Fictional Documentaries and Truthful Fictions: The Death Penalty in Recent American Film

Abstract

When it comes to death, most Hollywood movies cheat.They cheat by tinkering with the truth, because the truth as it actually is is too complex or too disturbing to confront honestly.(The so-called happy ending is the most famous form of such cheating.)They cheat because people generally prefer happiness and simplicity to darkness and complexity, especially where their entertainment is concerned, and filmmakers tend to give people what they want.Even great movies cheat.For example, last year's Oscar winner for best picture, American Beauty, cheats egregiously.The movie (for the one or two of you who have not seen it) deals with modern times: It is about suburbia, men and women who mindlessly pursue meaningless careers, bigotry, and finally, hope and redemption.In the end, the character played by Kevin Spacey is murdered.This is not a surprise ending because the Spacey character narrates the movie in a voice-over, and he tells us as the movie opens that in less than a year he will no longer be alive.We know at the beginning that 110 minutes later Kevin Spacey's character will be dead.Spacey plays a morally ambiguous character.He is in the midst of a full-blown mid-life crisis.He is a lousy husband and a worse father.For virtually the entire length of the film, he lusts after his daughter's high school classmate.In the end, however, he gently rebuffs a neighbor's homosexual advance and-again