ISSN 1062-7421
Vol. 10 No. 9 (September 2000) p. 514-516.
LAW IN FILM: RESONANCE AND REPRESENTATION by David A. Black. Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois
Press, 1999. 192 pp. Cloth $39.95. ISBN 0-252-02459-1. Paper $17.95. ISBN 0-252-06765-7.
Reviewed by Howard Gillman, Department of Political Science, University of Southern California.
Maybe the publishers inadvertently switched the sub-title and title. In this book there is considerable discussion
of resonance and representation, but not much analysis of the ways in which law is depicted in movies. Black is
a professor of communication and film theory rather than a legal scholar, and in this work he spends most of his
time engaging a theoretical literature on topics such as the nature of narrative, the characteristics of genre,
the role of reflexivity in film, and the various
ways in which critics respond to film. He has strong opinions on all these topics, and he goes to great lengths
to argue for the relative advantage of certain concepts (e.g., the fabula/syuzhet distinction) over others (the
histoire/discours distinction). However, he does not ask the kinds of questions that traditional legal scholars
typically ask about law movies, questions like whether courtroom depictions are accurate or whether certain movies
provoke us to think harder about the role of law in society, the nature of judicial politics, or the depiction
of law in popular culture. Because these questions suggest a "pedagogical agenda" that is unrelated
to
"film scholarship" he is uninterested in them except as a foil against which he can offer a more serious
"engagement with film history or the nature of film" (p. 123). Readers who are mostly interested in
film as a way of engaging in legal scholarship are hereby forewarned.
Black's engagement with film theory is more elliptical, sprawling, and confessional than systematic and focused.
The first sentence is a pretty good preview of coming attractions: "On offer in this book is a tour -- negotiated
in advance, and guided, by a narrative theorist -- of a succession of stretches of confluence between and among
the cultural, textual, and historical channels of film and law" (p. 1). Law is mentioned up front but we
also learn very quickly that "this book is NOT a survey of films about law, nor of any significant subset
of them. The films I discuss are chosen exclusively for their value as examples ... of how to talk about what
I am
talking about in the way that I am suggesting it be talked about." What he is talking about is "narrative
theory in engagement with the historical and operational premises of specific representation regimes" (p.
2).
Some efforts are made to link what he is talking about with law. For example, Black points out that narrative
is important both in law and in film, and concludes that films about law are thus narratives about narratives,
thus making the idea of narrative in this context "doubly determined" or even "overdetermined"
(although the special meaning and significance of this language is not spelled out). He also suggests, appropriately
enough, that "beyond narrative" in each of these "narrative
regimes" is "pleasure in film" and "power in
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law," although he admits that "film wields a kind of power, and law provides a certain kind of pleasure"
(pp. 40, 43). He notices in passing that courtrooms are kinds of theaters just like movie houses, although ultimately
he insists that we must be mindful of law's distinctive relationship to actual violence; after all, "suffering
and death
themselves are not, per se, narrative" (p. 38). However, much of what he has to say about these connections
between narrative and law is a reproduction of the
work of others (e.g., Bennett and Feldman 1981, Cover 1985), and as with most recent Hollywood remakes there are
reasons to prefer the original.
Legal scholars might find themselves hopeful when Black moves to the discussion of "genre," since that
topic suggests an effort to map out what should be the object of his analysis - films about law. But his "experiment
in operating under a genre-theory compulsion" produces no useable results. He tries to apply Rick Altman's
(1981) discussion of genre (from his book THE AMERICAN FILM MUSICAL) to the topic at hand but after the elements
of genre are elaborated Black says simply that he will not use the discussion to define the "corpus"
but "will let the preceding comments on the merits of various criteria ... suffice" (p. 67). While the
reader/spectator is still reeling from this calculated anti-climax Black quickly moves on to further polish his
conceptual apparatus, distinguishing reflexivity from
automatic reflexivity from elective reflexivity, exploring reflexivity as reflection and reflexivity as refraction,
building on Altman's distinction between the semantic and the syntactic elements of a generic film, and combining
these various projects to produce new terms like "syntactic reflexivity." What is the payoff of all
this work?
