Fiction
- In the novel and film To Kill a Mockingbird, a black man is accused of rape and tried before an all-white jury; in a central scene, principled defense attorney Atticus Finch fails to sway the verdict toward his client, who is later shot trying to escape. Critic Roger Ebert calls Finch's summation "one of Gregory Peck's great scenes".
- Melvin Van Peebles' film Sweet Sweetback’s Baadasssss Song was advertised with a tagline Rated X by an All-White Jury, referring to the MPAA Ratings Board, which had given the film an X rating. Van Peebles used the claim in posters and t-shirts as a "rallying cry" for the black audience he was trying to reach.
- The play and film Twelve Angry Men depicts an all-white jury tasked with deliberating the guilt of a black defendant who is accused of murdering his father.
Read more about this topic: All-white Jury
Famous quotes containing the word fiction:
“The society would permit no books of fiction in its collection because the town fathers believed that fiction ‘worketh abomination and maketh a lie.’”
—For the State of Rhode Island, U.S. public relief program (1935-1943)
“The obvious parallels between Star Wars and The Wizard of Oz have frequently been noted: in both there is the orphan hero who is raised on a farm by an aunt and uncle and yearns to escape to adventure. Obi-wan Kenobi resembles the Wizard; the loyal, plucky little robot R2D2 is Toto; C3PO is the Tin Man; and Chewbacca is the Cowardly Lion. Darth Vader replaces the Wicked Witch: this is a patriarchy rather than a matriarchy.”
—Andrew Gordon, U.S. educator, critic. “The Inescapable Family in American Science Fiction and Fantasy Films,” Journal of Popular Film and Television (Summer 1992)
“Americans will listen, but they do not care to read. War and Peace must wait for the leisure of retirement, which never really comes: meanwhile it helps to furnish the living room. Blockbusting fiction is bought as furniture. Unread, it maintains its value. Read, it looks like money wasted. Cunningly, Americans know that books contain a person, and they want the person, not the book.”
—Anthony Burgess (b. 1917)