Legal Themes in the Good Wife TV Series

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Table of Contents

Introduction
Background to The Good Wife
Legal themes and the depiction of legal characters
Media and Crime
Conclusion
References

Introduction

Many social scholars contend that media can make people learn crimes and legal defences against such crimes (Hewitt & Osborne1995: Davies & Jupp 1999). The problem for such an experience is that some people may normalise certain crimes on the grounds of the existence of the legal litigation deployed by say, character A, to evade the action of the force of the law successfully.

Different forms of media may help to contract deviant behaviour, public opinion of certain political issues, and social issues differently (Cavender 2004, p.336). This paper does not dig into details of how all the forms media impact these facets.

Rather, the attention of the paper is dedicated to TV series with particular focus on the use of legal themes and the depiction of legal characters in the fourth series of The Good Wife (USA 2009-2013).

The paper argues that media is an impeccable platform for offering cultural templates for people involved in deviant activities. This argument reinforces the perception that media owes people an apology for not only causing but also taking a central role in informing crime.

Background to The Good Wife

The Good Wife features Alicia, acted by Juliana Margulies who is the mother. She is compelled by economic challenges arising from imprisonment of her husband (Peter Florrick) to abandon her housewifely roles to rejoin her career in law to make both ends meet for her family.

The imprisonment of Alicia’s husband accrues from his implication with sex crimes and political corruption scandals. Working as a defence Antony, Alicia has to sacrifice many of her morals by defending her clients in the effort to make sure that she puts bread on top of the table for her children and or provide a stable housing for them.

Through other characters in The Good Wife, the audience sees incredible interplay of law and politics of the current and recent past America. In this sense, political ideas and opinions shared in the American society are drawn into the entertainment pretext in the form of analogies.

Although The Good Wife may be seen as a disguised attack or a reflection of some phenomenon issues that have been experienced in practice in America, it gives the audience an opportunity to peruse the reality and appropriateness of the existing legal frameworks in shaping the American society.

In spite of the fact that issues such as sex scandals that have resulted in falls of prominent political figures in the US may be dismissed on the grounds of being political gimmick, The Good Wife creates a picture that this issue is indeed a reality that the American society has to address.

Cultural templates coupled with people’s lifestyles and their criticisms are greatly explored. For instance, an intense debate is created in court on whether drowning of Trey was instigated by Wayne’s hatred for gays.

Consequently, it remains solid that The Good Wife reflects the politics of the modern US given that politics of sexual orientation in relation to universal human rights have struck the American political and cultural atmosphere in a magnificent way (Bockting, Autumn & Coleman 2009, p. 688).

After setting on stage these pressing legal problems, The Good Wife then proceeds to lay down controversial issues, which give rise to complex legal cases, which various characters attempt to resolve. Treatment of these cases and the portrayal of the characters suggest specific political views among the audience. The views may lead to normalisation and justifications of certain crimes coupled with eliciting of deviant behaviours.

Legal themes and the depiction of legal characters

In all the series of The Good Wife, Alicia is depicted as a legal character who is used together with Diane among other characters to explore legal themes arising from matters that are of concern to the public in America. In the second series of The Good Wife, politics of sexual orientation were dominant themes.

For instance, the audience meets Alicia Florrick who is much at ease with her brother who happens to be a gay. Consequently, it is arguable that, in the second series of The Good Wife, an attempt is made to inform and influence the audience to take the position that all people in the US are acceptable within the eyes of the law irrespective of their sexual inclinations. This assertion is further developed in the fourth series.

One of the dominant questions with regard to the manner in which media displays crime is whether it presents justice for all people irrespective of their cultural and political differences (Strickland et al. 2006). In the fourth series of The Good Wife, there is a speculation that Wayne could have drowned Trey out of his hatred for being gay. However, it is clear that no one is completely sure about this matter.

The lawyers go seeking for evidence. For this reason, Alicia and Diane call Beth Alexandra to testify and make clarifications of her relationship with Trey. She claims that she has had sex with Trey hence confirming that he was not a gay. She reiterated that Trey originated from a religious family.

Hence, it was doubtful that he could have sex with his fellow men. In this extent, the fourth series of The Good Wife strikes hard on the perceptions that gays are not acceptable in the society since their actions are non-religious thus making The Good Wife a tool for justifying deviant behaviours and for justifications of crimes against gays.

The fact that Beth thinks that Trey was a religious man and that he did not have sex with men means that the Wayne’s act of killing his friend Trey intentionally was justifiable if indeed Trey was a gay.

This mixture of lines of view in reaction to sexual orientation is perhaps a true reflection of American politics in which gays were denied rights to even participate in public gatherings (Eskridge 1993, p.113: Bockting, Autumn & Coleman 2009, p.692) because it was unacceptable mannerism.

The gay history in the US is not anything to go by since gays were at one time in their history forcefully jailed and considered outcasts in the society.

This situation persisted until various key political icons including president barrack Obama came out openly to declare that they supported respect for human rights irrespective of one’s racial backgrounds, sexual orientations, economic status, and political status among other demographic diversities.

