UNIVERSITY OF WESTMINSTER

Centre for Law, Society and Popular Culture

Television Drama, Law and National Identity Symposium

Symposium Participants

Meg Penrose Texas A&M University School of Law, USA.

Elena Falletti Carlo Cattaneo Univ., Castellanza (VA), Italy.

David Marrani Institute of Law, Jersey.

Kim Weinert Griffith University, Australia.

Erin Sheley University of Oklaholma College of Law, USA.

Francine Rochford LaTrobe University, Australia.

Darrell Newton University of Wisconsin – Eau Clair, USA.

Danny Nicol University of Westminster, UK.

Will Stanford Abbiss Victoria University of Wellington, NZ.

Ludovica Tua University of Geneva, Switzerland.

Lilly J. Goren Carroll Univ. in Waukesha, Wisconsin, USA.

Anja Louis Sheffield Hallam University, UK.

Michaela Brangan Amherst College, USA.

Jill Bronfman Common Sense, USA.

Allison Craven James Cook University, Australia.

 COMPILATION OF ABSTRACTS AND MINI-BIOGRAPHIES

Meg Penrose Texas A&M University School of Law, USA.

From Perry Mason to L.A. Law – Reflections on Television’s Portrayal of

Gender in the American Legal System

Long before there were “Miranda Rights,” Perry Mason was an American icon.
Broadcast into American homes over 12 seasons, Perry portrayed all that was good
about the law. He was strong, upright and outwardly ethical. He fought for justice
and, in fact, won all but three of his cases. In seemingly every episode, good
triumphed.

Yet, looking back, the show was a reflection of the times. The main characters were
largely white. The judges and lawyers were men. The depiction of men and women –
both in and outside the workplace – was largely stereotypical. In many respects,
Perry Mason captured the national American identity of the 1950s and early 1960s.

Many years later, as I entered law school, new legal shows and heroes emerged. Gone
were the shows casting only men in leading roles as lawyers and judges. Perhaps in
acquiescence to a new national identity, televised legal dramas leapt forward. From
L.A. Law’s Grace Van Owen to the title character in Ally McBeal, television slowly
began to reflect the reality that women could take on difficult legal cases in a
demanding profession.

My presentation will focus on how America’s national identity, particularly through

the lens of gender, is portrayed by popular media shows such as Perry Mason and
L.A. Law. Have modern portrayals advanced gender equality? Is television a mirror
of the times or a medium that advances the times? These questions, and more, will be
explored during my presentation.

Biography: Professor Meg Penrose is a full Professor of Law at Texas A&M

University in Fort Worth, Texas. She was awarded the Distinguished Teaching Award,
a university-wide award, by the Association of Former Students in 2017. Her areas of
concentration include Constitutional Law, Criminal Procedure, Gender
Discrimination, First Amendment and Social Media. She remains a devoted fan of
Perry Mason and legal dramas. She publishes and speaks regularly on gender, free
speech and constitutional issues. In addition, she continues to practice law, largely in
the area of criminal defense.

Elena Falletti Carlo Cattaneo Univ., Castellanza (VA), Italy.

A juridical transplant from “Perry Mason” to a real criminal procedure code:

The Italian Case

The reform of the Italian Criminal Procedure Code and the reorganization and
management of the legal market and law firms are connected to the broadcast of
popular legal drama shows. The most popular American legal drama, Perry Mason,

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had been broadcast by “Rai Uno”, the most important TV Channel in Italy from
1959 until recent yearsand it prepared the cultural background to the US criminal
process transplant into the Italian legal system.

The impact of US legal culture transmitted through the legal dramas, literature, and
films led to a spurious imitation of US legal institutions and customs which, when
adapted to the Italian culture, distorted their original meaning and function. The
American-style criminal trial transplant into the Italian system has remained
superficial and partial and failed to have a significant impact on the Italian legal
culture although its cultural prestige that led to emulation of the U. S. model.

The results of the comparative and cultural methodologies show that an approximate
“legal transplant” does not work. Nevertheless, legal concepts continue to be
“transplanted” from one legal culture to another, both through legislative reform and
the impact of popular culture. This process of juridical translation of legal categories
transforms them into hybrids. The transplant of the US system into the Italian one
cannot be said to be complete because the legal language and legal mindset adopted in
the two legal systems are completely different.

