The media hounding of #RheaChakraborty and the voyeurism with which the public is following it is suggestive of the warped understanding of justice that we as a society have acquired.
#Thread
The entire discourse reminds me of a prophetic scene from Tarentino's Hateful Eight, where a hangman explains the difference between justice and frontier justice.
The hangman is interacting with someone accused of murder.
If you're found guilty after trial, the hangman says, you would be hanged in a town square and I will perform the execution as a hangman. "That's what civilzed society calls JUSTICE," he says.
However, the hangman continues, "If the relatives of the person you murdered were outside that door right now. And after busting down that door, they drug you out in the snow, and hung you up by the neck... That would be FRONTIER JUSTICE!...
...Now the good part of frontier justice is it's very thirst quenching. The bad part is it's apt to be Wrong as Right."
Then comes the most critical part in the scene. "What's the real difference between the two?" He asks. "The real difference is ME... The Hangman...
..To me, it doesn't matter what you did. When I hang you, I will get no satisfaction from your death. It's my job. The man who pulls the lever that breaks your neck will be a dispassionate man. And that dispassion is the very essence of justice...
For justice delivered WITHOUT dispassion, is always in danger of not being justice."
Over the past few years, whether it is the hounding of Rhea or the celebration after four suspects in 2019 Hyderabad gang rape case were encountered, we've embraced frontier justice as a society
While it is indeed thirst quenching, as the hangman says in Hateful Eight, it is a giant step in the direction of anarchy, barbarism and dystopia.
Frontier justice 👇 In presence of cops.
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