Cape Fear and the Verdict : Law,Morality and Violence

Abstract

As a staple feature of popular culture, films shape our everyday understandings and expectations of relationships among law and violence. This paper compares two films, Cape Fear (1992) and The Verdict (1982). The analysis focuses on moral, jurisprudential and social meanings through which narratives provide validity and legitimacy for consenting to law and limiting violence. These films provide sharply different narratives of the capacity of law to control, direct, and limit violence. At one extreme, Cape Fear shows the total absence of legal validity, a descent to anomie and the eruption of violence. At the other end of the continuum, The Verdict demonstrates how, despite their imperfections, legal institutions provide a setting for realizing shared morality, establishing solidarity and truth, and exposing and limiting violence. By analyzing these films, we can more fully realize that our expectations of law to limit violence cannot be isolated from broader issues of solidarity, morality and social relations.