Feminist Law and Film: Imagining Judges and Justice

This Essay offers a model for systematic application of feminist law and film methodology to investigating the imagery of law and justice; to reexamining the relationship between feminist theory that focuses on an ethics of care and feminist theory that focuses on dominance, oppression, and resistance; and to reviewing the relationship between legal feminism and postmodernity. More specifically, employing interdisciplinary methodology, the Essay explores the imagery of a newly developing legal feminist concept, caring justice, by focusing on popular cultural images of the judiciary as presented by the film industry. Offering a close reading of a contemporary film, Pedro Almodovar\u27s High Heels, the Essay reveals how the film offers a radical and feminist alternative to that of Solomonic justice, which dominates our Judeo-Christian heritage. In High Heels, law, embodied in the image of a male judge in drag, is both motherly and fatherly, son and lover, subjective and caring, and above all thoroughly humane and differently just. This Essay argues that the film\u27s imagery of judge and law suggestively expands our contemporary pantheon of images of the judiciary

Feminist Law and Film: Imagining Judges and Justice

This Essay offers a model for systematic application of feminist law and film methodology to investigating the imagery of law and justice; to reexamining the relationship between feminist theory that focuses on an ethics of care and feminist theory that focuses on dominance, oppression, and resistance; and to reviewing the relationship between legal feminism and postmodernity. More specifically, employing interdisciplinary methodology, the Essay explores the imagery of a newly developing legal feminist concept, caring justice, by focusing on popular cultural images of the judiciary as presented by the film industry. Offering a close reading of a contemporary film, Pedro Almodovar\u27s High Heels, the Essay reveals how the film offers a radical and feminist alternative to that of Solomonic justice, which dominates our Judeo-Christian heritage. In High Heels, law, embodied in the image of a male judge in drag, is both motherly and fatherly, son and lover, subjective and caring, and above all thoroughly humane and differently just. This Essay argues that the film\u27s imagery of judge and law suggestively expands our contemporary pantheon of images of the judiciary

Applying dignity, respect, honor and human rights to a pluralistic, multicultural universe

“Human dignity” is the foundation of the human rights discourse that evolved around the United Nations’ 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights. In recent decades, the concept of human dignity has been vastly over-extended, gradually becoming a vague, nearly meaningless “catch-all” phrase. In the 21st century’s pluralistic and multicultural world, this development has played into two worrisome trends. One is the formulation of any cultural-specific identity-based claim as involving a human dignity-based human right; such over-extension of human dignity and human dignity-based rights breeds growing scepticism regarding the usefulness of the whole human rights discourse. The second trend is the erroneous portrayal of cultural specific honor-based claims as involving dignity-based human rights. Such misleading portrayal blurs the boundaries between the universalistically humanistic dignity-based human rights discourse, and culturally specific, often separatist and conservative honor-based mentalities. Attempting to address these troubling trends, this paper defines a tightly knit human dignity, which marks the absolute value/ worth of the common denominator of humanness in all human beings. This human dignity gives rise to universalistic and absolute – yet minimal – fundamental human rights. It is conceptually distinguished from what I refer to as “respect”, which assigns tentative value/ worth to the uniqueness of each and every concrete, specific expression of human existence. In this conceptualization, respect is the basis of tentative, secondary human rights – including those that address many specific identity claims in a pluralistic, multicultural world. Whereas "human dignity-based rights" derive from and protect the very essence of humanness, "respect-based rights" protect and enhance exclusive personal choices that manifest an individual's uniqueness, including each person's self-expression in lieu of his or her multiple affiliations. Such affiliations are often related to race, gender, nationality, religion, ethnicity, sexuality and/ or culture. Respect-based rights thus refer to most issues arising from pluralism and multiculturalism. Both dignity and respect are carefully distinguished from the very different notion of honor, which marks tentative, comparative human value/ worth that is intertwined with esteem and prestige within a specific (typically conservative and separatist) normative cultural context. Honor-based claims do not necessarily constitute either dignity or respect-based human rights. Such re-conceptualization yields a clear distinction between the absolute and universal fundamental dignity-based human rights, and the tentative, often cultural-specific respect-based rights. This allows to preserves the distinction between absolute, universal fundamental dignity-based human rights, and secondary, tentative, sometimes clashing respect-based rights. It highlights the difference between these two categories of human rights and any culturally-specific honor-based claims. These distinctions are important if we are to maintain the discourse of human rights and adjust it to a world which is ever more pluralistic and multicultural

Stalking: Culture, history, and law.