Biography: Elena Falletti is full-tenured lecturer of comparative private law at the

Carlo Cattaneo University, Castellanza (VA), Italy. She carried out her PhD in
Comparative Law at the University "Statale" in Milan in 2006. When she was PhD
candidate she gained a DAAD Stipendium and a Marie Curie Fellowship at the
Westfälische Wilhelm-Universität Münster (Germany). She gained a post-doctoral
Fellowship at the Max Planck Institut für Geistiges Eigentum of Munich (Germany).
She published several articles in peer-reviewed journals and publications and
undertook experiences of teaching and research in numerous countries.

David Marrani Institute of Law, Jersey.

Judges on TV: a comparative perspective

This presentation is an attempt to reconsider the ancient ars juris, the oldest juridical
tradition, that bridges legal history and art history and to give it a contemporary twist.
I will focus on the representation given of the judge in TV series. According to L.
Moran, the judge occupies the place of a marginal figure in ‘legal cinema’ and in
related scholarship. However, it may be possible to demonstrate that even though the
representation of this figure ‘signifies’ strongly. I intend to analysis that point with
comparative examples of representation of the judge in France and the UK in TV
series. The idea is to show the differences between inquisitorial and adversarial ways
through the specific representation made on the screen of the ‘active’ judges and the
‘passive’ judges.
Representation of the judge in ‘legal cinema’ is often the only image known by the
public of the judge ‘acting’ or ‘playing’ as a judge. Therefore its representation in TV
programs develops an image that contributes not only to the perception of the figure
of the judge but also of the justice system itself.
Colleagues participating might want to familiarise themselves with the two ‘types’ of
judges by watching for the French example the series Engrenage or Spiral in English
and for the UK Law and Order UK.

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Biography: Dr David Marrani studied law, philosophy and psychoanalysis in France
and in the UK. He is Dean and Professor at the Institute of law in Jersey. He is a
Visiting Professor at several European and International universities. His research
relates to comparative public law and the intersections between law, philosophy and
psychoanalysis. His latest monograph is Space, Time, Justice From Archaic Rituals to
Contemporary Perspectives. He is series general editor for the Routledge Research
in Constitutional law and a member of the SLS executive committee.

Kim D. Weinert Griffith University, Australia.

The Hollowmen: the political party cartel

Strong historical and cultural ties with the United Kingdom has meant that Australia
has relied upon British broadcasters for its fix of political sitcom. Sharing the
Westminster model of government Australians have appreciated the mocking of
political life in the television series of Yes, Minister and The Thick of It. However, it
was not until the late 1990s and early 2000s that Australia started to create its own
political satire television series. Shown on the ABC (the national public broadcaster)
The Hollowmen was the most successful political satire television series during this
period. Filmed in a traditional mockumentary style each episode of its two series
follow senior political advisors (the advisors) from the Central Policy Unit within the
Office of the Prime Minster and Cabinet, and department liaisons officers (DLOs)
from the Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet.

The main focus of this presentation is to examine the relationship between the
advisors and the DLOs, which reveals a striking contrast of ideals. The political
advisors are primarily concerned with re-election whereas the DLOs are designing
policies which replicate Australia’s ‘fair go’ and utilitarian ideals. The ongoing
rejection of the DLOs’ policies by the advisors reflects Australian politics in the 20 th
century. This presentation will further analysis this reflection by arguing that the
success of Australia’s government and political system turns primarily upon the moral
integrity of persons in power, and when hubris political party interests are involved
the traditional utilitarian ideals are too easily and are quickly abandoned.
Biography: Kim is currently a PhD candidate at Griffith University and an online
subject coordinator with the University of the South Pacific. Kim’s PhD is examining
Australia’s freedom of speech in Australian film from the 1970s to 2000 under the
supervision of Professor Kieran Tranter and Doctor Karen Crawley. Kim’s other
research work involves governance and regulation of not-for-profit organisations.

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Erin Sheley University of Oklaholma College of Law, USA.

