After watching "The Life of David Gore", it is estimated that many viewers will be like me, and they will not be able to calm down for a long time. As you get closer to the truth, your inner feelings get worse and worse. This movie is very old, the 2003 movie, 15 years ago, in this movie, you can also see the beautiful Kate Winslet, full of collagen, but now, she can only say that Xu Niang is half old ~ the protagonist Kevin Spacey, everyone should be more familiar with his "House of Cards", to be honest, he felt very different when he was young and old. There is a kind of hostility when I am old, and my expression is relatively mild when I am young
First, the story overview
What kind of story is this? It's not complicated, David Gore was sentenced to death for murdering Cons and will be executed at 6 p.m. on Friday, and journalist Bloom (Kate Winslet) has less than 3 days to complete an in-depth interview with him. David had previously turned down all interviews. Bloom was initially dismissive of the task, but during her contact with Gore, she discovered that everything was not as simple as it seemed, and Bloom decided to start searching for the truth with only three days left.
So what is the ultimate truth? David, and the object of his murder, his female assistant Cons, were staunch anti-death penalty activists, and in order to prove their theory, they deliberately planned such "murders", in fact, Cons committed suicide, and David became a murderer, and was eventually wrongfully killed. They hope to prove that the death penalty will wrongfully accuse a good person.
The background of this story is the invention of the death penalty by lethal injection around 1977. The lethal injection death penalty is different from the previous death penalty and does not cause great pain to death row inmates, so the us states have gradually restored the death penalty after the invention of the lethal death penalty. David's State of Texas has the highest number of executions in the United States and the highest crime rate in the United States.
2. What is the death penalty?
On the surface, a person commits a heinous crime, and then gives sanctions through legal means, and the execution of the death penalty is a deprivation of his life, and it is also a permanent elimination of the possibility of his re-offending.
But the death penalty involves the question of who gives the murderer the legal right to kill.
Oppositional paranoids like David, for example, have always insisted on two views: one is how you view death and why you can decide the life and death of others, and the other is that the death penalty cannot reduce crime.
The second question is actually very easy to answer, and the naked data is already illustrating. The crime rate and execution rate of Texas in the United States have always been the highest, and criminals have not become afraid to commit crimes because of the existence of the death penalty, whether it is in the movie in 1997 or now Texas, this cowboy-style western city has always been a paradise for drugs and prostitution, from beginning to end. Moreover, the age of crime is decreasing year by year, and the proportion of juveniles under the age of 20 who are executed each year in Texas is increasing.
From the perspective of the second issue, the death penalty is unlikely to have a crime prevention effect. It even has the function of fueling crime. Suppose a rapist knows that rape must be punished with the death penalty, and he may kill the raped person after the rape, or he may rape a few more people in a frenzy, because his result is already doomed.
You might be wondering, why can't he stop raping people? Why can't he, instead of killing?
All I can say is that if it is a highly civilized society, it may be possible to reduce the probability of bad people appearing a little. But in a material society, the so-called criminals, like the incidence of cancer, or the probability of disabled people, will eventually exist. Behavior that seems to be subjective, placed in the trajectory of social development, becomes an inevitability. In this society, there will always be winners, there will be losers, there will be rich people, there will be people without money, there will be those who do not use drugs, there will be drugs, there will be insensitive to sex, there will be indulgence in their own fun.
So there is morality, and above morality, there is law.
Since crime is inevitable, what about the death penalty?
The existence of the death penalty does not have a preventive function, it is more like an after-the-fact remedy. While one might hope that the death penalty is still threatening, this kind of death penalty in the blink of an eye is very different from ancient torture, too far away from ordinary people, and does not have the fear caused by the great pain in the flesh. It's like a symbol, just a passing symbol for nine hundred and ninety-nine thousand people in the world.
So, David's second point is actually correct. The existence of the death penalty is not very preventive for crime. What has a preventive effect is torture.
But the death penalty has a huge comforting effect on the victims.
For example, not long ago in the Hangzhou nanny case, then the man who lost his wife and three children, if he could not see the nanny die, it is estimated that he would not be able to close his eyes for a lifetime.
There was once a documentary about how the victim felt after facing someone who had hurt him or her and finally carrying out the death penalty. Most of the victims feel relieved. They are neither sad nor embarrassed to feel that they have deprived a person of their lives, they feel that they can finally let go.
This is very different from the feelings of bystanders. For bystanders, before the criminal has executed the death penalty, it may be possible to shout about the execution of the death penalty, and when the criminal actually executes the death penalty, the bystander will be shocked, as if something has been lost.
Therefore, when looking at the death penalty, different people have different feelings. And paranoids like David are more of a bystander.
But scholars like David have the first point of view.
They respect the lives of all people and believe that criminals have equal lives.
One detail in the film is that Cons cry bitterly because of another failed attempt to abolish the death penalty, and a boy is executed. And this boy is one of many neurotics, drug addicts, prostitutes and other lower-class people.
In Cons's view, he could have gotten better if he had a good birth and a good education. And the law didn't give him that chance, and this law, which has a death penalty system, is the biggest mistake.
