The Thin Blue Line Summary

769 Words2 Pages

Anthony Maddalon, “Movie Response TBL”, 2/13/17, Alicia Hammond [section 01D]
The movie The Thin Blue Line by Errol Morris inadvertently touches on the issues of memory and how memory can be linked to bias. One being the different schemas for crime scenes, criminals, kids, out of towners, and townspeople. From these schemas and spreading activation, bias can be shown in the depictive image formed.
The documentary gathered witness statements and interviews to show re-enactments throughout the film. These re-enactments changed based on what the interviewee could remember from the case. These different re-enactments showed the viewer not just verbally, but visually that the stories conflicted or were open to interpretation. Viewers being able to better conceptualize the inconsistencies in the case caused an impact on their opinions. In this way Errol Morris creates a higher definition depictive image for the visual working memory than what was being built from the propositional code viewers had of the case. With more information on the case, viewers with prior memories or knowledge of the case had a reason to question if justice was met. …show more content…

For example the police wanted vengeance and to close the case as quick as possible so any lead they could get they ran with, without checking credibility. For the witnesses they can be coached or primed into remember something in a specific way. At least one of the witnesses’ certainty in their memory was likely decided by money. The defense lawyer’s, Edith James, was aware that her memory was fallible and was less likely to state something as fact. Randall Adams’ memories were a retelling of what he remembers without trying to guess the other facts of the case. David Harris memories of the case in the interviews talks of a kid that got in over his

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