Reading The Law Made Strange: A Theological Jurisprudence of Popular Culture Author Peters, Timothy Douglas Panagiris Published 2014 Thesis Type Thesis (PhD Doctorate) School Griffith Law School DOI https://doi.org/10.25904/1912/3090 Copyright Statement The author owns the copyright in this thesis, unless stated otherwise. Downloaded from http://hdl.handle.net/10072/367131 Griffith Research Online https://research-repository.griffith.edu.au Reading The Law Made Strange A Theological Jurisprudence of Popular Culture by Timothy Douglas Panagiris Peters Bachelor of Commerce (Griffith University) / Bachelor of Laws (Hon 1) (Griffith University) Griffith Law School Arts, Education & Law Group Griffith University Submitted in fulfillment of the requirements of the degree of Doctor of Philosophy March 2014 Abstract This thesis elaborates and performs a form of cultural legal studies that examines the overlap between legal theory, theology and popular culture. In doing so it makes use of, and mobilises, the concept of estrangement or ‘making’ strange put forward by Victor Shklovsky and the Russian Formalists (amongst others). It does this at two levels: first, by examining the genres of speculative fiction as genres of estrangement that ‘make strange’ their representations of law, legality and justice; and second, by proposing a mode and methodology of cultural legal reading as one that itself ‘makes strange’, rendering the texts under analysis otherwise. As such, it sees in the stories told within the genres of speculative fiction not simply flights of fancy or postulates of pure imagination with no relation or reference to reality. Rather, they produce a meditation on and mediation of the world itself—one that opens us to see the world both in its createdness and contingency, as storied and imbued with meaning. It is for this reason that I turn to speculative fiction in relation to a mode of the cultural legal. Rather than focusing on the direct representations of law, legal institutions and legal actors within popular culture, the engagement of speculative fiction provides a way to understand and re-think the stories of and about law themselves. In the analysis of motifs of law and legality, of justice, authority and legitimacy that are ‘made strange’ by their situation in worlds imagined differently, we find the potential to think and see them otherwise, not in the sense of simply a utopian (or dystopian) looking forward through the potential of the imagination, but an understanding of the imagination’s setting free of these concepts enabling a different reflection and understanding of them. In turning to the stories told by speculative fiction—of superheroes, science fiction, mythic quests, fantastic stories and fairy tales—we find that they reveal and render visible a theo-legality or legal theology. That is, in drawing upon the way the stories of speculative fiction engage and encompass the theological aspects of law and our legal imaginary, this thesis constructs and propounds a iii theological jurisprudence of popular culture. Such a theological jurisprudence draws on the way the concepts of law, legality and justice are not only represented but ‘made strange’, and explored otherwise in the stories of speculative fiction. As such, it both renders visible and obfuscates the fundamental distinctions of legal modernity: between theology and politics, religion and law, church and state. In doing so, and following the turn to theology in critical theory, political science and jurisprudence, it uncovers, identifies and critiques the latent theologies of modern law. This form of cultural legal studies as ‘making strange’ is performed via five case studies or ‘readings’, each focusing on a particular film or series of films. Individually these readings explore particular themes of law (justice, the exception, law’s violence, sovereignty, law’s universality) and theology (Manichaeism, mystical religions, Christ-figures, compassionate acts, visions of divine realms). Together, however, these readings mark a course from antagonism to reconciliation—from law to love—via exploring three modalities of popular culture’s myth (pagan, Christological and secular). It begins by analysing certain modes of legality within popular culture’s basically pagan myths of Good and Evil: first in the superhero genre as represented by M. Night Shyamalan’s Unbreakable identifying both the co-dependency of Good and Evil and encompassing law’s focus on transgression, crime and criminality in the ordinary course; and second the fundamental unity of Good and Evil within George Lucas’s Star Wars trilogies identifying the ‘legal’ space of indistinction in the ‘state of exception’. From there, an essentially Christian challenge to this pagan mythos is invoked. This occurs initially in a reading of Christopher Nolan’s The Dark Knight that takes it out of the tradition of the ‘hero-myth’ and into the realms of theology. That is, Batman, read