Tyler's Turn Blog

Everybody's buzzing about Brokeback Mountain. Heath Ledger's publicist is working overtime to get him on as many magazine covers as possible, as momentum builds for his probable Best Actor win. Ang Lee is being hailed far-and-wide for his "brave" film-making. In the gay community, you can't have a dinner party these days without Brokeback Mountain coming up at least once.

So, my friends have been mock-horrified whenever they hear I'm not sure if I want to see this film.

It's not that I don't think Heath and Jake are handsome-as-all-get-out in their jeans and flannel shirts. Its not that I'm immune to Ang Lee's breathtaking filmic abilities (I've seen every one of his films — even The Ice Storm, which was painful to watch, and The Incredible Hulk, which was painful for other reasons). It's not that I don't think it's important for movies to explore the ways homophobia destroys lives. And, it's definitely not that I'm callous to the plight of closeted gay cowboys — I'm the president of PFLAG in my little New Mexico town, after all.

I just don't like depressing films. I go to movies to be uplifted or to have fun. I don't mind sad things happening in a film, as long as I can leave the theater feeling good about the world — and I haven't been convinced that the story of Brokeback Mountain would redeem itself at the end of the film.

So, last week I borrowed the book from a friend, and now I'm even more sure I don't want to see the film. The last ten pages were so sad they made my chest hurt. Far from redeeming itself, the end was classic tragedy, with everyone succumbing to his or her tragic flaws. I honestly don't know if I could handle the story, sitting in a darkened theater with Ang Lee wrenching at my heart with his cinematography. It was hard enough with Annie Proulx's straightforward prose.

So, don't look for me at the theater when Brokeback Mountain comes to town. I'll probably watch it on DVD when my spouse inevitably puts it on our Netflix cue, but I doubt I'll be choosing to see it in the theater.

Both people who commented on my post on redemption and the death penalty asked about justice for the victims (and for society). The real issue here, I think, is retribution. Doesn't justice require a retribution equal to the value of the crime?

A year ago, I would have poo-pooed these comments, and probably said the commentors were just confusing vengeance and justice. But, thanks in part to Eugene Volokh, I have come to realize retribution is a legitimate part of the justice equation. As Volokh and Mark Kleiman point out, rehabilitation and deterrence are not sufficient in-and-of themselves, and are often not even part of the justice equation (as in the continued hunt for Nazi criminals sixty years after the fact, when the criminals are no longer a threat and their punishment would in no way deter future war criminals).

Volokh, I think, takes retribution too far by advocating torture and death for certain crimes. He doesn't believe justice is served by essentially euthenizing a violent murderer in the same way we would put down a cat. He thinks certain crimes require a slow painful death. (If you follow the link, you'll find he moderated this opinion, but only because he thought torture would be difficult to implement in our current justice system.)

Although Volokh's opinion is extreme, his reasoning is (as always) carefully thought out, and thereby illustrates one of the main difficulties with retributive justice. How do we determine what counts as retributive? Must the punishment be exactly equal to the crime?

I would argue that life in prison without the possibility of parole is a sufficiently retributive punishment for murder. I'm not arguing for a European-style system in which murderers get ten years in prison. I simply don't think murder demands a state-sanctioned killing, any more than rape would require a retributive rape for justice to be served.

And, as I said in my previous post, I believe leaving open the possibility of redemption is much more important than a tit-for-tat response to crime. Retribution and restoration should both be goals of justice, even if they can't always be achieved in every case. The death penalty may serve retribution, but I don't see how it allows for restoration, and life without parole can serve both goals.