evils of permissible society”. Robertson exposes this “miscarriage of justice” in the form of the selected jury members over the desired by the Oz editors. Robertson juxtaposes the jury of “hardhats from every site in Kent” to the editors wanted “gay actor, the level mind...

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... of their industries, drugs alcahol or tobacco, contribute to more deaths in america each year. Naylor claims that "my product puts away 475 000 a year" and he takes great pleasure in that the level of alcohol related deaths is tiny in comparison "100 000 in a year? Wowee... a tragedy. Excuse me if I don’t exactly see terrorists getting excited kidnapping anyone from the alcohol industry". The emotionless facial alongside the close up shots of Naylor comparing the terrorist related deaths to alcohol related deaths highlights his lack of care towards human life. This is seen by the fast transition of shots between the two during the conversation, adding to the competetiveness of the argument. The foolish attitude of Naylor, ultimately representing the tobacco industry, outlines the satire nature of the scene which demonstrates the received lack of moral concern.