Why I No Longer Like 12 Angry Men (1957)

Tactic Five: Mischaracterization

Mischaracterization is the act of showing something as happening in one specific way but putting a spin on it that makes it seem as if it was something else. A classic example of mischaracterization happens in Gone with the Wind (1939). In the infamous grand staircase scene, the movie explicitly shows that a belligerent Rhett Butler decides to terrorize and later rape Scarlett O’Hara in a drunken, jealous rage. But then in the next scene, the movie implies that he had really made love to her in a fit of passion.

Rose also employed this tactic. The very first case of mischaracterization happens in the opening scene of the movie. In this scene, The Foreman (Juror 1, played by Martin Balsam) calls for a preliminary vote. When it comes out 11-1, immediately Juror 8 makes a big stink about it, acting as if the jurors had rendered their verdict right then and there, and in a matter of seconds. However, that’s clearly what they weren’t doing. They were just trying to get a sense of where everyone stood before they could discuss the trial in more detail.

What is going on here? Well, right off the bat, there was a problem with 12 Angry Men’s premise. For the audience to believe in Juror 8’s crusade, it had to also accept that all 11 holdouts of the jury got the verdict wrong versus one man. Not only is this implausible, it becomes even more so when we later learn more about the other holdouts and how they came to their decision in the first place. What we learn is that all 11 men arrived at their guilty verdict for a number of different reasons based purely on the facts of the case as presented during the trial. These facts, once you put them together like pieces of a jigsaw puzzle, made an even stronger case for the defendant’s guilt and left no room for doubt.

To be fair, it’s a possibility that 11 different people with 7-8 different personalities coming from 6-7 different backgrounds could’ve collectively come up with the wrong verdict for 5 completely different wrong reasons. But that’s not what happened here. We had 11 different men–each from a vastly different background–who were all in agreement about the same set of facts. One of them even came from the same background as the defendant. What were the odds that they were completely wrong?

Rose was aware that audience members would wonder about this, too, about how Juror 8 could be oh, so right versus the other 11 men who had all come up with their verdict based on the facts. So, via mischaracterization, he had Juror 8 make such a big stink about the preliminary vote that the impression was left in the mind’s audience that it was not only the final verdict, but that the jurors hadn’t taken the time to arrive at it without really thinking about it. This mischaracterization then cast anything that the jurors argued after this scene in doubt, so that when it eventually came to light that they had listened to the facts of the trial carefully, their arguments could be dismissed as hasty and careless.

Rose used this tactic mischaracterization over and over again in 12 Angry Men, in which he emphatically showed X happening, but mischaracterized it as Y. Let us take, for example, The Sports Fanatic and this issue of the baseball game he keeps obsessing over.

The Sports Fanatic is one of the four holdouts in 12 Angry Men. He doesn’t believe one word of what Juror 8 is saying and is not going to change his mind no matter what. He stated as much right from the beginning and even said multiple times that no matter how long Juror 8 talked and talked he wasn’t going to budge. The reason why is that he believed, based on the facts presented in the case, that the defendant was 100% guilty. The facts were: 1) There was a motive. 2) A woman saw the murder through the windows of an elevated train. 3) A witness heard the defendant yell, “I’m going to kill you,” then something hit the floor. 4) A witness saw the defendant running out of the building around the time of the murder. 5) A rare switchblade that the defendant owned was used in the murder. 6) The defendant couldn’t recall what movie he saw the night of the murder, but used the movies as his alibi.

When the deliberation dragged on and on, he realized that either the other holdouts like himself would refuse to change their vote (resulting in a hung jury) or that he would wind up being the one holdout needing to convince everyone else that the defendant was guilty. This is why he changed his vote to “not guilty.” Of course, Rose didn’t want you to realize this, so he mischaracterized The Sports Fanatic’s frustration by having The Watchmaker sanctimoniously dress him down for switching a vote to see a baseball game. It’s mischaracterization because though The Sports Fanatic may have tactlessly whined about the ball game, he only did that when everyone took minor breaks during deliberation. He never did it during the course of arguing the case itself. If you listen to the dialogue (and take notes), you’ll see for yourself that he only ever mentioned the ball game in idle chitchat with the other jurors during downtime, never during deliberation.

