Description
Book SynopsisIntervenes in the emerging discipline of law-and-film by developing a framework for evaluating how films represent "gender crimes" and how those representations affect audiences' ideas about women, their legal rights, and their roles in society
Trade Review“
Framed is groundbreaking. It pushes law-and-film scholarship forward in significant ways. The question at its core is not how various groups are represented but rather the more difficult one of how we as legal or cinematic audiences are led to judge these groups. Orit Kamir doesn’t simply ‘do’ an analysis of a group of films. Rather, she uses a set of films as a vehicle to explore the mechanisms of judgment.”—Rebecca Johnson, author of
Taxing Choices: The Intersection of Class, Gender, Parenthood, and the Law“In this fascinating book, Orit Kamir displays an original method for reading law and film that illuminates both a remarkable set of films from around the world and many of our deepest assumptions about law. All this is done from a powerful feministic perspective. I know nothing like it.”—James Boyd White, author of
The Edge of MeaningTable of ContentsAcknowledgments ix
Preface xi
Introduction: Conceptual Framework 1
Part I. Feminist Critique of Law Films that Honor-Judge Women
1.
Rashomon (Japan, 1950): Construction of Woman as Guilty Object 43
2.
Pandora’s Box (Germany, 1928): Exorcising Pandora-Lilith in the Weimar Republic 73
3.
Blackmail (England, 1929): Hitchcock’s Sound and the New Woman’s Guilty Silence 90
4.
Anatomy of a Murder (U.S.A., 1959): Hollywood’s Hero-Lawyer Revives the Unwritten Law 112
Part II. Cinematic Women Demanding Judgment
From Liberal Attitudes to Radical Feminist Jurisprudence and the Ethics of Care 5.
Adam’s Rib (U.S.A., 1949): Hollywood’s Female Lawyer and Family Values (Read with
Disclosure and
Legally Blonde) 135
6.
Nuts (U.S.A., 1987): The Mad Woman’s Day in Court 160
7.
Death and the Maiden (U.S.A., 1994): Challenging Trauma with Feminine Judgment and Justice (Read with
The Piano) 185
Part III. Women Resisting and Subverting Judgment
Beyond Conventional Feminist Jurisprudence 8.
A Question of Silence (Netherlands, 1982): Feminist Community as Revolution (Read against “A Jury of Her Peers”) 217
9.
Set it Off (U.S.A., 1996): Minority Women at the Point of No Return 243
10.
High Heels (Spain, 1991): Almodovar’s Postmodern Transgression 264
Notes 285
Bibliography 299
Index 313
