{"title":"Laughing in the Face of the Law: Humour as a Thermostat Activating Social Change for Porn Workers","authors":"Rebecca Rose Nocella, D. Chiaro","doi":"10.1177/17438721221124470","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/17438721221124470","url":null,"abstract":"The vulnerability of sex workers in the porn industry is a heated debate within feminism. The UK 2014 Audiovisual Media Services Regulations and 2017 Digital Economy Act, which burden the production of online pornography, provoked sex workers’ Face-Sitting and Kink Olympixxx protests. This paper investigates how throughout these protests, humour communicates sex workers’ discomfort on this legislation. Arguing that humour is a thermostat that senses public uneasiness and slowly activates social change, this paper examines the two protests highlighting how sex workers employed unrefined bawdy humour to unearth their neglected rights and move towards more adequate rights.","PeriodicalId":43886,"journal":{"name":"Law Culture and the Humanities","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2023-01-27","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"45761009","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Laughter in the Courts of Law: On Riss’s Graphic Report on the Papon Trial","authors":"Yasco Horsman","doi":"10.1177/17438721221116554","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/17438721221116554","url":null,"abstract":"This essay studies a minor genre often overlooked in the literature addressed to how historical trials are represented, discussed and remediated by cultural texts (such as films, novels, theatrical plays): graphic trial reports, representations of historical trials in the form of comics. Its focus is on the graphic trial reports published in the French magazine Charlie Hebdo in the 1990s, more specifically on the dispatches published in weekly instalments in 1997 and 1998 from the trial of former Vichy functionary Maurice Papon (1910–2007), drawn and written by Riss (Laurent Sourisseau), and later published as Le Procès Papon (2017). By analysing this book’s peculiar sense of humour, the essay proposes to reflect on the following questions: What does it mean to regard criminal proceedings as a comedy? Can laughter constitute a serious response to a trial, one that exposes the larger issues a trial broaches? What is the role of humour in the ‘affective life of law’, the capacity of trials to touch, move and affect the audiences that follow the proceedings in and outside the courtroom?","PeriodicalId":43886,"journal":{"name":"Law Culture and the Humanities","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2023-01-27","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"45242418","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Fritz Lang’s M – An Other among Us","authors":"Jacopo Martire","doi":"10.1177/17438721221125909","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/17438721221125909","url":null,"abstract":"M is one of the most celebrated movies by Fritz Lang. Examining the movie as a ‘jurisprudential text’, the present article will explore three interconnected problems: how in modern mass society, the legal gaze works as a device that both traces and tracks the subject within the multitude; how the presence of a radical Other within our midst is troublesome for law and can turn society against itself in autoimmunitary fashion; and, finally, how the legal subject is prevented from speaking precisely by the legal procedures that are supposed to make them vocal, superimposing the legal truth over the truth of the Other.","PeriodicalId":43886,"journal":{"name":"Law Culture and the Humanities","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2023-01-06","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"45186696","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Legal Aesthesis: Affect, Space and Encounter","authors":"D. Matthews, Illan rua Wall","doi":"10.1177/17438721211056512","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/17438721211056512","url":null,"abstract":"Legal aesthetics is traditionally understood as the relation between law and aesthetic objects: texts, images, films or other artistic media. This special issue reinvests ‘legal aesthetics’ with a different sense. Aesthesis draws attention to ‘the conditions of sensory perception’. Legal aesthesis therefore becomes a matter of drawing out the conditions of law’s perceptibility, and the role of law in shaping the conditions of sensory perception. Unlike existing work in law and aesthetics, this approach emphasises the materiality of the encounter with law. The following essays approach everyday encounters with legal relationality – public order, rights/ obligations, sovereignty, contract and urban regulation – in order to draw attention to the spatial and affective staging of law, outlining the conditions under which law renders subjects sensitive or insensitive, affected or unaffected, by various aspects of social life.","PeriodicalId":43886,"journal":{"name":"Law Culture and the Humanities","volume":"19 1","pages":"186 - 190"},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2022-12-12","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"43020407","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Through a Comedic Glass, Darkly: Ethics, Humor, and Home Ownership in Spain’s Early Technocratic Years (1957–1963)","authors":"Diana Roxana Jorza","doi":"10.1177/17438721221131895","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/17438721221131895","url":null,"abstract":"The current essay analyzes three oppositional film comedies produced during Franco’s totalitarian regime, after Spain