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Of Legal Roulette and Eccentric Clients - Contemporary TV Legal Drama as (Post-)Postmodern Public Sphere

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-).

Identiferoai:union.ndltd.org:DRESDEN/oai:qucosa:de:qucosa:28633
Date January 2012
CreatorsKanzler, Katja
ContributorsTechnische Universität Dresden
PublisherLeipziger Universitätsverlag
Source SetsHochschulschriftenserver (HSSS) der SLUB Dresden
LanguageEnglish
Detected LanguageEnglish
Typedoc-type:bookPart, info:eu-repo/semantics/bookPart, doc-type:Text
SourceParticipating audiences, imagined public spheres / ed. by Sebastian M. Herrmann ..., Leipziger Universitätsverl., 2012, S. 64-90
Rightsinfo:eu-repo/semantics/openAccess

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