However, this argument does not mean that gays have been accepted within the society as a whole. The Good Wife evidences this assertion through presentation of Wayne as a character who is not free to talk about the culture.

Although Beth convinces Kalinda that Trey was not a gay, Kalinda continues to draw and associate his killing to perceptions of people that he could have been a gay claiming that such a perception could have elicited hate crimes.

Being caught in this dilemma, which is perhaps well reflected on the actual dilemma in practice, Diane proposes that to get a first account on what Wayne thought or never thought, it was better that Kalinda conducts a direct interview on Wayne while still held behind bars.

Wayne is not even free to talk about it until he is threatened that, if he does not provide guidance to Kalinda on the subject, he would have a personal suffering in that, in case he killed Trey out of his hatred for gays, he would have his jail term increased by 20- years.

Although Clad who is gay and a childhood friend to Wayne clarifies that Trey was not a gay, the conversation of the subject is still not yet settled in the court since differing dimensions of perceptions are still evident with the defence maintaining that Clad could have been seen as a friend by Wayne as opposed to being a gay.

This case implies that The Good Wife fights to the last beat to present gay culture as a sexual orientation having negative perceptions among the public. This situation is worse in The Good Wife since even the judge seems to take sides on the subject.

Discussion of Alicia as legal character and a symbol for justice calls for consideration of the dimensions of justice as developed by social-legal studies. In case of substantive justice, effort is made to discuss and evaluate the likely outcomes of a given case coupled with the implications of the results (Asimow & Mader 2004, p.25).

Procedural justice investigates the process adopted to arrive at the justice (Cardozo, 1998, p.11). As a procedural justice symbol, Alicia who acts as a legal symbol for fighting for gays’ justice in a big way in the fourth of the series of The Good Wife complains to the judge that one cannot commit a hate crime simply because one is opposed to another person’s mannerisms.

However, the judge maintains that the discussion was vital in the legal context since mere perception would truncate into hate and hence a catalyst for crime. This position is not welcomed in the public domain since there are several debates in the episode around the topic claiming that even the judge could be a gay.

He admits to these claims by claiming that people may think he was actually gay until they became cognisant that he was married.

With regard to being a procedural justice symbol, Alicia is much aware of the presumption of innocence until found guilty. She is also concerned that fairness is the appropriate vessel for delivering justice to all. For instance, in the fourth series of The Goods Wife, the audience encounters Alicia and Diane interviewing Beth to dig into the heart of the challenge of determining whether Trey was a gay or not.

The interviewers want to gain substantive evidence to counter the allegations made by the defence group claiming that Trey’s fate was related to hate crimes. Indeed, this argument demonstrates that Alicia is cautious in her approach to legal battles. This strategy creates a solid foundation for holding the position that media may portray justice while well managed (Rapping 2003: Gies 2008).

In the contemporary American society, all lawyers are perceived to be vessels of justice. Unfortunately, this case does not hold always as demonstrated in the fourth series of The Good Wife. For instance, the university’s defence lawyer changes from one tactic to another to ensure that his client remains immune from being implicated with the circumstances leading to the death of Trey.

He first approaches the case by pushing for $500,000 settlement fee. When this case is rejected, he shifts to framing the issue to attract political opinion of the emotive matters characterising the American society: sexual orientations.

The Antony claims that Trey’s death culminated from a hate crime since he was gay according to him meaning that the university could not have anticipated in the most reasonable contemplation that such a tragedy would occur. Hence, the university cannot assume strict liability. In yet a different scenario, Eli admits that he lies to earn her living.

Media and Crime

Although media is an important tool for bringing into the public scrutiny how social challenges such as the implication with crimes are handled by the systems of law, it does not escape scot free from accusation for its capacity to provide avenues for instilling the belief that criminals can escape justice by raising strong defences (Carrabine 2008, p.78).

In fact, fictional TV series are identified as having a magnificent capacity to tell crime stories, expound, and criticise the state of laws within a nation, and how legal personnel handle situation calling for execution of justice (Asimow 2009: Robinson & Silbey 2012). Nevertheless, a challenge is evident in the TV shows since they have limited or even absolute inability to distinguish reality and fiction (Asimow et al. 2005, p.411).

In The Good Wife, crime is a phenomenal issue, which helps to build the TV series narratives. The crimes are based on true-life experiences in the American society. In the fourth series, the audience encounters Trey being murdered over reasons widely suspected to be driven by differences in ways of thought of social and cultural issues reminiscent to different opposing views adopted by liberals and conservatives.

In 2007, an American student (Amanda Knox) was convicted over murdering his roommate (British in origin) in Italy. In the fourth series of The Good Wife, the analogy of this incident is reflected through the tale and subsequent legal redress for the murder of Trey by his teammate Wayne.

Scrutiny of these two comparisons raises the question of whether media actually justifies that the society is evil and or whether incidents of people taking the law in their hands are normal.

The danger is that people watching The Good Wife may absorb this information and use it to justify their future acts of crime against their fellow citizens on the accounts that legal frameworks can shield them from facing the repercussions of their criminal acts.