transitioned to an Opus Dei technocratic rule and after the Ministry of Housing was created to solve the chronic lodging problems of the time. My analysis focuses on how La vida por delante/ Life Ahead (Dir. Fernando Fernán Gómez, 1958), El pisito/ The Little Apartment (Dir. Marco Ferreri, 1959), and El verdugo/ The Executioner (Dir. Luis García Berlanga, 1963) humorously critique the contemporaneous housing predicaments and the existing residential legislation. The article argues that these comedies effectively breach the hegemonically sanctioned thresholds of ethical, political, and aesthetic decorum of contemporaneous Spain by successfully resorting to an eminently materialistic, antimelodramatic discourse and to unsympathetic characters, prone to successive moral capitulations in their desperate chase for a decent housing and social advancement.","PeriodicalId":43886,"journal":{"name":"Law Culture and the Humanities","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2022-11-29","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"43918134","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Soviet (In)finite Jest: Leonid Yengibarov’s Pantomime and State Erasure","authors":"A. Movsesian","doi":"10.1177/17438721221122110","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/17438721221122110","url":null,"abstract":"This article presents Leonid Yengibarov’s innovations to Soviet pantomime and the ways in which his interdisciplinarity prompted philosophical reflection and dialogue. Yengibarov’s performances emphasized the tragicomic, a move away from traditional clowning and toward the recognition of and reflection on ethical responsibility. This unconventionality marked him as unpredictable in the decidedly curated reality of Soviet entertainment and often led him to deviate from what the state considered acceptable. As such, this article likewise explores the underlying reasons, particularly the socio-political, for why the custodians of public order, opinion, and law ultimately worked toward the erasure of his art, and perhaps even his life.","PeriodicalId":43886,"journal":{"name":"Law Culture and the Humanities","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2022-10-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"43854950","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Kid Pro Quo: Re-Imagining the Role of Empathy in Ownership and Law","authors":"Cara Linley","doi":"10.1177/17438721221124855","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/17438721221124855","url":null,"abstract":"The law and literature tradition has to date largely focused on texts that directly explore a legal issue or an encounter with a bureaucratic legal institution. Post-apocalyptic texts describing worlds with no central legal institutions have largely been left unexamined even though they often envisage alternate forms and roles for the law. The paper analyses Adrian J. Walker’s The End Of The World Running Club (2014) to explore a possible distribution of resources based on characteristics and actions with which we empathise. Drawing upon Aristotle’s theories of literature, the methods of creation of legal communities in general is considered.","PeriodicalId":43886,"journal":{"name":"Law Culture and the Humanities","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2022-10-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"49328608","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Laughter as Collateral Damage in the Trials of William Hone","authors":"Adam Komisaruk","doi":"10.1177/17438721221119364","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/17438721221119364","url":null,"abstract":"The radical London satirist William Hone was tried in 1817 on three separate charges of blasphemous libel. His three acquittals are generally attributed to the courtroom laughter he provoked, as well as to the careful distinction he drew between the secular “object” of his attacks (the government ministers) and the sacred “subject” in which he couched them (the Anglican liturgy). By its nature, however, laughter never hits its target without inflicting collateral damage. Late in life, Hone not only confessed his impiety but confronted its ontological implications: that laughter destabilizes the “subject” in a way not susceptible to adjudication.","PeriodicalId":43886,"journal":{"name":"Law Culture and the Humanities","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2022-09-23","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"46923457","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Book Review: Political Mourning: Identity and Responsibility in the Wake of Tragedy","authors":"Quinn Lester","doi":"10.1177/17438721221125503","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/17438721221125503","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":43886,"journal":{"name":"Law Culture and the Humanities","volume":"18 1","pages":"789 - 791"},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2022-09-09","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"45383145","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Book Review: Reproductive Rights as Human Rights: Women of Color and the Fight for Reproductive Justice","authors":"Julietta Hua","doi":"10.1177/17438721221125505","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/17438721221125505","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":43886,"journal":{"name":"Law Culture and the Humanities","volume":"18 1","pages":"794 - 796"},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2022-09-09","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"46648318","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}