Entertainment, Arts, and Sports Law Commons^™

Laws Of Race/Laws Of Representation: The Construction Of Race And Law In Contemporary American Film, 11 Tex. Rev. Ent. & Sports L. 219 (2010), Cynthia D. Bond

Cynthia D. Bond

Popular film has a lot to teach us about social narratives of law. Both law and film are story-telling, narrative systems. Accordingly, films about law are "overdetermined" in terms of narrative: they are stories about stories. Race is also a narrative system in which visual representation is key. The significance of the visual apprehension of race is deeply relevant to the legal construction of race as well. For example, in early citizenship cases and racial "passing" cases which persisted through the latter part of the 2 0th century. Since society constructs racial categories in large part by visual identification and …