Law on the Screen

Vol. 15 No.9 (September 2005), pp.806-810

LAW ON THE SCREEN, by Austin Sarat, Lawrence Douglas, and Martha Merrill Umphrey (eds). Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2005. 288pp. Cloth $50.00

ISBN: 0-8047-5162-5.

Reviewed by Lori Maxwell, Department of Sociology and Political Science, Tennessee Tech University. Email: LMMaxwell [at] tntech.edu

With their recently-published LAW ON THE SCREEN, Austin Sarat, Lawrence Douglas, and Martha Merrill Umphrey, have edited a must-read for a broad range of interdisciplinary scholars. Their unique contribution is to focus on both the representation of law in film and its reception by movie-going audiences. Moreover, they delineate promising research avenues in this relatively nascent area of film and law study and detail a literature review of the pioneering scholars in the field. The only problematic areas deal with conceptual clarity generally, and the methodology and assumptions within some of the essays. I will focus first on the Introduction and call for future scholarship and then evaluate each of the essays in the order they appear in the text. Most of the contributors are Professors of Law, but Shapiro is a Political Scientist, Smoodin is Professor of American Studies, and Waldman is a Professor of Mass Communications, respectively.

Sarat, Douglas, and Umphrey clearly establish the target audience and assist future scholars with a literature review but allow potential problems by not fully defining the terms “screen” and “law.” To begin, LAW ON THE SCREEN is clearly written for researchers. The editors state that their purpose is to “broaden the focus” of law and film research (p.4). They reiterate this at the conclusion of the opening section in issuing a call to those who are willing to traverse the “large terrain ripe for scholarly inquiry” (p.20). The unique nature of the work is that it appeals to such a diverse array of academic disciplines: film scholars, law professors, political scientists, sociologists, historians, race and/or gender scholars, criminal justice scholars, and others. Additionally, the Introduction offers would-be researchers a Who’s Who of previous scholars, referenced both within the text and in a treasure trove of endnotes that are worth the time to read.

However, while the literature review is clear and cogent, the two key concepts embodied in the very title of the text are a bit vague. The editors are unclear in what they mean by “screen.” All of the essays focus on the movie screen. And yet, when one reads the Introduction, this is not explicit. For instance, in the first few sentences one finds: “the proliferation of law in film, on television, and in mass-marketed publications has altered and expanded the sphere of public life” (p.1). Later, one is told that there are many ways we socialize our legal knowledge, “none more important than film (and) television” (p.2). When the reader concludes the text, confusion remains as to whether the authors are implicitly advocating future television research [*807] because they mention it, or they are rejecting it via their failure to incorporate a study of anything other than film.

This is much less of a problem, however, than the cavalier treatment of the word “law.” Certainly Stanford University Press did not expect the authors to detail the seven major categories and four subsequent pages of supplemental definitions found in BLACK’S LAW DICTIONARY. Nevertheless, it poses analytical problems to use the word “law” in six essays to refer simultaneously to gender, race, courtroom rulings, tort law, regime change, testimony, symbols of law (e.g., police and the old West), law as spectacle, the “delinquent milieu,” and camera angles (p.62). Fortunately, Michael J. Shapiro demonstrates how this pitfall can be avoided, as will be addressed shortly. However, the first essay is by Orit Kamir.

Kamir’s essay addresses the tension between a society’s need to move on after regime change and an individual woman’s need for justice from the rapist who tortured her under the old regime. Moreover, it contains a brilliant illustration of feminist criticism as a subtext within the broader work that could spark a lively debate in a gender and politics course.

Interestingly, however, he admits his assumptions up front regarding the strong influence of film on individuals in our society. Unfortunately, no methodology is extant to substantiate his assertions that “films are overwhelmingly influential, playing a key role in the construction of individuals and groups in contemporary society” (p.30). He adds that they “can be extremely effective in molding public actions and reactions,” as well as “provoking a host of emotive responses and powerful impressions” (pp.30-31). These are strong claims that need to be supported.

