My Days of Mercy and In Between: Echoing Changes in Cinematic Representations of Women Lawyers

Abstract

The booming of Law and Popular Culture has been marked by an unprecedented production and consumption of a voluminous literature examining a wide range of legal themes in movies and TV series on both sides of the Atlantic, the UK and the US. The enthusiastic proponents of the field have been focusing mainly on examining issues of justice, plot, and lead characters in the role of lawyers. Partly, this literature draws parallels between cinematic representations of lawyers and real-life lawyers. Almost indiscriminately, this work focuses mainly on a critical analysis and investigation of cinematic representations of male lawyers, rendering women lawyers’ cinematic portrayals largely unexplored on both sides of the Atlantic. Middle Eastern women lawyers’ celluloid representations are even more limited, functioning as a constant reminder of this ever-present absence. This paper seeks to address this absence by examining a relatively small sample of films from both the Anglo-American and Middle Eastern cinematic traditions. It puts forward the suggestion that despite differences characterising the relevant cinematic traditions, cinematic representations of women lawyers remain largely similar.