Murdoch Mysteries and Canadian Identity against the American Other

The Canadian detective show Murdoch Mysteries imports the early-twentieth-century

conceit of the iconoclastic genius investigator out of the sphere of the private into the
nationalized public in the form of the turn-of-the-century Toronto police department.
Where actual Victorian and Edwardian literary texts portrayed the professional police
as bumblers alongside their Holmesian private counterparts, Murdoch Mysteries
dramatizes that era in the format of a contemporary police procedural, thereby
blending both traditional and modern detective tropes into a historical narrative about
the newly-formed Canadian nation, with an employee of that nation as its hero. At the
same time, through recurring plot lines involving the machinations of Crown agent
Terrence Meyers and his American counterpart Allen Clegg (eventually revealed to be
a criminal), Murdoch Mysteries reveals contemporary Canadian anxieties about
American aggression and the accompanying importance of conciliation and
containment to American national identity. In particular, the ongoing references to the
fallout from the American Civil War, which appears around the peripheries of the
primary Canadian plot of the show as it intersects with Murdoch’s criminal
investigations, emphasize the dangers of American fragmentation to their closest
neighbors, and the contrasting cohesion and consensus of the Canadian body politic.
At the same time, the show’s repeated construction of the American “other” to
reinforce domestic national identity poses familiar Foucauldian risks insofar as it
compresses the foreign into the criminal in ways the deflect scrutiny from the
problems of Canadian nationalism.

Biography: Erin Sheley is an Associate Professor of criminal law at the University of

Oklahoma. Previously she was an Assistant Professor of law at the University of
Calgary. Her work on the impact of narrative on criminal law has appeared in, among
other journals, the UNC Law Review, the Wake Forest Law Review, the Indiana Law
Journal, the Journal of Criminal Law and Criminology, Law and Literature, and Law,
Culture, and the Humanities. Her book Criminality and the Common Law
Imagination, 1700-1900 is under contract at the University of Edinburgh Press. She
holds a JD from Harvard Law School and a PhD in English from the George
Washington University.

Francine Rochford LaTrobe University, Australia.

Land Law and class: Dad and Dave and Australian national identity

On Our Selection, Steele Rudd’s1 portrayal of farming in federation-era Australia,

represents a significant body of literature originating in ‘the bush’. Manning Clark
describes ‘Dad Rudd’ as ‘Australia’s Everyman’; Elliott notes his attitude ‘for the
selectors and against the squatters and the city’. The sketches, periodicals, radio
plays, theatre productions and, eventually, films that continued the Rudd legacy make
these stories a significant voice in the creation of Australian national identity – at least
in relation to the ‘bush’ identity. However, the attempt to update the representation to

1
‘Steele Rudd’ was the pseudonym of Arthur Hoey Davis.

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the 1970s in a television series was unsuccessful. This paper will consider the
alternative representations of regional Australia, considering the social context in
which the various series were created and experienced. It will reflect in particular on
the declining comparative importance of rural Australia by the time of the
development of the television series. The insights of the original sketches, and
arguably the radio versions, were not transposed effectively to the comfortable
situation comedy of the television series, which stripped the production of the
resonances of the cultural, social and economic priorities of Australia in the settlement
of the inland. This paper will, in particular consider the changes in settlement patterns
and the country’s social and economic strategies between the original version and in
the television series, and reflect changes in the narratives of power and class between
the various sources.

Biography: Dr Francine Rochford is an Associate Professor in the Law School at La

Trobe University in Victoria, Australia. She has written extensively on the issue of
water law and policy, particularly in relation to reforms to water policy. Her recent
interests in water law include the constitutional framework within which water
management occurs, the historical development of current water allocation principles,
comparison of water law and policy, and the human right to water. Previous water
related research has considered the tortious liability of water supply authorities for
contaminated water, the environmental and social impacts of water policy reform, and
constraints on adaptation to emerging water policy in regional communities.

Darrell Newton University of Wisconsin – Eau Clair, USA.