The same thing happens with the scene in which The Bigot starts spouting off at the mouth about how “dangerous” people like the defendants are, and how they can’t be trusted. What The Bigot said was terrible, but the reason why he goes on a rant is Rose, once again, resorting to mischaracterization.

Again, if you pay attention to The Bigot’s reasoning for voting guilty, you will find that like The Sports Fanatic, Bully and Stockbroker, he was the most adamant about sticking to the facts of the case.  He was also one of the jurors who said that he would never change his mind no matter how much Juror 8 talked because the witnesses and testimony (the switchblade, defendant’s motives, weak alibi, criminal history, etc.) pointed to the defendant’s guilt. (Again, I invite you to take notes while watching the film).

The reason why The Bigot starts going on a rant about “them” and “they” is the reason why The Sports Fanatic switched his vote. He became so angry and frustrated by how illogical the jurors were being that he basically thought, “Screw this. The facts are as plain as the nose on their faces but they want to ignore them. If I can’t appeal to their reason, I’ll appeal to their bigotry instead.” This is no different from when people start becoming more and more insulting as they get angry in trying to persuade someone to their point of view about someone. For example, someone who’s been wrongly ticketed for speeding might at first complain about how unfair the ticket is, then wind up ranting about how “stupid” all police officers are or how this is all the result of crooked “Democrats” or “Republicans” in office.

By the way, let’s talk about The Bully again, so I can show in no uncertain terms how cynical and manipulative 12 Angry Men is. It is very easy to be seduced into believing that because he had father-son issues, he had voted guilty against the defendant initially out of spite towards his son. In other words, he had let his “personal issues” get in the way of judging the trial accurately and fairly.

But let’s think about this for a second. The man actually cries when he finally confronts the fact that his relationship with his son is irrevocably damaged. This suggests that he was never really filled with bitterness or anger but remorse. Not only that, he feels a tremendous amount of guilt over their broken relationship; as he tells it, his son became a hell raiser because he humiliated him for being a wimp.

Given all this, does it make sense that The Bully initially voted against the defendant to punish his son? Of course, it doesn’t. So, what on earth is really going on in that pivotal scene when he breaks down, switches his vote to “not guilty” and the picture of his son dramatically falls onto the table?

Well, remember that all throughout the film, The Bully kept attacking Juror 8 as a “bleeding heart.” Bleeding hearts are people who will often try to make a case for offenders by making them out to be victims of society or circumstances, such as, “Have pity on him for killing all those people; he was bullied as a kid,” or, “He’s been out of work for months now; it’s not his fault he robbed that liquor store.”

The reason why The Bully called Juror 8 for being one is that this is exactly what Juror 8 wanted him and the others to do–to not vote on the facts of the case but to consider letting the defendant off the hook because he came from a rough background. The Bully’s refusal to play “bleeding heart” when voting on the defendant’s guilt was the correct one to take. However, Reginald Rose deliberately mischaracterized his stance as one of sadism and cruelty. In other words, it wasn’t that The Bully was doing what he was supposed to do when deliberating (not let sentimentality get in the way of deliberation). It was just that he was a cruel sociopath (or a “sadist”, in the words of Juror 8).

In the pivotal scene when The Bully breaks down, it’s because Juror 8 had successfully needled him about his son to such an extent that he switched his vote out of guilt. He finally goes in so many words,”It’s my fault my kid turned out to be a jerk; the defendant’s father probably treated him like crap, too, so I will let him off the hook.” Yet both Reginald Rose and Sidney Lumet mischaracterized that scene as if the opposite had actually taken place–that The Bully had let his personal feelings about his son influence his “guilty” vote in the beginning and that now that he was letting his feelings go, he was able to finally make the “right” decision with a clear mind.