<\/p>\n
Earlier this month,<\/span> Acting Secretary of the Army Adam R. Telle signed an order<\/a> scheduling the execution of Nidal Hasan, a former Army major who was convicted of killing 13 people in a 2009 shooting at Fort Hood, Texas. Two days later, self-styled War Secretary Pete Hegseth made a startling announcement. \u201cWe\u2019ll make sure that people are able to watch it, that it\u2019s public,\u201d Hegseth told the conservative Real America\u2019s Voice News network<\/a>, as the interviewer raised his eyebrows. The Department of War\u2019s official \u201cRapid Response\u201d Twitter account promptly promoted<\/a> the clip.<\/p>\n Hegseth\u2019s plan apparently won\u2019t come to fruition. Amid outcry about the barbarity and optics of streaming the planned execution by firing squad \u2014 scheduled for December 3 at Fort Hood \u2014 President Donald Trump on Thursday called off the broadcast. \u201cI think streaming the execution for all to see might have been a strong deterrent for the World to witness how America deals with Terrorists and SCUM like Hasan but, many very good and well meaning people would rather not watch him die, through streaming, or through any other visual device,\u201d Trump posted<\/a> on his social media website.<\/p>\n Some news outlets, such as The New York Times, framed<\/a> the planned killing as an aberration, claiming that \u201csuch a broadcast has little precedent, and releasing video of executions is most often associated with extremist militant groups like the Islamic State.\u201d This narrative, however, overlooks a forgotten American cultural history in which filmed executions turned government killings into spectacle<\/a>.<\/p>\n The practice of filming executions in America is effectively as old as cinema itself.<\/p>\n In 1897, a few years after the first motion pictures began to be exhibited in the United States, a Missouri farmhand named William Carr was convicted of murdering his daughter and sentenced to death by hanging. Filmmaker Frederick Guth, of the American Phonographic Company, who had previously recorded an interview with Carr in prison, opted to film the execution as well \u2014 marking a grim milestone as history\u2019s first filmed execution. The resulting motion picture, \u201cThe Hanging of William Carr\u201d (1897), was first exhibited in Kansas City and St. Louis, then screened around the country.<\/p>\n The following year saw the nationwide premiere of \u201cAn Execution by Hanging,\u201d otherwise known as \u201cExecution of Negro at County Jail, Jacksonville, Fla\u201d (1898). It showed the hanging of Edward Heinson, who was convicted and sentenced to death for criminal assault of a 14-year-old white girl. Illustrating racist views that have long shaped the American criminal legal system<\/a> and the death penalty<\/a>, the catalog of the film\u2019s production company, American Mutoscope and Biograph, teased the film as depicting \u201ca very ghastly, but very interesting subject.\u201d<\/p>\n As these early films were distributed across the nation, they were met with interest and outcry. The journal Phonoscope at the time described the filming of Carr\u2019s execution as \u201crevolting,\u201d while the Cleveland Leader cautioned that the film may have \u201cbrutalizing effects\u201d on viewers. Some newspapers even claimed<\/a> that during the hanging of Carr, Guth had hired people to storm the gallows to create added pandemonium.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Soon, the burgeoning cinema industry came to adopt a different practice for the growing number of films about executions. Filmmakers started blending reality with fiction, by combining clips recorded at actual execution locations with fictionalized reenactments of the killings themselves.<\/p>\n For instance, after Thomas Edison\u2019s Edison Studios failed to gain permission from the authorities to film the actual execution by electrocution of President William McKinley\u2019s assassin, filmmakers combined exterior location shots on the day of the killing with footage of a mannequin to depict the actual death in \u201cExecution of Czolgosz with Panorama of Auburn Prison<\/a>\u201d (1901).<\/p>\n Edison was no stranger to the format: He had previously produced numerous historical execution reenactments like \u201cThe Execution of Mary, Queen of Scots\u201d (1895) and \u201cThe Execution of Joan of Arc\u201d (1895). His studio also dabbled in zoosadistic entertainment, with films showcasing actual animal deaths, such as \u201cElectrocuting an Elephant\u201d (1903), which presented an elephant named Topsy being put to death for killing a spectator who had burnt her trunk with a cigar.<\/p>\n In 1905, American Mutoscope reused the title of its earlier film, \u201cAn Execution by Hanging,\u201d this time depicting a reenactment of the hanging of Mary Rogers, who was convicted of killing her husband (alternate title \u201cExecution of a Murderess\u201d). Along with what were apparently genuine location shots, American Mutoscope incorporated reenactments of the moment of death. The film was released as part of a trilogy, including \u201cReading the Death Sentence\u201d and \u201cReprieve from the Scaffold,\u201d with the third installment presenting an alternate fictional ending in which Rogers was not killed.<\/p>\n Other films around the turn of the century used a similar technique to conflate reality and fiction, with film catalogs accentuating the lurid nature of these pictures. The description of \u201cBeheading a Chinese Prisoner\u201d (1900) in the Lubin production company catalog reads: \u201cThe executioner displays the head to the spectators to serve as a warning for evil doers. Very exciting.\u201d Lubin had also earlier produced another execution reenactment, \u201cExecution of the Spanish Spy\u201d (1898).<\/p>\n Many films focused on executions carried out by mobs rather than the government. There was \u201cEdison\u2019s Lynching Scene,\u201d also known as \u201cLynching of a Horse-Thief\u201d and more coyly as \u201cA Frontier Scene\u201d (1898), as well as \u201cLynching Scene: A Genuine Lynching Scene,\u201d also known as \u201cLynching Scene at Paris, Texas\u201d (1897) from the International Film Company, and \u201cA Lynching at Cripple Creek,\u201d otherwise known as \u201cTracked by Bloodhounds\u201d (1904).<\/p>\n The motion picture camera, of course, wasn\u2019t the only new technology at that time shifting the public\u2019s perception of execution. When William Kemmler was killed in the first electric chair execution in New York in 1890, the American media heralded a \u201cnew era in capital punishment.\u201d Witnessing the new death technology, even in reenactment form, would prove to be a fascination for filmgoers over the years.<\/p>\n \u201cDeath in the Electric Chair at Sing Sing\u201d (1902), the final installment in American Mutoscope\u2019s five-part \u201cA Career of Crime\u201d series, is described in the company\u2019s 1902 catalog as \u201can accurate and thrilling representation of an electric execution at Sing Sing.\u201d<\/p>\n As the novelty of new execution methods wore off, their cinematic popularity likewise began to taper, though film promoters occasionally used the electric chair as a prop<\/a> outside the cinema to attract moviegoers in the 1930s. At the same time, as the practice of public hangings faded<\/a> in the U.S. and executions moved indoors, authorities began restricting access to death chambers to select groups of family members, victims\u2019 relations, official personnel, and chosen media. It\u2019s a practice that continues to this day<\/a>, preventing actual recordings of executions from reaching the public.<\/p>\n