The Seamless Web: A Blog on Law, Popular Culture and Related Issues

Fall Legal Shows

The Live Feed's blogpost on new pilots for the fall is too funny. It lists (among others) legal dramas that will launch (are we excited or what).

Live Feed's comments are very amusing. Check out what's forthcoming on CBS (Defenders), ABC (Matadors and The Whole Truth) NBC (Rex Is Not Your Lawyer and Kindreds which features an ex-patent lawyer--an ex-PATENT lawyer????) and Fox (Pleading Guilty).

ABC Cancels "The Deep End"

ABC has cancelled the legal drama The Deep End. I'm not surprised. The finale is scheduled for February 25. Watch full episodes at the website here.

Meanwhile, Raising the Bar seems to be MIA from the TNT website. WGO (What's going on)?

Reality Shows and Property Law

There's even more money than we thought in making those reality show deals, and not all of it is in front of the camera. 

Perry Mason, Volume Five, Due in April

Forthcoming: Perry Mason, vol. 5, part 1, due April 20.

"24" and Popular Culture

Desmond Manderson, McGill University Faculty of Law, has published Trust US Justice: '24', Popular Culture and the Law , in Imaging Legality: Where Law Meets Popular Culture (Austin Sarat, ed.; 2010). Here is the abstract.

 
The television series ‘24’ has been a television phenomenon which over seven series has spawned a mass following and innumerable spin-offs including webisodes, prequels, games, and action figures. More significantly it has been enormously influential in the construction of the relationship between rule of law and security issues, particularly in relation to terrorism. Jack Bauer’s actions, and specifically his use of torture in the common good, have been important influences in the development of the US debate. Nonetheless, to situate ‘24’ as a purely contemporary phenomenon – a child of 9/11 – is to miss the larger point.

On the one hand ‘24’ frames law against questions of singularity which appeal to a longstanding tradition of vigilante justice evident in familiar archetypes of cowboys and superheroes. At the same time such a tradition reaches back to much older Christological models of justice and subjectivity which modernism has deflected but never defeated. In ‘24’ and elsewhere, popular culture does not merely keep these memories of law alive: it actively realizes and advances them, and needs to be understood not only as a depiction of law but as a law-making force in its own right. A pluralist theory of law ties contemporary technological manifestations of popular culture back to law’s enduring social and discursive roots as we see, for example, in EP Thompson’s Cultures in Common. One might even characterize popular culture as a defence of some sort of ‘moral legality’ against the ‘market legality’ of modernity.

On the other hand, ‘24’ frames law against questions of urgency and emotion. While popular culture has for centuries reflected an older form of law and justice, its capacity to undermine the very pluralist and discursive openness which are its well-spring, demonstrates the dangers to which the rhetoric of urgency and the emotional power of medium and message are prone. In a world shorn of its faith in the traditional structures which sustained the moral economy and the moral legality, the appeal to simply trust in an inarticulable justice sustained by an emotional pitch which is in ‘24’ at every moment apparent, opens the prospect of legal terrorism.

Download the essay from SSRN at the link.

The Sounds of Freedom

President Obama hosted a celebration of the soundtrack to the civil rights movement, replayed in the East Room of the White House last night. Among the performers were Queen Latifah, Natalie Cole, Joshua Bell, and Morgan Freeman. PBS will be making the performances available later this month.

John Nettles Retires, But "Midsomer Murders" Carries On

ITV1 announces that John Nettles is retiring from his gig as Tom Barnarby, the unflappable Detective Inspector of "Midsomer Murders," after 13 seasons. Beginning this year, Neil Dudgeon ("Life of Riley") joins the cast as Barnaby's cousin, and will carry on as another detecting Barnaby, since he is also a police officer.

I'll miss Tom Barnaby and his capable and wonderfully supportive wife Joyce, and their daughter, actress cully (although Cully could return). I wonder if Cully will marry any of the interesting Detective Sergeants we've seen Tom Barnaby nurture along the way, and start her own little band of police officers. Maybe she could solve a crime or two herself. I think she has it in her. I will say that the Midsomer area seems to have as much crime in it as Cabot Cove, Maine. What is it about small fictional places that brings out the evil in people? Never mind--just get out the popcorn and hot chocolate.

Off the Deep End

I watched the second episode of "The Deep End" and thought, "Well, it's somewhat interesting. There are unusual twists and turns." This particular episode involved a couple of clients that ran a dispensary for marijuana; turns out they weren't exactly on the up-and-up (but we saw that coming). They delivered pounds of the stuff to the law firm when they spotted the cops coming, leaving their attorneys in the lurch. One of the name partners took the heat for possession. How to get him off the hook?

The naive young attorney who initially accepted the clients' business did some investigating on site and bumped into a disconsolate client of the customers, who as it turned out had prepaid for his pot. In California, individuals can purchase and/or grow marijuana for medicinal uses. Aha! Great defense. Off go the attorney and her colleague to argue to the judge that the firm is merely holding the pot for the clients, who having prepaid for it, are the legal possessors. Pretty clever.

In the parallel plot, another young attorney goes up against her father, who's opposing counsel. ("Class Action," anyone?) She finds out he is not just a bad dad, but a sleazy lawyer. No more Father's Day cards for him.

In a subplot, the angry partner/wife of another partner sends the gorgeous paralegal, who's having an affair with the partner, off to Montana (Montana?). She assures the young woman that given time and if she passes the bar (yes but how can she study for the CA bar in Montana? pretty tough Is she going to take the Montana bar?) she might be able to transfer back. Angry partner/wife tells paralegal, who actually has graduated from law school but also failed the California bar 4 times, "This is me being nice." Ouch.

Does this mean we won't be seeing this character any more? (Does this actress have a new gig?)

Seriously, sending an employee off to a less desirable employment site because a supervisor (and one's own husband) has engaged in footsie with her might be a problem legally. I'd like to see that issue developed in a future episode.

In the upcoming episode, there's going to be a "expectant mother delivers baby at inopportune time" scene. How many times have we seen this? Does every series have to have one of these?

Why You Should Watch Westerns

Interesting piece from BBC News about reaction times. According to new research (inspired by old "shoot 'em up" movies), we discover that,

[P]eople move faster when reacting to something than when they perform "planned actions".

In an experimental "duel", published in Proceedings of the Royal Society B, they studied the speed of these two types of movement.

As well as unpicking Wild West mythology, scientists hope the findings will shed light on movement disorders.

Read the rest of the article here. See? Pop culture is ever relevant.