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Getting The Insider's Story Out: What Popular Film Can Tell Us About Legal Method's Dirty Secrets, Rebecca Johnson, Ruth Buchanan

Articles & Book Chapters

In this paper, the authors seek to use the insights gained by viewing and thinking critically about a range of Hollywood films to better illuminate the disciplinary blindspots of law. Both law and film are viewed as social institutions, engaged in telling stories about social life. Hollywood films are often critical of law and legal institutions. Law is dismissive of its representation within popular culture. However, the authors argue that law disregards cinematic cynicism about itself at its peril and that there is much to learn by taking cinematic portrayals of law very seriously---not as representations of the truth of …