ABSTRACT

This book uses film and television as a resource for addressing the social and legal ills of the city. It presents a range of approaches to view the ill city through cinematic and televisual characterization in urban frameworks, political contexts, and cultural settings. Each chapter deconstructs the meaning of urban space as public space while critically generating a focus on order and justice, exploring issues such as state disorder, lawlessness, and revenge. The approach presents a careful balance between theory and application. The original and novel ideas presented in this book will be essential reading for those interested in the presentation of law and place in cultural texts such as film.

chapter |16 pages

Introduction

1Imagining law, justice, and order in real and fictional ill cities

part I|2 pages

Imagining ill cities: their treatments under various movie scenarios

chapter 1|12 pages

The dark side of cleanliness and order

18Visual renderings of oppression in dystopian science fiction cinema

chapter 3|12 pages

The dysfunctional town and the social contract

Figures of violence in the liberal legal imaginary

chapter 5|12 pages

Cities that degrade

Ken Loach on social ills

part II|2 pages

Visualizing the forms of ill cities

chapter 6|11 pages

The city armed to the teeth

77Bending the law in the Italian crime movies tradition

chapter 7|10 pages

Ill cities in their perfect “form”

A rereading of Pier Paolo Pasolini

chapter 8|17 pages

The city as ill body

Visual representations of urban landscapes in the Global South

chapter 9|10 pages

Bodies, monuments, and spaces in between

Encountering spatialities in a film by Jonathan Perel