obstacles to reading lawyer films
james r. elkins
I want to describe some obstacles to reading lawyer films. Elsewhere, I try to suggest some affirmative strategies for working with lawyer films. But we might as well begin with the traps:
The Pleasure Trap. "I watch films for pleasure (indeed, am taking this course simply because I've always liked movies), and I don't want to destroy that pleasure by heavy duty interpretation of the films we watch in the course."
The Legal Accuracy Trap. "The most obvious thing you notice as a student of law or a lawyer watching lawyer films (and lawyer TV dramas) is how the films distort the law, legal procedures, and the legal profession. Lawyer films don't present the law realistically. The most important thing for a law student interpreting a lawyer film is to point out the correct legal procedure and argue for a more realistic view of lawyers."
The Hollywood Film Industry Trap. "Lawyer films are a product of the Hollywood film industry and aren't intended as prescriptions on how to live or practice law."
The Literalist Trap. "About the only thing a student can do with a film is describe the characters and the plot and say something about the story."
Let me offer a brief commentary on these obstacles to law students working with lawyer films and then send you off to entertain some ways to work with lawyer films.
Translating Pleasure Into an Interpretive Strategy. Of course, we watch films for pleasure. Many of us read literature for this reason as well. The difference in reading literature and film is that with literature, we have experience in reading for pleasure and for education (most often under the guidance of a teacher). With no experience in watching films for any purpose other than their entertainment value, we may find ourselves at a loss as to how to read a film for instructive purposes. A film watched for entertainment may allow you to confirm your identity or escape it, but whatever identity work you do, you aren't asked to make it explicit. Watching a film for entertainment requires no work. Like a dream remembered in those brief moments upon awakening, there seems nothing to do, unless of course you want to understand the dream, but put the dream to work, ask what it means, where it might have come from, and what its connection is to you, the dreamer. In your work in the course, you will need a strategy to translate pleasure into an interpretive reading that established the film's place in your understanding of the legal profession and your own identity as a lawyer. You cannot, in the context of a film course, even one offered in law school, allow the habitual pleasures you associate with films distract you from the work required to put the film to use.
You, like the instructor, may be a long-standing movie fan and experience a great deal of pleasure when you watch a good film. Indeed, you may find it pleasurable to watch films you know, even as you watch them, to be less than excellent! One might hope that the pleasure we associate with films could be translated into thoughtful, powerful, provocative, and imaginative writing about "lawyers and film." One suspects that the translation of pleasure into effective writing is not a guaranteed process. Indeed, the same pleasure one hopes will provide the engine for good writing may turn on you, leaving you resentful that you must now deal intellectually and academically with an activity that has been associated with "pleasure" rather than with academic "work." The phenomenon is similar to that in literature courses in which readers with a long-standing love of reading are unable to translate their love of books into writing about books. (I have seen this phenomenon first-hand in the "Lawyers and Literature" course and found it disturbing.)
Avoid Legalistic Readings. When law students watch a film, the first thing they want to do is criticize the film by pointing out its legal inaccuracies, and that the film does not present the law, lawyers, and legal trials in a realistic fashion. This criticism is appealing because it makes the student of law an instance expert and film critic; it allows the student to draw on insider knowledge to challenge the view of law and lawyers presented in the film. A teacher in evidence, civil procedure, trial practice, or legal ethics might find this method of criticism valuable. But it is of questionable value in this course, where we are less interested in reinforcing a legal mind set and confirming your ability to use it. In this course, we have, as they say in Kentucky, "other fish to fry."
Getting Beyond Literal and Surface Readings of Films. The lack of familiarity and experience in reading lawyer films may lead a student to describe the characters and the plot and calling it a day's work. The problem here is that a literal reading of the film tells us only what we already know. A way must be found to get beyond the obvious.