Kamir does highlight key areas for future research, however. Following the lead of Felman and Laub (1992), he insists that being able to testify is empowering for women who are victims of rape or the atrocities of civil war. They argue that “the therapeutic process of narration, constitution, and reclaiming of the traumatic memory . . . manifests itself in testimony” (p.41). I would also add that Kamir’s discussion of the role of Truth Commission has potential viability for women in Afghanistan or Iraq today, where they could at least tell their stories on the record if the possibility of prosecuting rapists is no longer viable.

As mentioned previously, Michael J. Shapiro does an extraordinary job of clearly delineating the term “law” in his analysis. Specifically, Shapiro juxtaposes Foucault’s “delinquency milieu” with the racial politics of post WWII Los Angeles through the vehicle of Denzel Washington’s portrayal of Easy Rawlins in Devil in a Blue Dress. And yet, Shapiro explains to the reader up front that the “delinquency milieu” is but one way in which he evaluates the “law.” He is also cognizant of the “legal” ramifications of Reconstruction (p.85), the “law” as a reflection of the “economics of slavery” both for all blacks and for Easy’s character (p.87), the “legal” connotations between the panoptical and spatial/friendship links [*808] (p.84), and the current racial trouble in Los Angeles (p.85), as well as others.

Moreover, he does not simply present the “law;” he demonstrates how it is evident in the film. For instance, he discusses how Denzel Washington’s brilliant use of fluidity of motion when in the black parts of town contrasts with his “stride stiff and tentative” in the white part of town to reflect the economic history of the “law” (p.97). Also, Shapiro points out that the screenplay deviates from the novel, where the white policeman arrives in the black bar dressed in all white – a “startling appearance” representing both Jim Crow “laws” and the “law” of the cop as the delinquent milieu (p.85).

Richard K. Sherwin’s essay highlights the exciting interdisciplinary nature of this book, as well as his broad mastery of subjects. He is as comfortable discussing psychoanalytical theory as he is philosophy, equally conversant with Greek tragedy and postmodernism. As a political scientist, I was most excited that Sherwin was viewing the film as “spectacle.” More specifically, he explores the “legal spectacle, or a ‘jurisprudence of appearances, [where] law remains in force but lacks in significance’” (p.13). Viewing material as spectacle is a current and relevant area of political research. Note Bruce Miroff’s “The Presidency and the Public: Leadership as Spectacle,” in Nelson’s THE PRESIDENCY AND THE POLITICAL SYSTEM. And, Larry Sabato, the most well-known scholar in our field to focus on the spectacle, refers to the media in many instances as the “feeding frenzy” – the “spectacle without equal in modern American politics” (Sabato 2000, at 1).

Sherwin, though, seems to overstep when he predicts – based upon the homicidal/suicidal dream sequence of an individual film, Mulholland Drive – the total collapse of civilization as we know it by anticipating a “new paradigm for law” (p.131). In this new paradigm, Sherwin assumes the “collapse of the now ‘outmoded’ modern nation-state” (p.130). More surprisingly, he predicts “newly emergent political entities such as . . . the multinational terror network” (p.130). These terror networks, “may embody a transitional stage in which . . . fragmentation, decay, and ruin . . . and unresolved death anxiety prefigure more thoroughly reformulated political regimes” (p.130). One wonders how this methodology could possibly be replicated.

Jennifer L. Mnookin focuses on the inherent tension in the documentary form of filmmaking, which presumes a truthful representation but may be at its core undertaken as a means of advocacy (pp.154-155). In following two critically-acclaimed HBO films that highlight the “West Memphis Three,” whom many believe to have been imprisoned without sufficient proof of guilt, Mnookin yields groundbreaking results that could serve as a map for research into so-called reality television. Mnookin finds, for instance, that above and beyond the potential ramifications of advocacy (which was demonstrated with only about twenty percent of viewers leaving theaters convinced of guilt), that HBO may well have influenced the very outcome of the trial itself. HBO paid the families and lawyers and this may have negatively affected the defendants. Moreover a critical piece of evidence – possibly even the murder weapon itself – was given to an HBO cameraman by [*809] someone many believe to be the actually killer! Additionally, she points out how the film then took on a life of itself with numerous high profile celebrities embracing the cause of the young defendants, and fundraisers and websites popping up to support them. Thus, Mnookin demonstrates in her piece what Kamir assumed in his, that film can, as seen in this one instance, have tremendous impact and yield audience response.

