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Chapter
Legal narratives on trial: constructions of sex, blame and culpability and the provocation defence
DOI link for Legal narratives on trial: constructions of sex, blame and culpability and the provocation defence
Legal narratives on trial: constructions of sex, blame and culpability and the provocation defence book
Legal narratives on trial: constructions of sex, blame and culpability and the provocation defence
DOI link for Legal narratives on trial: constructions of sex, blame and culpability and the provocation defence
Legal narratives on trial: constructions of sex, blame and culpability and the provocation defence book
ABSTRACT
This chapter argues that both law and the facts are not simply what lawyers and judges find or discover; rather, that law and facts are constructed and framed in a context. It discusses how various tropes of subjectivity operate to evoke the deceased into narrative possibility. The chapter focuses on a comparison between the court's reading of the deceased's behaviour in the 1989 case of Gardner and the audience's reactions to the character, Melanie, in the film Jackie Brown. It shows that the implications of interpreting the event of murder as the inevitable culmination of the 'love hate' relationship. The chapter suggests how legal counsel exploits the conventions of romance narrative, which establishes the killer in the role of a hero beset by fate and in a tragic tale in which his ordeal is given primacy over that of the victim. The Ecclesiastical tradition 'predictably considered feminine sexuality and lust threats'.