Citation

Sarat A. Law Soc. Rev. 2000; 34(1): 3-46.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2000, Law and Society Association, Publisher John Wiley and Sons)

DOI

10.2307/3115115

PMID

unavailable

Abstract

This essay takes the theme of the 1999 annual meeting of the Law and Society Association, "The Legal Imagination: Taking on Cultural Studies," as an occasion for trying to promote an engagement between sociological studies and cultural studies. It argues that mass mediated images are as powerful and pervasive as other social forces with which sociological studies is already engaged and that the time has come to move from the study of law on the books and in action to law in the image. This argument is developed by analyzing the significance of the ubiquitous presence of tropes of fatherhood in popular cultural iconography about law. Drawing on psychoanalysis, gender theory, and film studies, this essay presents a close reading of a single film, "The Sweet Hereafter". This film exemplifies the ways in which fatherhood becomes one of the key terms through which law is mythologized and through which fantasies and anxieties about law are expressed. Exploring the imagination of law in and through mass medicated images, like those contained in "The Sweet Hereafter", is an important and engaging new frontier for sociolegal studies.