Death By Hanging addresses some hot button political issues in 1960's Japan including the mistreatment of the Korean minority and the use of the death penalty. It also portrays government officials in a less than complimentary light. However, it is not at all a straightforward expose of or polemic for an issue. Does the film make a political statement or social critique? How does the radical style of the film contribute to its politics? What message -- if any -- do you see in the film?
At its core, Death by Hanging aspires to be a two-pronged political ramrod. It unveils excruciatingly precise detail about the physical process and legal complications surrounding Japanese capital punishment and simultaneously highlights discrimination of the Korean minority in Japan through instances of outright stereotyping.
ReplyDeleteThe film’s most glaring shortcoming, however, manifests when it attempts to intertwine the two threads and use one to argue against the other. Upon R interacting with his hypothetical “older sister,” she insists Japanese mistreatment of Koreans drove his actions, dooming him into receiving the death penalty. The film, as such, blames xenophobia for R’s sentencing, but it never thoroughly establishes a connection between these otherwise separate topics.
The prison staff’s re-enactments of R’s life reveal he grew up in an impoverished, dysfunctional household plagued by familial abuse and neglect. The viewer can reasonably assume R’s resentment of his surroundings would lead him to overlook morality in his actions, provided his calm interventions of his brothers (the prison staff in character) were inaccurately representing reality. However, the film provides no evidence that discrimination of Koreans resulted in such a toxic family environment. It’s definitely a possibility, but mere assumptions and wishful thinking on the viewer’s part are not enough for the film to successfully deliver its point.
Also disconnected from marginalization of Koreans is R’s immediate desire to rape and murder two women. The prison staff, while the group is between the schoolhouse and bridge, state that R let his sexual desires overtake his dignity and sense of judgment, a claim only contested when R’s “sister” insists xenophobia brought him to this state of neglecting basic human boundaries. Death by Hanging establishes no clear connection between these two stages of R’s motivations. Sexual desire and frustration with societal injustice, inherently, are two topics with no overlap. The film ignores this thematic disconnect entirely, not bothering to overlap the two at all.
The culmination of these inconsistencies is a film wanting to link R’s unwarranted execution to his exposure to prejudice, but that never creates a link to begin with because it spends too much time examining the issues separately, rather than as an interconnected whole.
Death By Hanging’s radical cinematography, along with the radical content, critique the government and the death penalty. The film starts as if it were a documentary, giving overarching facts about the death penalty, including how the majority of people don’t support it. This use of narration and storytelling is not typical and draws attention to the fact that this film is different and will talk about the issues with modern society. The film then goes on to talk about R, and uses it as an example for why reforming the government and death penalty would be good.
ReplyDeleteThe government official’s attempts to execute R show the problems both with the death penalty, and the government as a whole. They acknowledge that they shouldn’t punish the new R because he wasn’t the one who committed the crime, and they spend much of the movie trying to get the new R to admit that he is the same R as before. This stance on the mind-body problem, as well as whether people can redeem themselves stands in opposition to the death penalty. R was able to change and wasn’t able to see himself doing any of the acts that he was accused of, but the officials still wanted to execute him, even going to extreme lengths to do it.
The complexities of the law also act to show incompetence throughout the government. When R first failed to die, they couldn’t come to an agreement about what they should do. Whether they should let him be free or try to hang him again, and whether or not he should be conscious. Everyone had different opinions, especially the priest who was trying to convince them to let R stay alive, and the resulting actions were comedic. The ability for the law to be interpreted in such a way that results in officials acting as women and children means that the law isn’t doing it’s job of providing a framework for punishment.
The Japanese film Death by Hanging sets the tone and general premise of the story with two sentences: “Have you ever seen an execution chamber? Have you ever witnessed an execution?” Though narrated in a calm tone, the two-time appearance of these two sentences was underlined with an undoubtably accusatory tone; to the 71% opposed to abolishing the death penalty, and those of us in front of the screens.
ReplyDeleteWith that established, the movie dives into the main plot point in which a guy named R was prosecuted for the rape and murder of two girls and sentenced to be hung. Yet, the execution is rendered unsuccessful as R survives and forgets all the crimes that he has done. The story proceeds with the various officials trying to revive R’s memories of his crimes as they didn’t feel right to execute someone who was mentally incapacitated.
This film, released just 23 years after WW2, symbolizes the aftermath of the war for Japan. The first hanging of R represents the incrimination of Japan for the war crimes and destruction they committed in WW2. This connection can be even further clarified as the crimes that R was charged with are parallel to some of the Japanese atrocities during WW2. Yet, with the passing of 23 years, the death penalty received by R, what remains is now a new generation of Japanese people, an R that has rebirthed from the execution unaware and separate from the crimes previously committed. As the officials attempted to revitalize R’s memories to properly arraign, it symbolized the world trying to place the burdens of WW2 onto the new generation, a generation that did not partake or remember the horrors of war.
Later in the film, it could be seen that many of the officials participating in or overseeing the journey of reawakening R’s memories are not people of innocent backgrounds either. In pursuit of their goals, they were willing to harm others. And while they are forcing someone else to pay for their wrongdoings, the officials themselves never do. Those who watched it happen, sat on the sidelines, just as we the audience were also simply watching and doing nothing. This depicts the winners of the war, the countries of higher power, trying to pass their jurisdiction onto the Japanese people while they have done things that harmed innocent lives too. (This could be exemplified by the US dropping two atomic bombs, which, though ended the war, killed thousands of civilians who were not involved in war efforts.) And other countries simply sat and watched.
This movie, I think, is a depiction of Japan trying to showcase that mistakes of the past are being placed on the shoulders of the new. And it is trying to reach through to those standing on the sidelines and those of us in front of the screens to say that they shouldn’t watch as burdens of the past are charged to the new generation.
In the film Death By Hanging it portrays a strong message in the sense that in the 1960’s Japanese used the death penalty more as a first resort rather than a last. Race also plays a role as the film goes on. Therefore seeing a strong political message as these are both touchy subjects. We go through a specific case of a man named R who was tried for murder. He was a Korean immigrant in Japan at the time, which had been a huge issue. The government officials attempted to execute him by hanging him but failed. He survived and woke up distorted. This is something the government officials had never experienced and were at a loss on what to do. They try everything to convince him he is still himself and that he still committed the crime he did. Just so they could attempt to execute him again. He did not regain this sense of identity as he had before the execution. In Japan this was a societal norm and many of them were not bothered one bit by the actions they were doing. Even still today, Japan commits acts like this. Punishments like this need to be regulated and monitored heavily. This film was also controversial because race was involved. Since he was a Korean in Japan this sets the idea that most immigrants were treated with very little respect. In the film we see the story of R specifically and how he was treated unfairly and did not treat him like a human deserves to be treated.
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