Indeed, it is unfortunate to see that most of the people who carry out executions are mostly poor-born and uneducated. For these people, it is the birth that determines his unbearable, and in the big way, it is society that causes their misfortune, but in the end they have to pay with their own lives.
David and Cons had compassion beyond the ordinary.
They ultimately choose to end their lives to make the strongest of their own, an extreme self-sacrifice. As David himself said, "Your life should not be measured by how many desires you have achieved, but by moments of self-sacrifice." He was a philosopher like Socrates, who died for his ideals.
But from my personal point of view, philosophers obviously never think about cost, they care about the redemption and sublimation of the self.
From a realistic point of view, the final result of those who do not carry out the death penalty is permanent imprisonment, not to mention how it feels to be locked up for a lifetime, how much of the country's food and taxpayers' money will they waste? In a society with scarce resources, who wants to raise people who are no longer useful to society?
Personally, a first-place student at Harvard University, a young head of philosophy, David ended his life early, neither preaching to solve the puzzle nor achieving the ultimate goal. He was dead, but there was still a death penalty in Texas, and there was still a death penalty in the United States. He should have played a better social value, and what he got with the call of life was nothing more than a temporary insult. Because in the end, the videotape was not released, and the insiders were limited to female journalists.
Here, more than just one question arises – why did you plan a murder with all your heart?
If the death penalty system brings about unjust, false and wrongly decided cases, why not look for such a real example and do such a thing artificially?
During the debate with the governor, the governor said, which case I have wrongly judged, please point it out.
David was speechless, he lost the debate, he lost his ordinary heart. So he and Cons plotted such a murder, for which Cons committed suicide and was suffocated by himself, while he, David, was reduced from a professor to a murderer, spent six years in prison, and finally died by injection.
It is also worth noting that David fell from the altar before he became a murderer, and because he had sex with the schoolgirl, he was bitten by the schoolgirl, saying that he raped the student, became a rapist, lost his job, and lost his wife and children.
This may have been greatly planned, or it could have been accidental by him.
But in any case, through such a thing, he was no longer glamorous, became a lower class, became a man that everyone looked down upon, shouted and beaten, was poor, and drank heavily.
So when he becomes a murderer, the society seems to be watching a good show — knowing that such a rapist can't end well. So the lawyer he sought didn't make a name for himself, and for six years he didn't appeal once.
This is very realistic. We will always unconsciously despise those who are born low and have bad luck, and we are very tolerant of the elite.
It is understandable from the point of view of the weak and the strong, but it is difficult to accept from a humanitarian point of view. David and Cons were people of high character, so it was difficult to accept.
3. Death for the death penalty
The protagonist in the movie finally chose to die for the death penalty. Movies are an extreme amplification, and in real life, people who make such sacrifices are estimated to be rare. What is the movie that can die for the death penalty, what is it that passes? Is it simply a call for the abolition of the death penalty, or is it an injustice to prove to the audience that the existence of the death penalty will be unjust?
In fact, if we go deeper, we put aside the angle of sacrifice, or jump out of the "whether the death penalty is correct", the film may convey a more in-depth and noble thinking. That is how to look at life.
In the various constraints of society, people are doomed to all kinds of injustices from birth, and these injustices are like the butterfly effect, which are magnified in the future life and become a force that controls a person's development. No matter how much we struggle, our families, our parents, and our experiences make up a different us. Life is different because of this, and life is colorful because of it.
David's dedication was to provoke people to think about why we should carry out the death penalty. Is it to fight crime, is it to clean up crime, or is it to show political authority?
Apparently, David and the others chose the last one. When he debated with the governor, he could not control himself and was very excited, because behind the execution of the death penalty, there was a power over life, a power that he despised. Indeed, the execution of the death penalty can only be determined by those in power, and who can say that the set of those in power must be correct?
Pushkin died because of the duel, but if the duel is placed in the present, is it not a fight, and the killing of people in the duel is not murder? However, the law at that time did not stipulate that the death penalty would be carried out in a duel.
Society is progressing, laws are changing, concepts are changing, but those who have been executed can never be resurrected.
The death penalty has created a large number of tragedies in China. When the people's wisdom has not yet been civilized, execution has become a good medicine for office workers to make quick decisions. Many young men, in some cases, were charged with rape and murder, and their lives ended with the sound of a gunshot, leaving only the endless pain of their parents. After a few decades, if the old case is overturned, or the real criminal appears, what can the state do? Smashing parents who have been crying all their lives with money? Any compensation is so insignificant in the face of life.
Of course, after the execution of the death penalty, the family of the death row inmate also has to bear the severe social atmosphere, and there is a death row inmate in the family, which is far worse than a criminal. Many of the families of death row inmates end up running away or living in the haze forever. When the death penalty was imposed, there was no law to take these innocent people into account.
Either way of thinking, it is either that the death penalty is justified or unreasonable, or that the death penalty is inevitable, or that the death penalty is artificial... These views cannot be stopped, and the death penalty is indeed happening...