This move would perhaps occur where the traits in the evil and criminal characters in the media go unpunished or receive punishments that are below par in comparison to the crimes committed. It is important to note that, in mass media, the audience is much aware of the true nature and traits of the characters since they (audience) are priory shown the suspects of the crimes committing the offences (Luhmann 2000).

This claim means that the audience digs into the application of law to punish crimes with anticipations of particular threshold of punishment. When this threshold is not delivered, high probabilities exist that the audience may develop criminal and deviant behaviour in anticipation that they would also come out scot free in a court of law.

The Good Wife may be thinly interpreted as the true depiction of the nature of the political class in America through the story of Eliot Spitzer (Ridley 2009). Spitzer quitted from the gubernatorial seat in 2008 upon being caught up with a prostitute in a hotel based in Washington, DC.

Peter Florrick is also caught in a parallel situation. Unfortunately, for the case of Peter, the audience is aware that he indeed committed the act. In the case of Spitzer, the same audience would treat the case as an allegation. Therefore, media tends to confirm the conceptions of people about the incidences shaping the political area as real and truthful.

In the future, in case a public figure is suspected to have committed similar crimes to those portrayed in the media, the audience will most likely consider such a person guilty of the offense by virtue of the fact that media portrays such people as attempting to run away from their responsibility through their defence lawyers.

The story of The Good Wife is narrated in Chicago, Illinois. This city had earned a bad reputation in relation to corruption when Rod Blagojevich attempted to sell Obama’s seat upon the departure of president Obama from the US senate. Consequently, the Rod Blagojevich lost his governorship.

In The Good Wife, a similar tale is told. Peter is depicted as suffering in jail for his corrupt acts. Although his defence lawyers attempt to have their client freed, a strong message is sent to the audience that criminal acts attract heavy penalties.

However, does this imply that the political class is corrupt in nature and that it faces the law only in the event its members are caught? What about when they are not caught? Does it mean corruption is o.k. in such a situation? The response to these queries may result in deviant behaviour among the audience of The Good Wife and other similar series reflecting the political, social, and economic malpractices in the society.

Conclusion

Topical issues reflecting the political, economic, and social themes prevailing within a given society or nations may be brought into the public lime light, discussions, and scrutiny in a variety of ways. Movie and TV series portrayals are amongst one of the subtle ways for realising this endeavour.

In such movies and TV series, themes of law, crime, and or how media presents these ailing challenges for the society are dominant. Although media may help to set platforms for challenging certain acts in the society outside the legal settings (courts), it may lead to contraction of negative profiling for persons tagged as law and social norms violators through the narration of episodes involving crimes.

This argument attracts an immense debate on the capacity of media to aid in not only the development of deviant behaviour but also in reinforcement of the behaviour among the audience. This debate was pre-visited in the paper through the scrutiny of The Good Wife, which is an American CBS TV series with particular emphasis on the fourth series.

References

Asimow, M. & Mader, S. 2004, Law and Popular Culture: A Course Book, Random house, New York.

Asimow, M. 2009, Lawyers in Your Living Room! Law on Television, ABA Press, Chicago.

Asimow, M. et al. 2005. ‘Perceptions of Lawyers – A Transnational Study of Student Views on the Image of Law and Lawyers’, International Journal of the Legal Profession, vol.15 no.2, pp. 407-436.

Bockting, W., Autumn, B. & Coleman, E. 2009, ‘Gay and Bisexual Identity Development Among Female-to-Male Transsexuals in North America: Emergence of a Transgender Sexuality’, Archives of Sexual Behaviour, vol. 38 no.5, pp. 688–701.

Cardozo, B. 1998, The Nature of Judicial Process, Yale University Press, New Haven.

Carrabine, E. 2008, Crime, Culture and the Media, Polity, Cambridge.

Cavender, G. 2004, ‘Media and Crime Policy’, Punishment & Society, vol. 6 no. 3, pp. 335-348.

Davies, P. & Jupp, V. 1999, Invisible Crimes: Their Victims and Their Regulation, Macmillan, Basingstoke.

Eskridge, W. 1993, ‘A History of Same-Sex Marriage’, Virginia Law Review, vol. 79 no. 7, pp. 112-119.

Gies, L. 2008, Law and the Media: the Future of an Uneasy Relationship, Routledge-Cavendish, New York.

Hewitt, D. & Osborne, R. 1995, Crime and Media: The Post Modern Spectacle, Pluto, London.

Luhmann, N. 2000, The Reality of the Mass Media, Polity-Press, Cambridge.

Rapping, E. 2003, Law and Justice as Seen on TV, New York: New York University Press.

Ridley, J. 2009, Pain of Eliot Spitzer Scandal for Ex-governor’s Wife Silda Recalled in New CBS Show The Good Wife. Web.

Robinson, P. & Silbey, J 2012, Law and Justice on the Small Screen, Oxford University Press, Oxford.

Strickland, R. et al. 2006, Screening Justice – The Cinema of Law, Hein, Buffalo, NY.

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