Somewhere over the Rainbow City: Barristers, Blackness and the Brummie

When considering national identity as a normative construct in television drama, I

seek to examine the legal drama, Rainbow City (BBC, 1967). Newspapers were quick
to discuss the controversial program, as television critics addressed not only the
impact of a Black male lead (Errol John as barrister John Steele) but the Black-male-
with-a-white-wife (Gemma Jones) phenomenon. According to research at the BBC
Written Archive Centre, there was great concern as to whether the BBC would
transmit the show, whilst critics were certain that the program would ‘drive the loony
minorities into frenzy,’ with concerns of sexual miscegenation. However, of principal
interest is the episode ‘Beards and Turbans’ (tx. 26/07/67) in which Steele
successfully helps an Asian student (Renu Setna) keep his flat after being threatened
with removal for complaining over rent prices. The episode underscores multiethnic
solidarity among immigrants, as an Irish tenant (Shay Gorman) ultimately testifies on
the student’s behalf. The national resistance to immigrant cultures in postwar England
became amplified as television programming was forced to unpack racialism; not as a
part of South African culture, or warped American values, but as an unfortunate part
of British culture, too. While various genres of television drama provided expressions
of national identity, seldom were these examined from the imagined perspectives of
Black and brown Britons. To note that coded messages about national identity existed
within this episode is an understatement. Though the episodes were written by white
Briton John Elliott, Rainbow City’s treatment of race and national identity warrant
serious examination.

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Biography: Darrell Newton is an Associate Vice Chancellor and Dean of Graduate
Studies at the University of Wisconsin Eau Claire. He is also a professor of
Communication and Journalism. Newton holds an M.A. in English and a second M.A.
in Communication Arts from UW-Madison, emphasizing television studies. After
extensive research on the BBC, a Doctorate in Communication Arts was earned, with
emphases in Media and Cultural Studies. He has completed a series of essays, and
wrote Paving the Empire Road: BBC Television and Black Britons, and Adjusting the
Contrast: British Television and Constructs of Race for Manchester University Press.

Danny Nicol University of Westminster, UK.

National Identity and Family in Doctor Who

National identity is often closely related to ideas surrounding the family. Often a
gendered family rhetoric may foster constructions of national identity (Hill Collins,
2000). Furthermore some scholars maintain that the family remains integral to
neoliberal capitalism, so that efforts to develop national identity along capitalist lines
are likely to involve engagement with the family (Brecher 2012). Legal changes
have reflected these constructions.

Doctor Who (1963-89, 1996, 2005-present) is a science-fiction programme in which

an alien (the Doctor) has adventures with mainly human companions, travelling in
time and space in a ship called the TARDIS. In Doctor Who A British Alien? I argue
that the programme particularly focuses on portraying Britain, and that in particular as
the BBC’s longest-running television drama series it valuably charts changes in the
way in which national identity is expressed. Whilst the programme’s treatment of
gender has been extensively analysed its portrayal of the family has been relatively
neglected. Yet the evolution of Doctor Who’s relationship to family is particularly
fascinating, altering starkly over time.

The paper identifies three phases:

 t h e “orphan companions” era of the programme’s early years in which
characters’ families were either startlingly unmentioned or dead, leaving the
TARDIS “family” unchallenged;
 an intermediate phase in the 1980s where families assumed more significance
but only sporadically;
 a deep family phase in the programme’s post-2005 reboot in which families
maintain a constant presence in person or spirit.

These phases, it will be argued, reflect the construction of a British national identity in
which family looms ever larger, reflecting Britain’s transition from social democratic
to neoliberal state.

Biography: Professor Danny Nicol is Professor of Public Law at the University of

Westminster and author of EC Membership and the Judicialisation of British Politics
(2001), The Constitutional Protection of Capitalism (2010) and Doctor Who: A
British Alien? (2018).

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Will Stanford AbbissVictoria University of Wellington, NZ.

Narrative and Emotional Justice Against the Backdrop of History: tensions of

heritage and post-heritage in Downton Abbey and Upstairs Downstairs

Downton Abbey (ITV1, 2010-15) exemplifies a ‘heritage’ approach by constructing a

“fantasy of Englishness” (Higson, 2006: 96) where duty and kindness are invariably
rewarded. The patriarchal benevolence of the Grantham family (Byrne, 2015) allows
loyal servants to have access to medical and legal aid, achieving numerous deserved
happy marriages among all classes by the series’ end. Below stairs, butler Carson
metes out justice on his own terms, permitting the progressive endeavours of
sympathetic characters while rejecting threats to the Edwardian social order. The legal
justice system, however, is less dependable, epitomised by Mr Bates’ lengthy false
imprisonment. It is the acts of individuals that provide emotional justice and narrative
closure, rather than the wider establishment.

