This article explores the specific capacity of TV courtroom drama to dramatize civic issues and to seduce viewers to an active engagement with such issues. I argue that television series of this genre eyploit the apparent theatricality of their subject matter-trials-to invite their audiences to the deliberation of social or political issues, issues that they negotiate in their courtroom plots. contemporary courtroom dramas amend this issue orientation with a self-reflexive dimension in wich they encourage viewers to also reflect on how the dramatic construction of 'issues' shapes their civic debate. I unfold this argument through a reading of episodes from two very different legal dramas, Boston Legal (2004-2008) and The Good Wife (2009-).
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:DRESDEN/oai:qucosa:de:qucosa:28633 |
| Date | January 2012 |
| Creators | Kanzler, Katja |
| Contributors | Technische Universität Dresden |
| Publisher | Leipziger Universitätsverlag |
| Source Sets | Hochschulschriftenserver (HSSS) der SLUB Dresden |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | doc-type:bookPart, info:eu-repo/semantics/bookPart, doc-type:Text |
| Source | Participating audiences, imagined public spheres / ed. by Sebastian M. Herrmann ..., Leipziger Universitätsverl., 2012, S. 64-90 |
| Rights | info:eu-repo/semantics/openAccess |
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