"...It is precisely in their treatment of logomorphism that ideologically reflective courtroom scenes tend
to differ from refractive ones: when the refractive potential in a courtroom scene encounters an opposing pull,
that pull comes consistently from the principle of verbal recountability. Courtroom scenes can absorb what might
otherwise be an effective onslaught of reflexivity, specifically by turning the signifiers of disruption into grist
for the verbal mill; or they can allow reflexivity full play" (p. 75).
You get the picture.
In highlighting other arguments about representation and resonance he is much more likely to discuss the movie
REAR WINDOW (a film about the experience of watching movies) than more familiar films about law, judges, and trials.
When we finally get to some law films it is more likely that Black will choose to focus on the presence of movie
projectors in law films (like FURY) than the presence of law in those films. Black mentions RASHOMON, but rather
than focus on the movie we get a criticism of an essay by a law professor (Sokolow 1991) in which he discusses
the difficulties of using the movie in a law class to make a point about reconstructing events from competing eyewitness
accounts. Don't look here for discussions of TWELVE ANGRY MEN or ANATOMY OF A MURDER or A MAN FOR ALL SEASONS
or THE PAPER CHASE. In this book Nicholas Ray's unsatisfying murder melodrama IN A LONELY PLACE gets almost a
whole chapter because of the way in which it uses "ad hoc categories of reflexivity such as 'Hollywood' and
'narratological'" (p. 94).
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The only movie courtroom scene that gets any sustained attention in this book (about 3 pages) is from Woody Allen's
BANANAS, and this because that scene "lends itself to a double traversal by a theory of reflexivity"
(p. 79). Thankfully, though, the reader gets a brief opportunity to tune out the tour guide and derive some simple
pleasure from a recounting of parts of that scene. Remember when the character witness for the Woody Allen character
(Fielding Mellish) says, "I'm sorry to disappoint you, but I've known Fielding Mellish for years and he's
a warm, wonderful human being"? Remember when Mellish then asks the clerk to please read the statement back,
and the clerk reads, "I've known Fielding Mellish for years and he is a rotten, conniving, dishonest little
rat"? "O.K.," says Mellish, "I just wanted to make sure you were getting it." (I mention
this scene because reviewers who get caught up in this theoretical netting might begin to worry that they are becoming
the court clerk to Black's Mellish in an unanticipated example of refractive reflexivity.)
For all his talk about narrative Black is not very sensitive as a writer to the pleasures that narrative structure
can offer a reader -- even a reader of theory. He describes his purpose as "an attempt to take a small number
of generative insights, go forward with them, and renegotiate the field of inquiry -- if only to see what it will
look like" (p. 6). But most readers take greater satisfaction from the sense of coherence that we associated
with a presentation that is tied together with a clearer
sense of purpose. When Black writes at one point that "even a film that goes in heavily for reflexivity can
do so in a manner that is not particularly probing or critical" (p. 72) it is too tempting to think that the
same thing is true for some books.
While criticizing the projects that legal scholars bring to bear on film analysis Black says that "by studying
film without putting it in the kind of context it finds in legal studies, we either demonstrate that studying film
is a legitimate academic goal in itself or we fail, precisely, to do so" (p. 137). Precisely.
REFERENCES:
Altman, Rick. 1987. THE AMERICAN FILM MUSICAL. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.
Bennett, W. Lance and Martha S. Feldman. 1981. RECONSTRUCTING REALITY IN THE COURTROOM: JUSTICE AND JUDGMENT IN
AMERICAN CULTURE. New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press.
Cover, Robert. 1985. "Violence and the Word," YALE LAW JOURNAL 95: 1601-28.
Sokolow, David Simon. 1991. "From Kurosawa to (Duncan) Kennedy: The Lessons of RASHOMON for Current Legal
Education," WISCONSIN LAW REVIEW 5: 969-86.
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Copyright 2000 by the author, Howard Gillman.