Watching TV and Thinking About It Too

I’m out of class because its the holidays and I have no immediate job. I have books in front of me, but I am too lazy to read them. So I flip out the remote control and watch television. I watch movies. Pretty mind-draining, but I refuse to lean back altogether. Spoilers ahead.

I’ve watched an episode of Prison Break; the pilot for Kidnapped; a bit of anime (with lots of patience); a made-for-TV movie, Safe House starring the captain himself, Patrick Stewart; episodes of CSI, all three series; a season four episode of Enterprise, Awakening; an episode of Season 6 Law & Order: Special Victims Unit, Conscience; an episode of Criminal Minds; an episode of Robotica; an episode of Wrecks into Riches; some MTV; and endless channel surfing. I’ve also managed to get out of the house to take a look at 28 Weeks Later. Lets look at some of these things that I spent my precious living moments watching, and try to get something more than what’s its worth at face value, eh?

I liked Law & Order: Special Victims Unit, episode: Conscience, very much. Its basically about a psychologist and a child sociopath who murdered his son coldly without remorse. The former was initially sympathetic to the latter, but once the detectives found out that the child was misleading him and everyone else to think that he was a victim when even boys at a “tough camp” said he was crazy, the psychologist used a moment of opportunity to shoot the boy with a snatched handgun. The remainder of the episode dealt with the trial of the psychologist, whom was eventually acquitted on the charge of 2nd degree murder i.e. “the intentional killing of a person without premeditation”. However, a word with Detective Stabler reveals that he did intentionally kill the child on grounds of what he had written as a psychologist: child sociopaths are dangerous to society and are as culpable as adults.

The title, Conscience, is doubly apt. While sociopaths are remorseless, the father psychologist acted purely out of conscience. His last words to Detective Stabler were something to the tune of “The difference between him [the child sociopath] and me is that I won’t kill again.” So there are several important issues that we can deal with in this episode. Classically, its whether the actions of the father-psychologist are justifiable; the next would be the effectiveness of the jury system to serve justice.

Luckily for me, Sheu Fei also watched the episode, and when asked, he thought that the father was indeed justified; he was preventing another cold murder. To a certain extent, I think that the child sociopath’s murder is not merely justified through blood mathematics — save one or more lives by killing another — but that the child manipulated and lied his way through for his own selfish gain. There is something more personal to the direct abuse of trust relationships, more personal than the cold abstraction of preventing another murder in the future. Its like a slap in the face. Nevertheless, according to this line of reasoning, I don’t know why trust is more valued than abstract reasoning.

Its interesting that the psychologist decided to murder the child through abstract reasoning, while the normal person would think that one would only commit 2nd degree murder out of anger or some intense emotional outburst. Then the psychologist used his knowledge in the field to plead temporary insanity and manipulated the jury to think that he killed his child in rage. He said he stood by the standards of his peers; that the child should really be locked up forever. So there’s another parallel between the sociopath and the psychologist: the manipulation of others. However, it can be said that he can be justified: he was acting according to his conscience for the betterment of society, and perpetuated a minor evil in order to prevent a larger one.

Thus it spawns a larger, more general question: whether the conscience is a part of the rational mind, or is it another separate faculty altogether? Sadly, I am not equipped to deal with this issue at this moment.

However, what I am better equipped to do is to deal with the effectiveness of the jury system. The jury system acquitted the father. I would like to think that they did it because in his shoes, they would not have liked to be convicted. After all, this was a father struck with betrayal and the murder of his child in cold blood. However, I think that the reasoning is faulty. Nobody can ever be in his shoes because he is a psychologist who has written on the dangers of child sociopaths. Call it karma, call it convenient story-writing, but the chances are a normal person couldn’t even fathom the danger of a sociopathic child like the father-psychologist can. On principle, he ought to be acquitted. No NORMAL person ought to be charged like that because they would be truly acting in the heat of the moment. However, he is an exception to the principle. He had a reason to act purposefully. Whether or not he was temporarily insane is irrelevant because that knowledge which can only be processed rationally will play a part in determining his actions.

The point is that because of the jury system and how they tend to impose an “if I were in his/her shoes…” method of justice, the outcome of the trial was such. Perhaps in a system of judges he would have been found guilty because judges are more, “impartial” and “wise”. This reminded me of an article I once read about a notable Malaysian (either a politician or a judge) defending the jury-less Malaysian judicial system by claiming that judges are indeed fairer and ensure that justice is served.I guess I can accept that if I can be somehow be assured that the judges are independent from politics. That’s my Political Theory lecturer speaking in me, he wants an independent judiciary too, although we might want them for completely different reasons.

But I guess a jury system is indeed more democratic than not. Is a jury system wiser than a judge? That’s far from the point. The point is the people judged the people. While the judge pronounces if the case can be tried and the sentence if guilt is found, the people have the power to find him or her not guilty. That’s what democracy is about, power to the people. My political theory lecturer says that its

Nevertheless, will a jury be prejudiced along unreasonable lines? Will a jury deliberate at all? Is it even important if they deliberate? Well, I don’t see how a single judge or a panel of judges can be more free from unfair prejudice, or how a professional body will deliberate more than a random selection of people. (Of course, I’m making a purely theoretical claim about something empirical. Sure, lawyers, would love to hear from you.)

Moving on to the pilot episode of Kidnapped. The protagonist, a certain Mr. Knapp, is a specialist in kidnap recovery. He prides himself on emphasizing recovery; The FBI prioritize many other things too, including evidence gathering for charging kidnappers in court. Knapp himself is shown to be merciless in vigilante justice. He’s shown to in a previous job to use a kidnapper as a human shield against other kidnappers, and returns fire without hessitance.

Now the thing with the show was one of his quotes, to the FBI agents who compromised the rescue. “You guys are the ONLY people playing by the book.” One of the agents ordered SWAT to storm an apartment based on a phone call trace. However, it was a trap and the entire SWAT team died. The agent justified himself by saying, he made the call based on the book, on regulations and standard operating procedure.

Sartre rings in my head when describing this. Its going to be difficult for the agent to explain to family members of the deceased that he ordered them to storm the trapped apartment “by the book”. There’s something here about what rules are for, when they are best followed and when they are not, and why we have rules, but this entry has gone on long enough already.

One last thought on 28 Weeks Later, also involving conscience. Britain has been wiped out by zombies, and they have all died of starvation. A US-led resettlement of the British Isles takes place. Two children, break the rules and exits the resettlement zone to return to their London home, where they surprisingly find their lost mother, still untaken by the virus. It seems that she has a genetic immunity to the virus, but still is a carrier. However, the father, being an administrator of the resettlement community, abuses his all-access pass to see his wife, he gets infected too, and the outbreak could no longer be contained. An army doctor, realising the value of the children as potential cure to the infection, tries to protect the children from extermination. In the end, the children unwittingly spread the virus to continental Europe in escaping from the British Isles.

Would anybody have killed the children given the chance? The immunity served to preserve one life, but threatened the life of the rest of the world. I could say that the children acted not out of reason but of conscience to go back home against the rules. I could say that the husband acted also not out of reason in abusing his privileges. The helicopter pilot wasn’t supposed to rescue the kids or anybody for that matter. Could it be said sometimes that conscience doesn’t always act in our best interests?

All in all, I quite enjoyed 28 Weeks Later having also watched 28 Days Later, despite the whole Blair Witch “bad camerawork” thing going on. “Stupid kids” should be the tagline for the movie. Could be an argument for resolute action too. The children were effective in their acting, but nonetheless irritating in how they couldn’t get anything done for nuts.