How does one define morality? Does morality entail a legal structure? Or does it entail religious learnings? Is morality a vague concept brimming with gray areas? Or is it a segmented pie chart that differentiates right from wrong?
Our belief systems are developed as children. We often hear our parents scream in frustration and exhaustion, “you have to agree to what I have said because I said so.” This is the exact point where a child is left starving from their very fundamental right to question. They are starved of answers till their stomachs aren’t hungry anymore. They believe every charismatic, authoritative person who wears bold colors and gives complicated explanations while grabbing their loudspeakers, only because they said so.
Talk of the town trials have always been confronted by a spinning whirlpool of conflict through public opinion. Having witnessed the complicated intricacies of public trials, the visual of a well-recognized individual standing in the court of law has always been a testimony to the meeting point of socio-cultural ethics and legal complexities.
In a time when women faced death as a form of punishment or were left to a fate of shame due to accusations; the Salem Witch Trials (1692) boiled down to nothing but a twisted game of pointing fingers. Perhaps the most popular phenomenon seen in large masses is paranoia. The comfort of any theory that remotely connects the dots fuels the collective ideologies of a community. It gives the charismatic, authoritative individuals a platform to grab their loudspeakers and scream their opinions into one’s ear.
While the world was modernizing and the media took shape in newer forms, the common man got exposed to the concept of questioning deeply ingrained ideologies. What followed was a world full of divided opinions that represented individual beliefs and perspectives.
The Commander. K. M. Nanavati case of 1959 (K. M. Nanavati v. State of Maharashtra), where a naval commander was accused of murdering his wife’s lover Prem Ahuja, proved to be an example of the impact of divided opinions. While the jury pronounced Nanavati as not guilty with an 8-1 majority, the sessions judge Mr. Ratilal Bhaichand Mehta referred the case to the Bombay High Court for a retrial due to the possibility of the jury having been misled.
As time passed, a rising wave of powerful media professionals tailoring popular opinions and their portrayal of public trials continued to play impactful roles in both the legal proceedings of the cases and the socio-cultural perspective of the people involved.
On June 12, 1994, football star O.J.Simpson’s ex-wife, Nicole Brown, was stabbed to death (The People of the State of California v. Orenthal James Simpson). This high-profile case quickly transformed into an aggressive debate amongst activists. While several feminists believed that the murder itself was a brainchild of sexism, several African-American activists believed that the case proceedings were an act of racial discrimination.
If one accuses today’s youth of uninformed opinions, social media would surely be found guilty. While convenient consumption of different perspectives should ideally work in the favor of the digital space, the truth is an inescapable maze of misinformation and echo chambers.
It has long been established that our perceptions of celebrities are viewed through the broken glasses of filtered media consumption. When popular actor Johnny Depp filed a defamation case against his ex-wife, Amber Heard, in 2019 (John C. Depp, II v. Amber Laura Heard), the masses rushed to do what they have become infamous for doing time and time again- use social media as their primary source of information.
Being opinionated is powerful and a reflection of your morals. However, having partially and unreliably informed opinions that are so strong that you refuse to listen to alternate perspectives is antithetical to creating a world that respects possible changes in views. Plagued by cancel culture and extreme online shaming, most individuals would rather ride the bandwagon than develop their understanding of the proceedings of public trials.
When we view these trials of individuals that we don’t personally know, we view them through a lens that has fictionalized them. It is a fundamental human tendency to subject the legal proceedings of a well-known legal case to immense discussions. However, it is imperative to remind ourselves that the people involved in the case are more than hashtags on Twitter, click-bait titles on YouTube, and dramatic news headlines on our TVs.
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