BOOK REVIEW

Margaret Thornton (ed.), Romancing the Tomes: Popular Culture, Lawand Feminism, London, Sydney: Cavendish, 2002, 312 pp., Price £29.95(PB), ISBN: 1-85941-723-X

A collection of essays addressing aspects of the nexus between popularculture, law and feminism is likely to engender interest across a broadspectrum of scholars engaged in socio-legal theory. Romancing the Tomeswill not disappoint, providing distinctive, original and thoughtful contribu-tions. Three factors mark the book as worthy of particular considera-tion – firstly, its contributors adopt a lively, provocative style whichis hugely readable (you could take this book on holiday) yet deliverssophistication to serious issues. Second, the collection ranges over a greatvariety of topics, providing proper pause to the intellectual community inrealising the scope of links between popular culture, law and feminism.Lastly (and this point derives in part from those foregoing), althoughthe declared foci of the title may well appeal to very particular sectorsof the academic community, it provides material of significance for allthinkers – whether primarily ‘social’, ‘political’, ‘cultural’ or ‘legal’ intheir discursive identity – concerned with the currents which create ourcivilisations, from reception theory to cyberpornography, from the creationof the judicial imagination to the interconnectedness of fact and fiction,violence and love. Though the title denotes ‘feminist’ concerns as a clearstrand throughout the book, the topics justify the view that feminist issuesaffect the entire social fabric. In other words, while a potential marketis clearly flagged by the title, the book also contains more than enoughmaterial to challenge and discomfit those for whom links to ‘culture’ and‘feminism’ might carry scant gravitas compared to ‘law’.

This review can provide only a brief indication of the range of issuesencountered in Romancing the Tomes. With the three strands of popularculture, law and feminism in mind, the chapters explore the challengesposed to law by popular culture, the inescapable nature of processesof interpretation and the philosophical and textual prejudices underlyingevidential process. Media such as the film Pretty Woman (with Grbichrendering a fascinating account of parallels between the modern romantic

Feminist Legal Studies 12: 109–111, 2004.

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text and mediaeval land holdings in the coming to being of power) and thebook The First Stone (encapsulating a political doublethink still trailingfeminism, as outlined by Genovese) provide sites of historiographicretrieval. The real practical difficulty facing the law in attempting toregulate the “borderless” world of cyberpornography is explored incisivelyby Baron, whilst a cautionary and tragic tale of cycles of exploitation viathe internet is the subject of “Jail Babes” (Davies and Cook). The finalsection, entitled “Fictions of the Real” explores the promotion of certain(and unrepresentative) gender archetypes in the interface between ‘reality’and ‘fiction’ claimed by the (Canadian) ‘True Crime’ genre (Strange andLoo); and the motivations and beliefs generated (and fed) by the largereadership of crime fiction (Turnbull).

The book is divided into six sections, while the pause between chaptersholds an alteration of register and genre in the form of poems contributedby M.J.C. Cronin – an attractive shift, though an occasional note ontopics explored by the poems would have been welcome. MargaretThornton’s “Introduction” provides a foundational exploration of theworlds of the popular and of law, demonstrating the very real andunexpected intimacies obtaining between those two seemingly disparateworlds. Terry Threadgold reflects, with theoretical breadth, upon theconventions through which law claims conceptual independence fromcultural influences whilst at the same time being a product of culture, ofthe “scapes” with which to picture the world and the reading strategiesavailable to read the world. The phenomenon presents most ironically inthe continuous loop whereby law derives evaluations from popular culture,then asserts sufficient independence to proclaim meanings for popularculture and its creatures (that is, us). Isabel Karpin further explores thisphenomenon, unearthing the substrata of meanings generated by popularculture, germinal to all citizenry, including the judiciary.

Several chapters descry lessons for the universal from the particular– Rosanne Kennedy in looking at the juristic prejudices concerningdiffering texts in the trial of Madeleine Smith, Seuffert through the oddlyschizophrenic social engagement between romantic love and domesticviolence, and Perera on the “alternative genealogy” provided by the institu-tionally and politically challenging folk texts of Indigenous Australians.Diane Kirkby provides a materially grounded legal history in her intriguingstudy of the great contribution to the social fabric provided by workingwomen of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries in the recreational worldof the pub – a contribution often actively undermined by the law. Incontrast, Margaret Thornton melds theory through her trenchant applica-tion of Baudrillard to the unconscious waltz between stereotypes of self,

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other, fiction and reality evident in the novel written by Australian HighCourt Judge, Ian Callinan, The Lawyer and the Libertine.

A theoretical range and vigour – filtrating interpretative practice fromthe taproom to the robing-room – is a notable aspect of this book. Anotheris the unabashed confrontation with pressing moral failings in our society,failings which pose complex challenges for the law. So often portrayed asmarginal ephemera, an underlying theme of this book is that such failingsfoster harms beyond the feminine or dispossessed and indict broader weak-nesses in the legal and political communities. Take Jail Babes (discussedin Chapter 11 by Davies and Cook) as an example. The Jail Babes websitemay have started out to mend lonely hearts on both sides of the screen. Ofcourse the potential for corruption would always have been there – fuelledby the very idea of ‘captive’ women capable of exploitation on all sides.But it might have developed as a portal of connectedness and constructionand burgeoning hope. Instead, persons are “so many units of consumption”in the maw of commerce, entrenching the most destructive cycles and thelaw courts’ complicity, when accountability for such failings rests with allof us, for:

In vilifying and attempting to eradicate Jail Babes through legal means, there is also anadded danger of treating it as though it can easily be divorced from the cultural and politicalterrain that has produced it (p. 217).

So may read the eventual epitaph for our culture. For the moment it mayread as the epigraph, the encapsulating message of this book.

MELANIE WILLIAMS

Department of LawUniversity of Wales

Hugh Owen BuildingAberystwyth, SY23 3DY

UKE-mail: miw@aber.ac.uk