women lawyers and film
james r. elkins
The primary focus of many articles on women lawyer films is a critique based on the failure of the film to accurately portray women lawyers as they see themselves in the legal profession. We might pose the following question: In what sense are films supposed (or expected) to be read in terms of their verisimilitude (that is, their accordance with truth or correspondence to reality)? If reality is to be the basis for interpretation, then one wonders, what, if anything, might be gained from films like "And Justice for All" (where lawyers, judges, and the legal system are all presented in a rather disparaging light). And what is one to make of a film like "The Devil's Advocate"?
One student criticized "And Justice for All" because the woman lawyer heading up the ethics committee investigating Arthur Kirland (Al Pacino) had an affair with him even as her committee was investigating him. The student asks: "Was it necessary that she began an affair with Arthur Kirkland?" Of course not, but then nothing is "necessary" in a film. The better question, I think, is what purpose does this affair serve in the film? What is it doing in the film? Is it gratuitous (as in, gratuitous violence)? One might be cautious about reading a small part of the film and ignoring the film itself. How much attention does any single element of a film deserve? There may, and often is, some irritating element or aspect of a film (a character, some dialogue, a relationship that doesn't fit or feel right) and we may still decide to give the film, rather than the distraction, a reading. Some films, of course, consist of little more than a series of distractions and annoyances and should be critiqued on this basis. One might well see "And Justice for All" as just such a film; I do not. The relationship of particular elements of a film and the film as a whole is of some importance as one takes up interpretation. In interpretation, we move, I think, from part to whole, or whole to part, and need to be aware of the movement and how it affects our reading of the film.
The student asks how the affair contributes to the story? Good question. In the context in which the question was posed, we can most definitely see that the student thought the affair made no contribution to the story. I think an argument can be made that it does and that the affair is not in any sense gratuitous, or for that matter, an insult to women, or women lawyers.
The student asks, "why represent female lawyers as sexual beings rather than as smart, savvy, lawyers?" Another good question, and it can certainly be presented based on a viewing of Hollywood women lawyer films. But is the question best raised as to "And Justice for All?" First, the student implies that Gail Packer [Christine Lahti] was portrayed as a "sexual being." But was she? For that matter, how was the sexual nature of the relationship portrayed? Sexual it was (so far as we might assume), but it might certainly be read in a less literal way, that is, that the sexual relationship represents not sex but something about the way lawyers live (and love), that is about the lives they have outside law.
And finally, was any lawyer, including Arthur Kirkland, portrayed as "smart" and "savvy"? One might characterize Kirkland in this fashion, but then one might not. I can imagine a viewer concluding (perhaps not altogether correctly) that there were no smart, savvy lawyers in this film and to have created one, woman or otherwise, would have resulted in a different film.
Carole Shapiro, in "Women Lawyers in Celluloid: Why Hollywood Skirts the Truth," 25 U. Tol. L. Rev. 955, 963, n. 34 (1995) lists the following films in which women lawyers have a speaking part: The Seduction of Joe Tynan (1979); And Justice For All (1979); First Monday in October (1981); Second Thoughts (1982); The Cradle Will Fall (1983); Jagged Edge (1985); Legal Eagles (1986); Suspect (1987); The Big Easy (1987); Physical Evidence (1986); The Accused (1988); Music Box (1989); Presumed Innocent (1990); Wild Orchid (1990); Class Action (1991); Defenseless (1991); Love Crimes (1991); Other People's Money (1991); A Few Good Men (1992); Guilty as Sin (1993); Philadelphia (1993).
Shapiro mentions, in addition to Adam's Rib (1949), two other late 1940s films featuring women lawyers: Tell It to the Judge (1949) and The Bachelor and the Bobbysoxer (1947). Two other films from the 1930s are not well known, Shapiro points out, because they are not available on video: Career Woman (1936) and The Lady Objects (1938). Shapiro, in her review of these films, concludes that Adam's Rib "offers one of the most appealing cinematic portraits of a woman lawyer." [Id. at 963]
Bibliography
Stacy Caplow, Still in the Dark: Disappointing Images of Women Lawyers in the Movies, 20 Women's Rights Law Reporter 55 (No. 2/3 Spring/Summer 1999)
Carrie S. Coffman, Gingerbread Women: Stereotypical Female Attorneys in the Novels of John Grisham, 8 So. Cal. Rev. L. & Women's Stud. 73 (1998)
Christine Alice Corcos, "We Don't Want Advantages": The Woman Lawyer Hero and Her Quest for Power in Popular Culture, 53 Syracuse L. Rev. 1225 (2003)
Terry Kay Diggs, No way to treat a lawyer; when screen lawyers are women, Hollywood changes the rules, 12 Cal. Lawyer 48 (1992)