This work examines the phenomenon of stalking and contemporary American anti-stalking legislation within a wide socio-cultural framework. It shows how issues now addressed as the socio-legal reality of stalking have evolved in Western culture in different contexts and under different names, and gradually have taken on their current formulations. It argues that a better understanding of stalking stories, as they have been told in various discourses throughout history, can prove helpful in evaluating the current stalking legislation, and in suggesting alternatives. Chapter 1 introduces the work. Chapter 2 discusses one of the earliest known stories of stalking in Western culture, that of the female night stalking demon Lilit, who had once (known as Inanna) been the great Sumerian Goddess of Love and War. The chapter follows Lilit into Jewish folklore, where she became Adam's first wife, who flew away from Eden and has been returning to haunt men's sleep with sexual exploits. It show how this ancient stalking story associated stalking with uncanny repetitive return of a double shadow character, both familiar and estranged, loved and feared. Chapter 3 goes on to argue that in medieval Europe, when the patriarchal social order felt threatened by femininity, this image of the female stalker was imposed on those women who were labeled witches, and then prosecuted and executed. It also introduces the cultural story and archetypal image of the male stalker. Chapter 4 focuses on 19th century literary fictions, such as Shelley's Frankenstein and Stoker's Dracula, which are shown to have defined the modern stalking stories and their motifs. Chapter 5 follows the stalking stories and characters into 20th century film, concentrating on the horror genre, and Chapter 6 explores the identification of the mythological stalker with the contemporary serial killer. Chapter 7 examines how contemporary legislation adopted some of the issues associated with stalking in these stories, while neglecting others. It argues that the adoption of certain elements, such as the stereotypical castings of male and female actors, may be undesirable, whereas more awareness to other elements, such as the victim's mental experience, may be beneficial in better framing the laws.S.J.D.Communication and the ArtsComparative literatureCriminologyCultural anthropologyFilm studiesFolkloreHistoryLanguage, Literature and LinguisticsLawSocial SciencesUniversity of Michigan, Horace H. Rackham School of Graduate Studies, Law Schoolhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/129919/2/9704817.pd

Betraying dignity : the toxic seduction of social media, shaming, and radicalization

What do medieval knights, suicide bombers and "victimhood culture" have in common? Betraying Dignity argues that in the second decade of the twenty-first century, individuals, political parties and nations around the world are abandoning the dignity-based culture we established in the aftermath of two world wars, less than a century ago. Disappointed or intimidated, many turn their backs on the humanitarian, universalistic culture that presumes our inherent human dignity and celebrates it as the basis of every individual's equal human rights. Instead, people and nations are returning to a much older, honor-based cultural structure. Because its ancient logic and mentality take new forms (such as social network shaming and certain aspects of "victimhood culture") -- we fail to recognize them, and overlook the pitfalls of the old honor-based structure. Narrating the history of honor-based societies, this book distinguishes their underlying principle from the post-WWII notion of dignity that underlies human rights. It makes the case that in order to revive and strengthen dignity-based culture, the concept of human dignity must be defined narrowly and succinctly, and enhanced with the principle of respect. Continuing its historical and cultural narrative, the book discusses contemporary phenomena such as al-Qaeda terrorists, shaming via social network, FoMO, and some features of the emerging "victimhood culture". The book pays homage to Erich Fromm's classic Escape from Freedom.-- Acknowledgments; -- Introduction: Why Worry about Dignity, Honor, and Values; 1) Escape from Dignity to Honor: An Overview; 2) The Honor Game; 3) Divine Human Glory: In the Image of God; 4) The Concept of Dignity That Underlies Human Rights; 5) Respect: The Value of Our Singularity; 6) Escape from Dignity and Respect; -- Bibliography; -- About the Author; -- Inde

Judgment by Film: Socio-Legal Functions of Rashomon

This Article is one example of a film, law, and society project. Hoping to contribute to the emerging body of law and film scholarship, this Article suggests that some popular feature films offer unique cinematic insight into our understanding of the relationship between law, society, and culture. Furthermore, some films go beyond contributing cinematic-theoretical input and conduct their own cinematic socio-cultural judging-acts. Engaging in sociocultural dialogue with legal discourse, a film\u27s underlying structure may evoke its viewer\u27s unconscious, intuitive familiarity with legal notions and conventions, and, relying on legal intuition thus evoked, the film may manipulate it and engage the viewer in its own implicit judging process. Such cinematic proceedings are distinct from fictional legal proceedings portrayed on-screen. Judgment by film may use a film\u27s characters, plot, imagery, and structure to represent more general social issues and may result in very real influence on the world-view of audiences, who are also society\u27s jurors, judges, and reasonable people. In the law and film relationship, film may therefore play far more active theoretical as well as socio-cultural judging roles than portraying legal issues and courtroom drama, or supplying plots for legal analysis. This cinematic activism is particularly interesting, as it may go unnoticed and thus escape critical awareness. Rather than present the concept of cinematic judging-act in a purely theoretical manner, this Article demonstrates its dynamics and significance, its close relationship with cinematic law and society theory, and its elusiveness through analysis of a single feature film: Rashomon