Doing Law in the Dark, Or:
Popcorn and Hot Buttered Torts
Gary Handman
ghandman@library.berkeley.edu
3-8666
Doing Law in the Dark, Or:
Popcorn and Hot Buttered Torts
Gary Handman
ghandman@library.berkeley.edu
3-8666
Doing Law in the Dark, Or:
Popcorn and Hot Buttered Torts
Who Killed Cock Robbin (Walt Disney, 1935)
1. (Briefly!) discuss the differences between
film genres (documentaries and fictional films)
2. Describe the types of writing and research
about film, both fiction and non-fiction
3. Introduce selected sources for finding books
and journal articles about film in film studies
& related disciplines
4. Discuss strategies for doing research
Ingrid, my dear,
it’s only a movie!
…but a movie is never “only a movie”
•All films are social constructs and cultural
“texts”
•All films are “documentary” in one way or
another (Bill Nichols)
•Records of the pro-film event
•Documentaries of Wish Fulfillment
(MOOOVIES)
•Documentaries of Social Representation
The earliest law “docu-drama”?
Georges Méliès. Dreyfus: The Court Martial at Rennes (1899)
Law and Documentaries of Wish Fulfillment (The Movies!)
•The legal process (and lawyers) as grist for high drama and melodrama…the stuff of engaging cinema
•Lawyers as archetypes: heroes and scoundrels in control of the destiny of their clients.
•Continuation of realist literary traditions of 19th Century
•Rich topic for parody
•Allows us to be spectators in a process often closed and/or mysterious to the public at large.
Documentaries of Social Representation as Judicial Arguments
(Documentaries)
•Many/most documentaries are structurally and rhetorically similar to legal pleading and the legal
process (regardless of the topic)
•Interrogation or prosecution of individuals, events, socio-political conditions
•Seeking revelation, justice, redress
•Evidence drawn from the historical (“real) world
•The audience as a jury to be convinced:
•An attempt to instill believe in the accuracy of the evidence
•An attempt to convince the audience to act on that belief
•Documentaries and the legal topics: the legal process itself under scrutiny
Scholarly and pop
Writing About Film
Docs of Social Rrepresentation
Docs of
Wish
Fulfillment
(feature
films)
Writing About Film…
Scholarly/
In-depth
Current
Pop and fan
Industry
Historical
Sources for Film & Scholarship and Research
•Periodicals (aka magazines, journals,
serials)
•Newspapers
•Pop periodicals: Reviews
•Scholarly and professional periodicals
•Reviews
•Critical analysis/scholarly writing
•Books
•From schlocky to scholarly
•Biography, genre writing, individual
films, individual directors
•Web Sites (more about this later…)
•Other online databases
Periodical Articles:
Reviews? Critical Writing?
What’s the diff?
Reviews:
•Assessment of aesthetic and content merits of a film
Found in popular periodicals, film periodicals, and
(less often) in more scholarly journals
In pop periodicals: Current and Historical (older)
Usually cover current releases, more pop theatrical
releases
Tend to be relatively short and relatively superficial
(with some exceptions and depending on the publication
and who’s doing the writing)
Interesting sources of info about audience reception
and “current think”
Periodical Articles:
Reviews? Critical Writing? What’s the Diff?
Critical analysis:
Discuss films in:
broader historical, cultural, political, artistic
context and/or
Focus on a specific aspect of a film, film
genre, or filmmaker
Found in books and scholarly or film-related
journals
Tend to be longer, more substantive than reviews
(with some exceptions and depending on the
publication and who’s doing the writing)
Often include notes, bibliographies, other
scholarly apparatus
…But how do you locate this stuff?
The Information Universe
Library Catalog(s)
Journal/Newspaper
Indexes (article databases)
Library Catalog(s)
Pathfinder: UCB Library holdings only
MELVYL (CDL cat): All 9 UC Campuses
•An inventory of what the library owns
•Search by Author, Title, Subject
•Whole books and print and electronic
journals, NOT what’s inside of those
publications
The Information Universe: Books
Look it Up in Pathfinder or MELVYL by Author, Title, or Subject :
Black, David A.
