The Risk Of Judging

Why an innocent suspect can have a huge impact on one's life?

Have you ever asked yourself, if your unfounded suspects of someone, when you tell them to someone else, could make incredible effects on yours and his life?

I’ve started reflecting on this topic especially because I've recently seen Jagten.

Jagten is a Danish movie directed by Thomas Vinterberg starring Mads Mikkelsen.

Suspicion always haunts the guilty minds

William Shakespeare

Jagten - why lying is a problem

Lucas is a common man, who was getting through a rough divorce and was trying to create a new life in this little community. He is not allowed to see his son when he wants to. He is a nursery teacher. His best friend has a little child, called Clara, but she is alone and neglected by her parents. She often finds herself alone, walking down the streets, so Lucas helps her parents by bringing their daughter safely to school.

Clara starts to feel close to her teacher, but after being scold by Lucas decides to tell the nursery director that she had seen Lucas's private parts. The nursery director is worried about it, at the start she decides to keep this information to herself. She calls an expert to interview Clara to verify that what she was saying was true, and he concludes that it is true because children don’t lie about those things. The director now feels obliged to suspend Lucas from his job and to tell to all the parents of the children attending that school what had happened and verify that nothing happened to their children.

In a scandalous climate, Lucas is now the black sheep of the village, although he didn’t do anything, his condition keeps getting worse as the other children attending the school think they remember that something had happened to them.

It becomes impossible for him to live a normal life, someone kills his dog, he gets beaten in the supermarket and they throw rocks through his windows. In the end, finally, the real truth comes out and everything comes back normal.

The topic in jagten is really interesting, this movie shows us what a single stupid lie can cause on the life of an innocent teacher. From the start we know that he is innocent, the problem is that all the other people, the parents of the children have no idea of it. They are sure of his guilt.

Children always tell the truth

There is this popular belief that children always tell the truth, but are we sure of that?

Although children are meant to be more sincere, we may think of them in a Nietzschean way. The child who fears nothing and simply is a free spirit, a force of nature, who doesn't recognize the difference between good and evil.

The child is still immature, in a sense that is free from all the social structures that we “adults” have living in a society.

He probably doesn’t even know to be lying, he is just living as he is. As they are so pure and innocent it is easy that they start believing something happened when in reality it isn't.

In the movie Clara, who lied saying that Lucas “abused” her, can’t even tell the difference between what happened and what didn't. Those new memories that something had happened comes from all the parents and the school director who keep saying that Lucas did what it did.

Because of this popular belief and the new fake beliefs in Clara's memories, Lucas’s life got destroyed.

Suspicion is inexorable

The last scene of the movie is kinda controversial as we see Lucas going to help Clara, taking her in his arms. It is similar to when he helps her in one of the first scenes.

The only thing that changes is our perspective, as we feel like Clara is unsafe when he goes to her, although we know he is an innocent person the suspect that he made something still runs through our minds.

This fear, which is the same fear that the parents of all the students of that school feel, is legitimate. It is legitimate because they care about their children and their safety, and the question that always arises is: “what if all of this was true?”

How to avoid ruining someone’s life especially in this digital world

In the modern world, someone’s reputation can easily be ruined. This happens thanks to social networks and our insatiable desire of gossiping about everything and everyone.

Those gossips are the real problem; every single gossip (or lie, like some fake information about someone) has the potential to become a snowball that becomes bigger and bigger, capable of overwhelming anything. For each person through whom the information passes, it will increasingly mislead from its original meaning.

Probably we should start to think more about ourselves rather than others, and when we get to know a new gossip we shouldn’t say it out loud to all the world but instead, check its truthness.