Rights statement: https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/international-journal-of-law-in-context/article/from-judge-judy-to-judge-rinder-and-judge-geordie-humour-emotion-and-televisual-legal-consciousness/49733218DA3D23C21D66176A51C79C48 The final, definitive version of this article has been published in the Journal, International Journal of Law in Context, 14 (Special Issue 4), pp 581-595 2018, © 2018 Cambridge University Press.
Accepted author manuscript, 331 KB, PDF document
Available under license: CC BY-NC: Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License
Research output: Contribution to Journal/Magazine › Journal article › peer-review
<mark>Journal publication date</mark> | 1/12/2018 |
---|---|
<mark>Journal</mark> | International Journal of Law in Context |
Issue number | Special Issue 4 |
Volume | 14 |
Number of pages | 15 |
Pages (from-to) | 581-595 |
Publication Status | Published |
Early online date | 23/11/18 |
<mark>Original language</mark> | English |
This paper attempts to counter legal studies' common reading of court TV shows by starting with an understanding of them as television, rather comparing them to 'real courts'. It analyses two recent examples of British court TV shows - Judge Rinder (ITV, 2014-) and Judge Geordie (MTV, 2015) - to draw out how the text's form establishes particular kinds of 'televisual legal consciousness'. Judge Rinder's daytime address and his camped authority allow a frame in which humour can disarm conflict and reveal wider political injustice. Judge Geordie's irreverent upturning of the judged into judge draws upon the registers of youth reality television to privilege affect and emotion. In staging some of the tensions between law's masculine rationality and popular culture's feminine emotionality, these shows enact their interdependence. Such an analysis that includes attention to form, address and genre allows us a deeper exploration of the relationship between television, law and the everyday.