Law in film: resonance and
representation / David A. Black. Urbana:
University of Illinois Press, c1999.
UCB Main
1999
Call #
Get da Book in da Stax
PN1995.9.J8.B63
The Information Universe: Finding Articles
Article Databases
(Indexes/Abstracts)
•
Allow subject/author searching in
a group of journals in a particular
discipline or topical area.
•
Produced by different commercial
publishers; often look/act
differently from one another.
•
Some indexes also offer:
•Abstracts
•Full-Text
•UC e-Links: links to UC/UCB
holdings via MELVYL
Articles/Reviews
(how do you find this
stuff?)
Article databases
(aka Indexes)
Film-related (not many exist)
General news
Literary and Arts
Other disciplines: e.g. Women’s
Studies, American Studies, Ethnic
Studies, History and
LAW
Choosing an Articles database (index)
•Look at the listings of article databases
available via the library www.lib.berkeley.edu:
FIND INFORMATION / ARTICLES /
ARTICLE DATABASES BY SUBJECT
•General Databases are often good places to
start (particularly for newsy/topical issues)
Gary’s Desert Island
Index/Article Database List
GH Desert Island
Index/Article Database List
•Ebsco –
•Academic Search Complete
•Film & Television Literature Index
•ProQuest (Research Library)
•MLA (Modern Language Assn.
Bibliography)
For law and film:
•Legaltrac
•Index to Legal Periodicals and Books
All databases are not created equal (or by the same company)…
Common Search Features:
--Save list of good stuff
--Mail Articles/Citations to yourself
Online is Cool
But Remember: Not everything is online!!!!!:
•Article Databases: Generally only go back 1020 yrs online (some exceptions – e.g. JStor;
Historical Newspapers; PCI)
•Not every publication is indexed (e.g. weird
ejournals and other film arcana)
•Fairly small (but rapidly growing) subset of the
books and journal universe is currently available
in full-text
The Information Universe
Remember Also:
•Not every topic has lots written about it,
either in books or journal lit.
--Research on very current topics
--Research on radically specific topics
--Research on topics off the beaten
academic track or off the pop culture
radar
The Information Universe
What to do if nothing is turning up:
•Tweak your topic: Broaden it / select a
different angle
•Rethink your search strategy (new keywords,
new concepts, etc.)
•Bail out completely and choose another topic
How to Begin? Before you click: THINK
•Formulate a concise, concrete statement of the
research problem
•Formulate your search in terms of
keywords and key phrases:
The impact of television advertising
and television violence on school
performance and pre-adolesecent
social interaction.
How to Begin? Before you click: THINK
•Think of synonyms for key words/phrases
Academic achievement
Grades
…etc.
Commercials
Ads
…etc.
Children
Youth
Adolescents
…etc.
The impact of television advertising
and television violence on school
performance and pre-adolesecent
social interaction.
Media
TV…etc
Socialization, relationships,
peer interaction…etc.
A few cautionary words about research on the Net
The Net
Google
Rocks!
LibraryLand
http://www.lib.berkeley.edu/MRC/
FilmBibMenu.html
a growing listing of
bibliographies on various film
topics and individual films
compiled by MRC (includes bibs
for genres, filmmakers, national
cinemas, and individual film).
Connecting from off-campus
…being driven over the edge
by your research?
Call me:
Gary Handman
643-8566
ghandman@library.berkeley.edu
Film Scholarship & Film Criticism
Movies = 100+ Years
Film Scholarship = 50 years
William Dickson (Edison labs)
invents The Kinetoscope
1889
1922 –
Nanook of the
North
1950’s
1960’s
Film Studies
Film Scholarship
Writing about film = fan and industry perspectives from the beginning