The BBC’s Upstairs Downstairs (BBC One, 2010-12), meanwhile, offers a ‘post-
heritage’ (Monk, 1995) reading of the past’s social hierarchies. The legal justice
system remains marginalised, but the series’ close relationship with political history
(Bastin, 2015) sees emotional justice equally compromised. Lady Persie
simultaneously undermines the establishment’s authority and the domestic regime at
Eaton Place, by feeding government information to Germany while conducting an
affair with her brother-in-law Hallam. The inability to remove Persie’s influence from
the household expresses the instability of the Edwardian way of life in the 1930s,
mirroring the production’s own difficulties in recreating the popular 1970s series
(ITV, 1971-75) in the 2010s. This paper will examine the negotiation between
heritage and post-heritage points of view in the two series, assessing their differing
ideologies in the light of Downton Abbey’s successful commodification of the past
(Chapman, 2014) and Upstairs Downstairs’ comparative failure.

Biography: Will Stanford Abbiss is a PhD student in the School of English, Film,
Theatre and Media Studies at Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand. His
doctoral study focuses on British-produced television period drama of the 2010s,
reading from a ‘post-heritage’ perspective. He recently presented a paper on The
Crown (Netflix, 2016-present) at an international conference in Aarhus, Denmark.

Ludovica Tua University of Geneva, Switzerland.

Modern myths of yesterday’s sultans

Ranking second after the U.S. in global TV series sales, Turkish diziler are sold in
more than 140 countries, attracting researchers’ attention all over the world. Despite
the heterogeneity of their type, I focus on Turkish historical dramas and the way they
depict the Ottoman past. My research is based on the TV series Payitaht: Abdülhamid,
aired since 2017 by the State channel TRT. This historical drama shows one of the
most controversial Sultan (Abdülhamid II, also known as the « Red Sultan » in
Europe) trying to defend the Empire from domestic conspiracies and external
enemies. I suggest that the current popularization of this Sultan by the television
requests the creation of a modern myth (Roland Barthes) making people accepting

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and appreciating Abdülhamid, despite the criticism often addressed to him.
Considering that the imperial era has been longtime stigmatized by republican
government and Kemal Atatürk’s supporters, what does this nostalgic phenomenon
tell us about the 21st Century Turkey lead by AKP (Justice and Development Party)?
How has the myth of Abdülhamid been created and broadcasted in Turkey and
abroad? Through a semiological approach to memory studies, I want to highlight the
way this TV series contributes to creating a new national hero, eventually able to
strengthen the support to today’s ruling party.

Biography: After a two-year Master's degree in Middle Eastern Studies at University

of Geneva, I wrote a thesis on the subject of Muhteşem Yüzyil, a Turkish historical
drama which unexpectedly become a global phenomenon. I also gave a conference
based on this topic, and recently published a chapter about it. Then, I moved to Paris
in order to attend a second Master’s degree at EHESS (Ecole des Hautes Etudes en
Sciences sociales). I am currently working on TV series Payitaht: Abdülhamid and the
"comeback" of this Sultan in Turkey

Lilly J. Goren Carroll Univ. in Waukesha, Wisconsin, USA.

Conserving the Past: Nostalgic Longing, Nationalistic Anxiety & Visual Images
in Tension

Recent Anglo and American television productions have delved into colonial and
nationalistic pasts while projecting a contemporary understanding and, in some cases,
a critical eye on to those nostalgic presentations. Cinematic approaches have taken on
both fictional and non-fictional versions of historical events, integrating a postcolonial
vision of the past. The heroic messages of many of these nostalgic representations
highlight a sense of glory in past accomplishments, while often obscuring failure,
insecurity, and the nostalgic longing of eras dominated by overt nationalism. They are
also projected onto our shared memories alongside the constant recitation of super
heroic images and narratives. Thus, within mainstream visual narrative productions,
citizens are seeing both superhero/superheroine narratives as the means of fixing our
current problems, especially the threat of world domination or destruction by evil
individuals, or they are reliving the past glories of heroic conquest, the defeat of evil,
and the nostalgic recollections of an orderly life through period dramas. Even as
television and cinematic viewing becomes more fragmented, aspects of their
narratives become embedded within the culture and often contribute to the popular
memory of events and understandings of the past. While these nostalgic recreations
explore the complexity and limitations on those who inhabited the worlds that are
presented, many of these historical narratives are produced because they present an
heroic event or period that reflects well on a nation. The focus on this contemporary
cultural iconography intends to elucidate the complex messaging that combines this
nationalistic longing with a subsumed understanding of nostalgic heroics and patriotic
glory.

