Description
Book SynopsisWhat's going on with the rise of tv law programs - both fictional and documentary, and how does that affect our lives and real court rooms.
Trade ReviewLaw and Justice as Seen on TV provides a comprehensive and sophisticated look at the ways law appears nightly in the living rooms of millions of Americans. Combining valuable insights about the workings of the television industry with an insightful argument about the criminalization of American life, Elayne Rapping has made a distinctive contribution to interdisciplinary legal scholarship. Her work shows how valuable the analysis of popular culture can be in illuminating some of the most important legal and social issues of our time. -- Austin Sarat,William Nelson Cromwell Professor of Jurisprudence and Political Science, Amherst College
In recent years, an expanding wave of law and criminal justice programs has emerged on American television. Elayne Rapping proves a masterful guide in her overview of a wide range of TV narrative fiction series, Court TV, talk shows, news, and other programs that deals with law, order, criminality, and justice, contextualizing TV crime and justice in the context of fierce political battles over these topics in the past decades of American history. -- Douglas Kellner,author of Media Culture and Media Spectacle
Law and Justice as Seen on TV is deliberately provocative. * Akron Beacon Journal *
Lively and engagingly written, it explores as Rapping writes, "an interplay of aesthetics, politics, and legal history [that] come together in complex and often contradictory ways. Anyone who has watched these shows will appreciate seeing them in a new way. Much of the enjoyment in reading the book comes from Rapping's ability to draw on a wide range of cultural and intellectual interests and present them in down-to-earth language. * Trial *
Accessible and lucid. * www.sirreadalot.org *
Table of ContentsContentsAcknowledgments Introduction I Fiction and Entertainment Genres1 The Return of the Attorney-Hero: Politics and Justice in the Prime-Time Courtroom 2 Aliens, Nomads, Mad Dogs, and Road Warriors: Tabloid TV and the New Face of Criminal Violence 3 Signs of the Times: Oz and the Sudden Visibility of Prisons on Television II News and Documentary Genres4 Cameras, Court TV, and the Rise of the Criminal Trial as Major Media Event 5 The Politics of Representation: Gender Violence and Criminal Justice 6 Television and Family Dysfunction: From the Talk Show to the Courtroom 1697 Television and the Demonization of Youth 8 Television, Melodrama, and the Rise of the Victims' Rights Movement 236Conclusion: The Criminalization of American Life
