PLAYWRIGHT’S NOTE

One of the posters for the film 12 Angry Men, written by screenwriter Reginald Rose and directed by Sidney Lumet, carried the words in large letters: “Life is in their hands, death is in their minds.” The 1957 film denounces the American jury trial system and criticizes one of the important segments of an otherwise unquestioned legal system. If we abstract away from the courtroom and the American legal system, we see enraged members of the Ku Klux Klan wearing the fine hoods of legalism, marching in a procession of verbal lynching, whose effect on the person being lynched is no less fatal. At the same time, we witness an almost successful legalization of lynching, however much of a contradictio in adjecto that may be.

The play 12 Angry Women does not attempt to bring down the unquestioned authority of the legal system (every element of this phrase is open to question). Instead, it delves into our small, seemingly harmless taboos. Into the proverbial Serbian hospitality and openness. Into the typically Serbian, “healthy” nationalism in which there is supposedly—and never has been—any racism, anti-Semitism, or anti-Roma sentiment. Into prejudices that are part of folklore, and hate speech that is part of everyday slang.

I do not know how many of us are truly aware of what we say. Most of the angry women are not, and they certainly do not mince their words. Their verbal lynching flows smoothly, almost in unison, charmingly, at times humorously; words roll forth without consequence, words spoken so many times in our everyday lives that the person uttering them no longer feels any responsibility for them. Words which, once spoken, become a terrifying objectivity. Words because of which, one day, someone will lie with a shattered skull, dead and cold.

Jelena Mijović