Biography: Professor of political science at Carroll University in Waukesha,

Wisconsin. Books include Mad Men and Politics: Nostalgia and the Remaking of
Modern America (Bloomsbury Publishers, co-edited with Linda Beail); Women and
the White House: Gender, Popular Culture, and Presidential Politics (University

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Press of Kentucky, co-edited with Justin Vaughn)—winner of both the 2014 Susan
Koppelman Book Award and the 2014 Peter C. Rollins Book Award; You’ve Come a
Long Way, Baby: Women, Politics, and Popular Culture (University Press of
Kentucky). Articles published in Politic & Gender, Society, Political Research
Quarterly, White House Studies, The Forum: A Journal of Applied Research in
Contemporary Politics. Goren was a Fulbright Fellow to the University of Bonn in the
summer term, 2018.

Anja Louis Sheffield Hallam University, UK.

Television, Law and National Identity in Spain

Both law and visual culture are dominant discourses constituting an imagined
community, which creates meaning through storytelling and performance. Spanish
television is a particularly good case study, since the medium has been a vital tool of
identity construction at individual, collective and national level in a country that lived
through almost 40 years of dictatorship (1939-1975). Television was thus used as a
means of propaganda (1956-1975), as primary educator of democratic values (1975-
1989) and as creator of a social debate (1990 onwards). This paper gives an overview
of TV shows in the three phases of legal process: apprehension (crime shows),
adjudication (lawyer shows), disposition (prison dramas). Analyses of the on-screen
construction of law will focus on a few key issues: gender, sexual orientation,
corruption, justice, and popular-legal education. If we consider television one of the
most influential agents of value construction, then law shows can be considered a
powerful tool to guide viewers through the moral climate of their time. TV shows of
the 1980s, in particular, are often referred to as ‘mythical’, attesting not only to their
nostalgic value, but also to the importance of a collective process of ‘working
through’ social issues. The TV shows analysed range from the iconic Es usted el
asesino?/Are you the assassin? (1967) and the 'mythical' series of the transition to
democracy (Anillos de oro/Wedding Rings, Turno de oficio/Public Defender) to the
most noteworthy shows of the 1990s and 2000s, with particular emphasis on
americanization and transnationalization of TV formats.

Biography: Reader in Spanish and Intercultural Studies at Sheffield Hallam

University where she is a member of the Cultural Communication and Computing
Research Institute. She has published widely in the field of ‘Spanish law and culture’,
with particular emphasis on gender studies and popular culture. Her monograph
Women and the Law: Carmen de Burgos, an Early Feminist analyzes the
representation of law in the work of Spanish feminist Carmen de Burgos. She has co-
edited a collection of essays that brings together leading international specialists of
Burgos's work (Louis and Sharp (2017), Multiple Modernities: Carmen de Burgos,
Author and Activist. Routledge). Recent projects include the representation of female
lawyers and enforcement officers in Spanish film and television

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Michaela Brangan Amherst College, USA

The Expanse, and the Limits, of Communitas

The Expanse is an melodramatic mix of noir fiction, cyberpunk, spy-fi, war SF, and
good old “Bodysnatchers”-style alien invasion. It’s also a story about the ways in
which national identity might be reconstituted, redoubled, and deconstructed in a
post-state era. With extraordinary effects, space is the televisual stage for territorial
battles between proletarian “Belters,” militaristic Martians and elite “Earthers,” to
assert jurisdictions that define and constrain citizenship, movement, and trade.
However, as the “cosmo”-political stage is constantly expanding—a physical fact
which the series title suggests—the class conflicts that animate expansionist
economic, legal and military strategies are redeployed, and defamiliarized. In The
Expanse, macro and micro sovereignties collide with macro and micro identities. The
limits of the human as a laboring and social body are placed under physical and
philosophical pressure in mutable alien jurisdictions that defy terrestrial legal
understandings of borders and property, and challenge what it means to “take up”
space and accordingly, to “have” national identities within that taken space. Roberto
Esposito’s concept of communitas is a useful tool in thinking through these issues.
How do we, can we, should we "think" community in/as ever-expanding space?

