Volume 03 - Number 2 - September 1996
Pages: 33 - 74
Dervin, D. (1996). The psychohistorical ideal of empathic even-handedness in Dead Man Walking [Review of the film Dead Man Walking by Tim Robinson (1996)]. Clio’s Psyche, 3(2), 66.
The Psychohistorical Ideal of Empathic Even-handedness in Dead Man Walking
Intro
The way the film Dead Man Walking was represented in the media and in popular culture confirmed for me that it contained two distinct subjects which were not only linked but also reversed. A New Yorker review doted on Sean Penn’s acting career to the near exclusion of everything else, yet it was Susan Sarandon who won the Oscar. Such splitting made me wonder if audiences weren’t responding to two different movies, and in fact the two powerful themes — anti-death penalty and victims-reconciliation — elicit very different and conflicting responses.
anti-death penalty, capital punishment, Dead Man Walking, empathy, film review, identification, pop culture, psychohistory, splitting, Tim Robinson, victims-reconciliation
The way the film Dead Man Walking was represented in the media and in popular culture confirmed for me that it contained two distinct subjects which were not only linked but also reversed. A New Yorker review doted on Sean Penn’s acting career to the near exclusion of everything else, yet it was Susan Sarandon who won the Oscar. Such splitting made me wonder if audiences weren’t responding to two different movies, and in fact the two powerful themes — anti-death penalty and victims-reconciliation — elicit very different and conflicting responses.
On its face, opposition to capital punishment puts us on the side of the angels, protecting the sacredness of life from government intrusion. But, since everyone’s motives are prone to being mixed as they are displaced onto the political sphere (as we know from psychohistory), we should not be surprised to find reaction formations and superego defiance at work — liberals have psyches, too. The lust-killer Poncelet (Sean Penn) behind bars and in chains, struggling to light a cigarette, assumes the victim role, while the victims’ families in their lust for revenge assume the role of aggressors. Penn plays on our sympathies; the redneck relatives elicit contempt.
Yet the film does not foster any alliances. By claiming a spiritual dimension for character, Sister Prejean (Susan Sarandon) facilitates our sympathies for Poncelet the sinner as worthy of our compassion and divine mercy. Her special status and capacity for empathy also enable her to mediate between the two plots’ distinct worlds. But her conflicted feelings for the angry, cold-hearted relatives, unresolved until the end, form for me the more probingly original quality of the film. The debate over capital punishment is long-standing and tends to split everyone into easy affiliations — pro or con identification with victims or victimizers. But the value of empathizing with those who appear to be seeking cold-blooded revenge and being able to recognize the validity of their feelings, without validating their wishes, transgresses the dominant convention of vengeance movies and opens new pathways of cinematic sensibility.
Yet the film does not foster any alliances. By claiming a spiritual dimension for character, Sister Prejean (Susan Sarandon) facilitates our sympathies for Poncelet the sinner as worthy of our compassion and divine mercy. Her special status and capacity for empathy also enable her to mediate between the two plots’ distinct worlds. But her conflicted feelings for the angry, cold-hearted relatives, unresolved until the end, form for me the more probingly original quality of the film. The debate over capital punishment is long-standing and tends to split everyone into easy affiliations — pro or con identification with victims or victimizers. But the value of empathizing with those who appear to be seeking cold-blooded revenge and being able to recognize the validity of their feelings, without validating their wishes, transgresses the dominant convention of vengeance movies and opens new pathways of cinematic sensibility.
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How to cite this article
Dervin, D. (1996). The psychohistorical ideal of empathic even-handedness in Dead Man Walking [Review of the film Dead Man Walking by Tim Robinson (1996)]. Clio’s Psyche, 3(2), 66.