as a non-heroic Christ-figure, challenges both the pagan myth of Good and Evil, as well as the inherent violence and arbitrariness of modern secular legality with an alternative compassionate act. This theological reading is then promulgated through a critical challenge to certain modern secular myths embodied first in a universalised law without exception (as represented in Alex Proyas’ I, Robot) and second in an absolutised form of secular sovereignty (as represented in George Nolfi’s The Adjustment iv Bureau). Thus, in exploring speculative fiction’s estranged accounts of the mythos of modernity and modern law, a possible alternative theological jurisprudence is uncovered and articulated: one based on a love that takes us beyond the law itself. v vi Declaration of Originality This work has not previously been submitted for a degree or diploma in any university. To the best of my knowledge and belief, the thesis contains no material previously published or written by another person except where due reference is made in the thesis itself. _____________________________ Timothy Douglas Panagiris Peters vii viii Table of Contents Abstract iii Declaration of Originality vii Table of Contents ix Acknowledgements xi Chapter 1 Introduction 1 1. By Way of Introduction: Law, Theology and Popular Culture 1 2. Cultural Legal Studies: From ‘Law and Literature’ to Intertextual Jurisprudence 14 3. The Law ‘Made Strange’: Taking Speculative Fiction Seriously 26 4. Outline of Chapters: There and Back Again, A Cultural Legal Tale 40 Chapter 2 Comic Book Mythology: Shyamalan’s Unbreakable and the Grounding of Good in Evil 49 1. Introduction 49 2. Superheroes and Justice: Comic Books as Visual Mythology 51 3. (Re)Presenting Comics: Crossing Visual Mediums 56 4. Pop Culture Manichaeism: Visualising the Battle Between Good and Evil 59 5. ‘Meaningless Suffering’ and Evil that Demands a Response 63 6. Eradicating Evil: A Good By Any Means Necessary 67 7. The Precariousness of Law’s Response to Evil 71 8. Conclusion 75 Chapter 3 ‘The Force’ as Law: Mythology, Ideology and Order in George Lucas’s Star Wars 77 1. Introduction 77 2. “I’ve got a bad feeling about this”: From Mythology to Ideology 79 3. “Learn to let go of everything you fear to lose”: From Ideology to Law 84 4. “It surrounds us, it penetrates us, it binds the galaxy together”: Law, Civilisation and Savagery 89 5. “More powerful than you could possibly imagine”: Law, Order and the State of Exception 95 6. Conclusion: “May the Force be with you” or “Good luck you’re gonna need it!” 100 Intermission: Anakin vs Batman - Christ-Figures in Mythology and Theology 101 Chapter 4 Beyond the Limits of the Law: A Christological Reading of Christopher Nolan’s The Dark Knight 109 1. Introduction 109 2. Myths of the Post-9/11 Superhero: Law, Exceptionality and Justice 111 3. ‘Who Appointed the Batman?’ or ‘Who declared the exception?’: The Sovereign in Gotham City 117 4. For, And, Or Against Justice? Refusing the Sovereign Decision of Life and Death 123 5. “When the chips are down, these ‘civilised people’ will eat each other”: The Joker, Hobbes and the State of Nature 126 ix 6. “The Only Morality in a Cruel World is Chance”: Law, Procedural Justice and the Toss of the Coin 138 7. Law, Counter-Law, Love: Batman as a Typology of Christ 146 8. “We don’t need another hero”: The (In)Conclusion of The Dark Knight Rises 155 Chapter 5 Allusions to Theology: I, Robot, Universalism and the Limits of the Law 159 1. Introduction 159 2. The Law as Custodian: Asimov, Proyas, Paul 161 3. Alain Badiou: the Universal, the Truth, the Event 163 4. Breaking with the Cosmic Order: Žižek, Paganism, Christ 168 5. Breaking with the Logic of the Law: Badiou, VIKI, Sonny 172 6. Puncturing the Situation: ‘There is neither Jew nor Greek, male nor female, robot nor human?’ 175 7. Conclusion: The Universal and the Realm of Love 178 Chapter 6 Escaping the Bureaucratisation of Destiny: Law, Theology and Freedom in The Adjustment Bureau 183 1. Introduction 183 2. Questions of Genre: Theological Science fiction and Philip K Dick on Screen 185 3. “Whatever Happened to ‘Free Will’?”: The Metaphysical Speculations of The Adjustment Bureau 190 4. “That’s just a name we use”: Nominalist Political Theology from Duns Scotus to Hobbes 197 5. “Did You Really Think You Could Reach the Chairman?”: The Absent Sovereign or ‘Where is the Chairman’? 203 6. “Because She’s Enough”: Love of One for Another 209 7. Conclusion: “Free Will is a Gift” 214 Chapter 7 Conclusion: A Theological Jurisprudence of Popular Culture 217 Bibliography 225 x Acknowledgements This thesis is the culmination of a long period of study, thought and engagement which would not have been possible without the support, enthusiasm, input and encouragement of a large number of people. First, thanks must go to Professor William MacNeil for introducing me to a new way of thinking about film and popular culture and for sharing the ‘luv’ of legal theory.