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Cardozo Journal of Conflict Resolution

Abstract

American culture is suffused and infatuated with anger. Politicians strive to placate the "Angry White Male," whose antagonisms also find expression in road rage, overheated talk radio, violent video games, and players-fans skirmishes at professional sporting events. American media churns out alarmingly vivid images of violence, and the ominous tendency for teenagers, in particular, to act out these lurid fantasies of "righteous wrath" dramatizes the nexus between this potentially toxic "consumption of cultural items" and anger. Vietnamese expatriate monk Thich Nhat Hanh observes that Americans "cannot speak about anger, and how to handle our anger, without paying attention to all the things that we consume, because anger is not separate from those things." Exemplified by the iconic John Wayne and his always-unsuccessful attempts to restrain his wrath, American film and television have actively reinforced the concept that suppressing anger is not only unhealthy, but unmanly as well. Portrayals of the legal process bolster this perspective, with gifted actors like Jack Nicholson and Al Pacino providing indelible images of "going off" in courtroom settings. Even a warts-and-all depiction of the jury system, in the film "Twelve Angry Men," is comprised of a series of intense outbursts of jurors' venting and hostility contrasted with heroic holdout Henry Fonda's grace under pressure. Fonda's rationally-rooted battles with the emotional other jurors-whether a vile bigot, or a lout who would rather be at the ballpark- culminate in explosions of self-shaming anger. Justice prevails-but few would advocate the raw, bilious, visceral exchanges that moved it along. Fewer still would contend that the bigot or the ballpark lout were somehow sensitized, transformed, or improved by their encounters with the legal system.

Disciplines

Dispute Resolution and Arbitration | Law | Psychiatry and Psychology

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