Title
Law and Justice as Seen on TV / Elayne Rapping.
ISBN
9780814769102
Published
New York, NY : : New York University Press, [2003]
Copyright
©2003
Language
English
Language Note
In English.
Description
1 online resource
Other Standard Identifiers
10.18574/nyu/9780814769102.001.0001 doi
Call Number
PN1992.8.J87 R37 2003
Dewey Decimal Classification
791.45/655
Summary
Law and Justice as Seen on TV examines the impact, significance, and social and political problems raised by the enormous onslaught of law-related television programming, both fiction and nonfiction, in the years since the rise of live televised trials as major media events. The book weaves together the various strands-media history and analysis, legal history and policy, and the national turn to the political right in the last decades-which gave birth to this trend and has kept it thriving and growing, by leaps and bounds, to the present day. Beginning with the history of courtroom drama on TV and its various contradictions and shifts, since the late 1940s to the present, the book analyzes the various entertainment series and genres that have so proliferated in recent years, giving special attention to such popular and influential series as "Law and Order" and "Cops." The second section begins by charting the complex and contested history of the coming of cameras to the courtroom and the way in which that legal decision led to televised trials and to the rise of Court TV. It examines as especially interesting and important the major trials-such as those of the Menendez brothers, O.J. Simpson, and Timothy McVeigh-which helped to shape the way television came to frame trials and their social implications for public consumption. From there it examines major social issues-gender violence, youth crime, family dysfunction, victims' rights which, with the rise of the courtroom as a major political and television arena, have come to be viewed largely as legal issues to be discussed and determined in legal terms by Americans in general. Accessible and lucid, Law and Justice as Seen on TV concludes with an examination of the broad implications of this social and cultural trend, closing with some thoughts about its expansion, on television and in the actual legal arena, during the "war on terrorism" in the wake of 9/11.
Access Note
Access limited to authorized users.
System Details Note
Mode of access: Internet via World Wide Web.
Digital File Characteristics
text file PDF
Source of Description
Description based on online resource; title from PDF title page (publisher's Web site, viewed 18. Sep 2023)
Available in Other Form
print 9780814775608
Frontmatter
Contents
Acknowledgments
Introduction
Part I Fiction and Entertainment Genres
1 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
Part II News and Documentary Genres
4 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
7 Television and the Demonization of Youth
8 Television, Melodrama, and the Rise of the Victims' Rights Movement
Conclusion: The Criminalization of American Life
Notes
Index
