Time To Kill Themes

English Multimodal presentation

Question 4: Examine the way language has been used to promote particular values or attitudes in one text you have studied.

A time To Kill is a 1996 American crime drama film directed by Joel Schumacher. Set in Canton, Mississippi the film involves the rape of Carlee Hailey’s daughter Tonya, which then results in the arrest and subsequent killing of the two men by Carlee, who is found guilty and prosecuted for his actions and calls up Jake Brigance to defend him in court for his retaliation on Billy Ray and James Willard. Throughout the film we get an insight into the white and African American race and we are subjected to scenes that show the dominance and bigoted values white people believe in. Schumacher has

The music starts when it shows Tonya walking down the gravel road holding her bag of groceries that she has recently been sent to buy for her family. The music is mellow representing a peaceful calm afternoon walk back home until it is slowly over powered by the groan of the Utes motor. Even when the car noise over powers the music it is still faint and can be distinctly heard until a loud scream from Tonya echoes through the forest. Schumacher has purposely changed the audio from a calm mellow song to the scream of Tonya as she is tossed around, bashed, tied to the trees and raped by Billy Ray Cobb because it builds suspense to the audience. The scene shows quick glimpses off Tonya’s arms and legs being tied to the trees and the close up view of Billy Ray from Tonya’s perspective looking down at her. Through the camera angle being from Tonya’s perspective and the camera shot being a close up of Billy Ray it shows that Billy is dominant over Tonya and this again can be related back to the fact of white supremacy and that these bigoted men show no justice and respect to the African American’s even if it is a 10 year old innocent