Citation

Sarat A, Umphrey MM. Cult. Stud. 2013; 27(1): 30-48.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2013, Informa - Taylor and Francis Group)

DOI

10.1080/09502386.2012.722295

PMID

unavailable

Abstract

To Kill a Mockingbird is a classic of American cultural-legal studies, and it offers in Atticus Finch an iconic hero who, as Stephen Lubet suggests, is popular culture's most important embodiment of lawyerly virtue. As other scholars have noted, however, To Kill a Mockingbird is not just, or primarily, a law story. Rather, Scout Finch's portrait of Atticus as a father is regarded by many as the key to the text's cultural resonance. Told as a daughter's memory of her father, her brother, and the town in which she grew up, the text frames the era's conflicts over race, gender, and justice through the lens of Scout's admiration for Atticus. From our perspective, however, it is the conjunction of lawyer and father that fuels To Kill a Mockingbird's appeal and importance, and in this paper we argue that such a conjunction, particularly in its filmic incarnation, provides an opportunity to explore the role that fathers and fatherhood play in cultural imaginings of law and in exemplifying the various faces of law's power. We argue that Atticus Finch is a father/lawyer committed to a particular vision of fatherhood and law, one in which both can transcend, if not transform, the context in which they exist, one in which orienting oneself to the future takes precedence over controlling the present, one in which the temporal horizon of law and fatherhood is kept firmly in view. In the figure of Atticus, To Kill a Mockingbird suggests that law and fatherhood are powerful and yet limited in their power, and that both exist in the present but are oriented towards an as yet unrealized future.