Patrice Fleck, The Silencing of Women in the Hollywood "Feminist" Film: The Accused, 9 Post Script 49 (Summer 1990)
Diane M. Glass, Portia in Primetime: Women Lawyers, Television, and L. A. Law, 2 Yale J. L. & Feminism 371 (1990)
Louise Everett Graham & Geraldine Maschio, A False Public Sentiment: Narrative and Visual Images of Women Lawyers in Film, 84 Ky L. J. 1027 (1996)
Orit Kamir, Feminist Law and Film: Imagining Judges and Justice, 75 Chi.-Kent. L. Rev. 899 (2000)
Cynthia Lucia, Framing Female Lawyers: Women on Trial in Film (Austin: University of Texas Press, 2005)
Carolyn Lisa Miller, "What a Waste. Beautiful, Sexy Gal. Hell of a Lawyer": Film and the Female Attorney, 4 Col. J. Gender & Law 203 (1994)
Carole Shapiro, Women Lawyers in Celluloid: Rewrapped, 23 Vt. L. Rev. 303 (1998)
____________, Women Lawyers in Celluloid: Why Hollywood Skirts the Truth, 25 U. Tol. L. Rev. 955 (1994)
Ric S. Sheffield, On Film: A Social History of Women Lawyers in Popular Culture 1930 to 1990, 14 Loy. L.A. Ent. L. Rev. 73 (1993)
Mark Tushnet, "Class Actions: One View of Gender and Law in Popular Cutlure, in John Denvir (ed.), Legal Reelism: Movies as Legal Texts 244-260 (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1996)
Elaine Weiss, Who's Missing in This Picture? Why Movies and Television Have Ignored Women Lawyers, 16 Barrister 4 (September 22, 1989)
Web-Resources
Essays
Mayne: "The Female Audience and the Feminist Critic"
Women in Film: That Object Named "Desire" or In Search of True Liberation for Women
Remembering Women: Psychical and Historical Constructions in Film Theory
Feminist Film Criticism: The Piano and 'the Female Gaze'
A Few Little Surprises in High Fidelity
Post-Colonial Feminist Theory and Film
(Un) Boxing Helena: A Feminist and Psychoanalytic Analysis
Masculine Excess and the Metaphorics of Vision: Problems of Feminist Film Theory
Building the Feminine: Feminist Film Theory and Female Spectatorship
Courses and Syllabi
Women and Film
University of VictoriaStrong Women in Film
Wellsley CollegeWomen and Southeast Asian Cinema
University of Virginia
Bibliographies
Film
University of Wisconsin System Women's Studies Librarian's OfficeWomen in Film & Television: A Bibliography of Materials in the UC Berkeley Libraries
Bibliograpy: Women and Film
Diane Carson, Linda Dittmar & Janice R. Welsch (eds.), Multiple Voices in Feminist Film Criticism (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1994)
Barbara Creed, Monstrous-Feminine: Film, Feminism, Psychoanalysis (New York: Routledge, 1993)
Mary Ann Doane, Femmes Fatales: Feminism, Film Theory and Psychoanalysis (New York: Routledge, 1991)
_____________, The Desire to Desire: The Woman¹s Film of the 1940's (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1987)
Mary Ann Doane, Patricia Mellencamp & Linda Williams (eds.), Re-vision: Essays in Feminist Film Criticism (Frederick, Maryland: University Publications of America & The American Film Institute, 1984)
Patricia Erens (ed.), Issues in Feminist Film Criticism (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1990)
Lucy Fischer, Shot/Countershot: Film Tradition and women's Cinema (New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1989)
Molly Haskell, Holding My Own In No Man's Land: Women and Men, Film and Feminists (New York: Oxford University Press, 1997)E. Ann Kaplan, Women in Film Noir (London: British Film Institute, rev. ed., 1998)
Annette Kuhn, Women's Pictures: Feminism and Cinema (New York: Verso, 1993)
Judith Mayne, The Woman at the Keyhole: Feminism and Women¹s Cinema (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1990)
Marsha McCreadie, Women on Film: The Critical Eye (New York: Praeger, 1983)
Patricia Mellencamp, A Fine Romance: Five Ages of Film Feminism (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1995)
Tania Modleski, The Women Who Knew Too Much: Hitchcock and Feminist Theory (New York: Methuen, 1988)
Constance Penley, The Future of an Illusion: Film, Feminism, and Psychoanalysis (Minneapolis: Univeristy of Minnesota Press, 1989)
Laura Pietropaolo & Ada Testaferri (eds.), Feminism in the Cinema (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1995)
Jan Rosenberg, Women's Reflections: The Feminist Film Movement (Ann Arbor: UMI Research Press, 1983)
Anneke Smelik, And the Mirror Cracked: Feminist Cinema and Film Theory (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1998)
Jackie Stacey, Star-Gazing: Hollywood Cinema and Female Spectatorship (New York: Routledge, 1994)
Sue Thornham, Passionate Detachments: An Introduction to Feminist Film Theory (New York: Arnold, 1997)
Sue Thornham (ed.), Feminist Film Theory: A Reader (New York: New York University Press, 1999)
Responding to Social Commentary about Women Lawyers and Film
The Offended Critic: Film Reviewing and Social Commentary
a film reviewer recants on a previous judgment about a film (and cautions against meledramatic "taking offence" at a film); expresses caution against film criticism as social commentary (another form of "taking offence" that is "in almost every case, weak and unsatisfying") (a critique of special interest to the conventional social commentary on women lawyer films)