Biography: Michaela Brangan is in the department of Law, Jurisprudence and Social

Thought at Amherst College (Massachusetts, USA). She teaches and researches how
common law forms are engaged by experimental literatures and science fiction, and in
popular and political discourse. Before coming to Amherst in 2018, she received a
PhD in English at Cornell University and a JD at Cardozo School of Law.

Jill Bronfman Common Sense, USA.

Timelines and Boundaries: Mapping Privacy in Alternative Dystopian Television

Series

It’s not a coincidence that the popularity of alternative timeline dystopian fiction has
taken over American television since the last election. Black Mirror, Electric Dreams,
The Handmaid’s Tale, The Man in the High Castle, and Star Trek: Discovery
acknowledge the possibility that the U.S. could have, and indeed may, devolve into a
totalitarian government. These shows are a constellation of data points plotted beyond
conventional parameters for dramatic media in the United States. Americans may
assume that our American political institutions are set in stone, immutable by the
force of any one individual or political group, but these shows are a reminder that
politics are human, situational, and changeable. This paper will map the rise of
alternative timeline fiction before, during, and after the current political upheaval in
the United States, including challenges to the First Amendment, to rights to privacy
and individuality, and to a system of checks and balances between the branches of
government. Section I will summarize the history of alternative timeline fiction and
set the context for its resurgence. Section II of the paper will look at current media,

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critical reviews, and public reactions. Section III will analyze social change and
reactivation of national identity(ies) in the wake of change. Finally, in Section IV, this
paper will indicate whether alternative timeline fiction foretells the future or forstalls
it, and where the opportunities are for improvement in conditions and scope of the
American national identity in the larger context of Western liberal democratic values.

Biography: Jillisa Bronfman, Privacy Counsel for Common Sense Media, previously
was Director of the Privacy and Technology Project at the University of California
Hastings College of the Law, where she taught Data Privacy Law courses. She has
also taught Media Ethics, Mobile Media, and The Age of Information courses at San
Francisco State University. She holds degrees in Law and Communications
Management from the University of Southern California (USC) and Mass
Communications and History from the University of California, Berkeley.

Allison Craven James Cook University, Australia.

The Good, the Gothic and the Lives of the Saints: Inter-activating morals, rules
and folklore in Netflix’ The Good Place

The Good Place is one of a number of global television series in which moral virtue
and social ethics form the basis of the dramaturgy. If Breaking Bad was a dramatic
prototype, The Good Place is undeniably comedy, or even farce. This paper concerns
the didacticism of The Good Place through its comic construction of human suffering.
The scenario of The Good Place concerns the designer tortures of a postmodern ‘hell’
which conceal the illusion that an ensemble of recently deceased humans is actually in
‘the bad place’ disguised as a utopian world of civility and social justice, and race and
gender equality. The humans repeatedly subvert their ‘demon’ tormenters by detecting
the deception, triggering an eternal return of the same as the demon mastermind
repeatedly reboots and redesigns the scenario to maintain their entrapment in hell. A
moral philosopher, Chidi, is the most tortured of the souls who compulsively vents his
anxieties by instructing his fellow humans about moral theory. Thus the episodes of
the series become mini lessons in philosophy for the television audience within the
overarching plot of the humans’ efforts to escape to the ‘real’ ‘good place’. A judicial
figure – a comic judge – ultimately oversees their eternal fates.
The paper examines some ways in which suffering – of the humans and their
tormentors - is formulated: the instruction on moral philosophy; the ‘rules’ with which
the demon designer must comply; the folklore of ‘good’ and ‘bad’ places; and the
chaotic justice of the rights of appeal to the judge. In each sense, The Good Place a
good example of the didactic propensities of global television.

Biography: Allison Craven is Associate Professor of Screen Studies and English at

James Cook University, North Queensland Australia. She publishes on global fairy
tale and gothic narrative, and Australian cinema. She is the author of Fairy Tale
Interrupted: Feminism, Masculinity, Wonder Cinema ( 2 0 1 7 ) ; a n d Finding
Queensland in Australian Cinema: Poetics and Screen Geographies (2016). A current
research project on the Gothic arises from her three-year secondment as Roderick
Scholar in Comparative Literatures at JCU.

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