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Jeremy Barry

Ms. Michko

AP Language and Composition

7 June 2023

Crime and Justice Discussion Reflection

1. In the seminar on Crime and Justice, I found it very interesting how much films and

movies can affect us, regardless of how similar it is to a book. I didn’t truly understand

the extent of the impact it can have on our viewpoints until we had this discussion.

Although it may seem obvious, these points didn’t stand out until we dove into them

towards the end of our conversation. Our group seemed to be in agreement that the film

changed most of our perspectives on Truman Capote as it made him come off as more

human but, it also made him seem a lot more unbiased as his relationship with Perry was

illustrated in a way that couldn’t be captured with words. Furthermore, I was also slightly

surprised by the differing viewpoints regarding the podcast we listened to, serial, while

many individuals including myself thought that the narrator was sympathetic towards

Adnan, others thought the narrator was unbiased. This sympathy that the narrator gave

ultimately led to a bit of bias in my opinion. I thought that most people would feel the

same way I did until lots of my peers started talking about how she was unbiased. Yes,

she may have been less biased than Truman Capote but she was still biased, so she

shouldn’t have gotten the praise from my classmates that she received.

2. This discussion we had got me thinking about a lot but, one aspect where I felt as my

mind was changed was regarding the question, “what makes an author reliable?” Now at

first, I figured this question wasn’t too complex and could probably be answered in a
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couple of sentences. After hearing a high proportion of my classmates choose this

question, it made me wonder about it. Beforehand, I figured that truly immersing yourself

in a story is a great thing to do as a journalist. I even went as far as to say that Capote did

a good job in this aspect of his work. I forgot who said it but a classmate of mine said,

“How could he not be unbiased when he was so involved” Those words stuck with me as

they made me understand that fully immersing yourself in a story may not be the most

healthy thing to do for the writers' health and for the stories overall well-being.

3.

a. In this discussion, I felt as I provided a valuable contribution as I wasn’t just

simply restating what my previous classmates said. For instance, there was a time

when we spent a long time on one part of a long question. I took the initiative and

naturally flowed the conversation to talk about the Clutters and the community,

not just Perry and Dick. There were also other parts of the conversation where I

brought up new, points that raised thought-provoking questions, like the time I

talked about not only the validity of the book but also the credibility of the movie.

b. In future discussions, I hope to take more of a prominent role in the process of

discussing a question. One thing I noticed that nobody seemed to do was ask

follow-up questions (not on the paper), to have more exciting, interesting,

conversations. This could be beneficial as discussions without this tend to have

lots of repetitive information as we tend to restate what someone else has already

said without providing further information.