Diane Waldman’s essay is an illustration of the synthesis between the editors’ Introduction and her plea for limited use of corrective criticism. Sarat, Douglas, and Umphrey, in their literature review, make clear that one of the pioneers in this field is David A. Black, who describes how “law” is often portrayed in the context of the courtroom setting. Waldman, too, works from Black; however, she challenges him as well. Black rejects the notion of corrective criticism – attempting to critique a fictional film to correct facts or make it more plausible (p.202). She believes that, by correcting errors in fictional films intended to represent real events, one can trace the financial interests that drove the production, the marketing elements that influenced the spin of the film’s release, as well as the impact these external agents have on audience reception. She went back to accused polluters and the people who actually suffered from the environmental pollution and cancer as presented in A Civil Action to evaluate their response to the film. Her results are fascinating. The polluting company in question tried to access advance copies of the film and has subsequently established a web site – ostensibly for spin control but in which they impugn themselves (p.223). Furthermore, the dying words of children were attributed to the wrong families (p.209). Thus, corrective criticism seems a valuable tool to evaluate interest groups.

Finally, Eric Smoodin’s analysis of the fan mail sent to Frank Capra upon the release of Mr. Smith Goes to Washington is an intriguing snapshot of responses to Jimmy Stewart’s character. Smoodin’s analysis as to why the climate of the late 1930s bred distrust for insiders in Washington, but a high level of support for an outsider who is a true patriot, is unique and raises many questions for future research for political scientists who have often evaluated the allure of the Washington “outsider.” Due to lack of data, political scientists have historically attributed political alienation and loss of political efficacy to the post-Vietnam and Watergate eras. But these letters seem to indicate that American citizens were feeling it much earlier and seeking a hero to save them from corruption and gridlock. They found the hero in Mr. Smith and vicariously through Capra as well. Smoodin also hints at the pedagogical value of LAW ON THE SCREEN when he notes that this “film is a scene-by-scene primer in American law” (p.232). However, his methodology, which is well presented, is unlikely to be accepted by political science journals because it is highly subjective in attempting to evaluate underlying motivations of audience response through the “rhetoric of reception” (p.237). The closest thing in our discipline would be a content analysis.

In conclusion, Sarat, Douglas, and Umphrey have put together a valuable text with broad interdisciplinary appeal [*810] to both researchers and classroom instructors in LAW ON THE SCREEN. The literature review is helpful, and the target audience is clear, although it extends beyond the scope envisioned by the authors. The terminology needs clarification, but editors often choose to “let a thousand flowers bloom” intentionally in early works to promote inclusion. Nevertheless, each author is free to define his/her own usage of terms, as Shapiro does so well. Some assumptions are made regarding audience response and methodology, but overall the essays are well-done and enlightening. I applaud the call for scholarship by the editors and their choice of unique essays, and I echo their appeal to journal editors to begin publishing this type of research with more frequency (p.22).

REFERENCES:

Felman, Shoshana, and Dori Laub. 1992. TESTIMONY: CRISES OF WITNESSING IN PSYCHOANALYSIS, LITERATURE, AND HISTORY. New York: Routledge.

Nelson, Michael (ed). 2000. THE PRESIDENCY AND THE POLITICAL SYSTEM. Washington D.C.: Congressional Quarterly Press.

Sabato, Larry J. 2000. FEEDING FRENZY ATTACK JOURNALISM AND AMERICAN POLITICS. Baltimore: Lanaham Publishers, Inc.

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