I walk out of a film and my friend asks, "what did you think about the film?" I reply, "I liked it." He asks, "what did you like?" At this point in the conversation, I have the opportunity to present my understanding of the film. My understanding may be in the most clichéd of terms; I might also search for a language and a way to describe what I have seen that does not rely upon over-used terms and expressions. But how am I to do that? How can I find a way to adequately express how the film has affected me? How the film has deepened my understanding of law, the legal profession, and the human condition?
While our initial reaction to a film or piece of literature is important (so much so that you may never overcome it), it will be important in a film course to get beyond your original reaction and immediate impressions of the film. You must find a way to say something more than this is the story (plot) of the film, these are the characters, this is what the lawyer character did, and I liked or disliked the film. You must find a way to "read" the film at some deeper level and attempt to reach some level of meaning that will make the film not only an evening of pleasure, but a text for analytical and critical attention.
Adam Holley, a former student, in a paper written for a lawyers and literature course noted that "It is one thing to enjoy dumb things, yet another to have dumb things produced for consumption because we are dumb and don't know it." When I talk about films I try to avoid saying dumb things, and try to know when I am venturing onto dumb terrain.
Every film has a surface and, if it is a film of any value, "something" beyond. You must try to get from the surface--plot characters, story line and the dazzle of visual images--to something beneath/beyond/behind this surface of literal features. What is this film doing? (And what can I, by my reading, make it do?) Does the film assume pretensions of doing anything other than entertainment? (And if it is nothing more than entertaining, how does it accomplish this purpose?) What kind of lawyer would this film have me be?
A key term here is: critical. As one commentator/teacher puts it: "In this class the expectation is that we will not be innocent consumers of various texts, but reflective and critical. (Critical is used here as a response to common sense. To be critical is not to accept the common sense meanings and relationships, but to unpack them and their assumptions, looking for other meanings and implications.)" [Robert Muffoletto's "Technology in Education," syllabus, College of Education, University of Northern Iowa]
You might check your film reading against the following progressions which signal a movement from the surface to the depths beyond: (i) the movement from the personal to the abstract, the simple to the complex, the notational to the interpretative; (ii) the movement from plot to story to myth; (iii) the movement from the familiar, to the puzzling, to the mysterious..
On Realism
The Offended Critic: Film Reviewing and Social Commentary
Pop Culture Skews Images of Real-life Lawyers
Spielberg's Saving Private Ryan: Small Truths at the Expense of Big Ones
On Politics and Ideology
Getting Beyond the Surface
Bibliography
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Marlene Booth, Fact and Fiction in Film, 15 Legal Stud. F. 233 (1991)
Joel K. Asarch, Audiovisual Media Tend to Distort Role Realistically Played by Lawyers, 199 New York Law Journal 39 (May 2, 1988)
Suzanne Frentz, T.V. Law: Image Versus Reality, 7 (1) Focus on Law Studies 1 (American Bar Association, 1991)
John Katzman, Perception v. Reality, The Lawyer in Popular Culture, Texas Bar Journal 116 (Feb. 1992)
Amy Mashburn and Dabney Ware, The Burden of Truth: Reconciling Literary Reality with Professional Mythology, 26 University of Memphis Law Review 1257 (1996)
David Ray Papke, The American Courtroom Trial: Pop Culture, Courthouse Realities, and the Dream World of Justice, 40 South Texas Law Review 919 (1999)
_____________, Conventional Wisdom: The Courtroom Trial in American Popular Culture, 82 Marquette Law Review 471 (1999)
Margaret M. Russell, "Rewiting History with Lighting: Race, Myth, and Hollywood in the Legal Pantheon," in John Denvir (ed.), Legal Reelism: Movies as Legal Texts 172-198 (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1996)
Richard Sherwin, When Law Goes Pop: The Vanishing Line Between Law and Popular Culture (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2000)
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David M. Spitz, Heroes or Villains? Moral Struggles vs. Ethical Dilemmas: An Examination of Dramatic Portrayals of Lawyers and the Legal Profession in Popular Culture, 24 Nova Law Review 725 (2000)
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