Cultural Values of 12 Angry Men Essay Example

end of the movie.One of the men brought up a point that just because he grew up in the slums doesn’t mean he murdered his father. He spoke from his personal experiences.

But the twelfth juror added, “I kept putting myself in the kid’s place. ” This is important because his way of looking at the case was fine. The man stood firm on his vote until the boy was proved with facts to be guilty. He showed cultural relativism because he realized he must understand the culture of the boy on its own terms rather than comparing the boy to his own social facts to determine the outcome of his trial.

If the whole jury embraced cultural relativism when viewing the defendant’s crime, they might put themselves in his shoes and try to take everything into consideration. The twelfth juror does this in the beginning and encourages others to do the same. They then change their mind to not guilty and realize, “the type of boy accused of the crime has nothing to do with the facts. ” I do not think of myself as a member of any subcultures because I do not like labels. If I ad to categorize myself, I would be in the punk/art group because I appreciate art in all of its forms and punk because that is what people think my style is.

I think my group is a subculture since my interests are the same as others within my group. My group is often sanctioned by the mainstream culture because of our appearance and interests. Watching 12 Angry Men helped me better understand the depths of culture. The

culture of a person affects every aspect of their life. I also realized how big of a process juries go through to determine the fate of their defendant.