The Unforgiven Lives of Others

Abstract

This chapter introduces the concept of apology by looking at how the range of different apologetic acts can be delineated or categorized. It examines how contemporary writers have proposed different ways to do so, and then proposes its own model of distinguishing between private and public apologies. It then examines two films—the American Unforgiven and the German The Lives of Others—to demonstrate how moral worlds that structure what it means to apologize and to forgive are formed through particular kinds of mythologizing and demythologizing. The two films represent exemplary kinds of social orders—the vigilante West, a totalitarian state—that can promote or foreclose the kind of moral world where such exchanges can be meaningful.