A witness to justice

• Pages: 61-91
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.1108/S1059-4337(2009)0000046003
• Published date: 2008--
• Date: 2008--
• Author: Jessica Silbey

A WITNESS TO JUSTICE

Jessica Silbey

ABSTRACT

In the 1988 film The Accused, a young woman named Sarah Tobias is

gang raped on a pinball machine by three men while a crowded bar

watches. The rapists cut a deal with the prosecutor. Sarah’s outrage at the

deal convinces the assistant district attorney to prosecute members of the

crowd that cheered on and encouraged the rape. This film shows how

Sarah Tobias, a woman with little means and less experience, intuits that

according to the law rape victims are incredible witnesses to their own

victimization. The film goes on to critique what the ‘‘right’’ kind of

witness would be. The Accused, therefore, is also about the relationship

between witnessing and testimony, between seeing and the representation

of that which was seen. It is about the power and responsibility of being a

witness in law – one who sees and credibly attests to the truth of their

vision – as it is also about what it means to bear witness to film – what can

we know from watching movies.

In the film The Accused (1988), a young woman named Sarah Tobias

(played by Jodi Foster) is gang raped on a pinball machine by three men

while a crowded bar watches.

1

She seeks to prosecute the three men but the

assistant district attorney, Kathryn Murphy (played by Kelly McGillis), cuts

a deal. Sarah’s outrage at the deal convinces the assistant district attorney to

prosecute members of the crowd that cheered on and encouraged the rape.

Studies in Law, Politics, and Society, Volume 46, 61–91

Copyright r2009 by Emerald Group Publishing Limited

All rights of reproduction in any form reserved

ISSN: 1059-4337/doi:10.1108/S1059-4337(2009)0000046006

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This film shows how Sarah Tobias, a woman with little means and less

experience, intuits that according to the law, to be a rape victim is to be

invisible – without the power to establish or assert a self among others – and

how she, nevertheless, sets out to challenge her victimized status.

Despite the fact that after being raped Sarah went directly to the hospital

and the police, and despite the fact that the police documented the physical

and medical evidence of the rape, Sarah’s legal and social powerlessness

prevented the gang rape from going to trial. According to the representation

of the law in this film, Sarah is a woman who, because of her low economic

status, lack of education and tendency to drink and carouse with men,

cannot credibly bear witness to her own victimization. Her testimony alone

is insufficient proof of her rape. She cannot be a witness because she is not

seen and cannot see herself in the terms set forth by the law or the film. She

is either invisible (unseen or unremarkable) or she is condemned as

unmanageable and alien (incomprehensible) by both the law and the

camera. As invisible or alien, she is unbelievable before the law and the film

viewers. The legal discourse of The Accused demands a certain kind of

witness in order to testify to the truth of events. So too, the filmic discourse

(a primarily visual medium) either corroborates or undermines the witness’

credibility by controlling the mechanism by which one sees or is seen (as

present and as credible) in the first place. The Accused ’s story and form

demonstrates how Sarah is incapable of bearing witness before the law to

her own rape because of the way it imagines her (or ‘‘images’’ her) as either

invisible or alien (de Lauretis, 1987, p. 37).

The Accused is a film not only about the search for a witness to a crime

but about the right kind of witness – someone who saw the crime take

place and who can credibly testify to their ‘‘personal knowledge’’ of it.

This witness must be knowledgeable and self-aware in order to affect justice.

This film, therefore, is also about the relationship between witnessing

and testimony, between seeing and the representation of that which was

seen. It is about the power and responsibility of being a witness in law – one

who sees and credibly attests to the truth of their vision – as it is also about

what it means to bear witness to film – what can we know from watching

movies. That the Hollywood-produced The Accused, which is based on a

true story, is about seeing and bearing witness makes this transfer double-

edged – at once diegetic and metafilmic. There are witnesses within the film

and witnesses to the film, who may also become witnesses to that which the

film is about: being and bearing witness to a woman, to a man, to a rape,

to the law and to a film. These many different acts of witnessing in and

of this film make it a complicated but rich critique of the relationship

JESSICA SILBEY62