Document Type
Article
Publication Date
1-19-2012
ISSN
1743-8721
Publisher
Sage Publications
Language
en-US
Abstract
This commentary takes a new look at law and film studies through the lens of film as memory. Instead of describing film as evidence and foreordaining its role in truth-seeking processes, it thinks instead of film as individual, institutional and cultural memory, placing it squarely within the realm of contestability. Paralleling film genres, the commentary imagines four forms of memory that film could embody: memorabilia (cinéma vérité), memoirs (autobiographical and biographical film), ceremonial memorials (narrative film monuments of a life, person or institution), and mythic memory (dramatic fictional film). Imagining film as memory resituates film’s role in law (procedural, substantive and cultural) as authoritative rhetoric that must be disputed and reappropriated to serve the specific goals of justice.
Recommended Citation
Jessica Silbey,
Persuasive Visions: Film and Memory
,
in
10
Law, Culture, and the Humanities
24
(2012).
Available at:
https://scholarship.law.bu.edu/faculty_scholarship/1372
