Creating Communities

The internet, it is often said, is a democratic medium in which users are free to express themselves and their thoughts directly to the worldwide audience. As in the non-cyber world, there are degrees of consequence associated with such expression. As we have seen all too frequently, at the worst end of the spectrum of consequences are reprisals taken against those who use the internet to speak their minds, particularly in authoritarian regimes, where such dissent would not be tolerated as a physical act of speaking. At the other end of the spectrum of consequences, we see examples of job seekers denied jobs or people fired from their jobs due to questionable postings on social networking sites. Both ends of this consequence spectrum involve the piercing of the internet’s fluid nature by concrete, outside norms, be they state repression or employer concerns over employee activities and behavior.

This piercing is fascinating, yet what is also fascinating is the creation of communities within the internet itself and how these communities then pierce the concrete communities and norms of those who participate in them and vice versa. The recent movie “Julie and Julia” provides insights into these relationships and the process of community and norm building online.

The plot of the movie is relatively simple, and parallels the lives of Julia Child and Julie Powell. While the portions of the movie pertaining to Julia Child are extremely interesting, the focus of this post is on the portrayal of Julie. Julie is a woman in her thirties who moves from Brooklyn to Queens with her husband at the beginning of the movie. While both boroughs are part of the larger City of New York, it is clear that each has its own culture, and that Julie is not pleased with the move, which is justified as allowing her husband to live near his office. Julie’s real passion is writing, however the novel she penned was not successful and so she has taken a bureaucratic job. The movie is set in the year 2002 and, we soon discover, Julie’s job at the Lower Manhattan Development Agency involves taking calls that are primarily related to post-September 11th related questions from the public. The audience hears the calls she receives on a daily basis, which range from idiotic questions to irate callers to truly horrible stories of loss and tragedy. With one exception, Julie’s friends are highly successful and shallow, and her meetings with them seem to make Julie feel inadequate. Indeed, when one of her friends, a writer for a New York magazine, asks to interview her for a story, Julie finds out too late that the real subject of the story is New Yorkers who have lowered their job expectations.

Julie’s one passion is cooking and her icon is Julia Child. Eventually, Julie decides to start a blog which will chronicle her attempts to complete every recipe in Julia Child’s famed cookbook, Mastering the Art of French Cooking, over the course of a year. In creating the blog, Julie creates the rules and boundaries for the community she hopes to foster through her project. She will make every recipe – even the difficult recipes or the recipes that are difficult for her, such as those involving the cooking of live lobster – and will tell her readers the results even if the results are not as envisioned in the cookbook. Julie also does not shy away from bringing others, such as her husband, into the blog community through references to his assisting in her culinary endeavors.

The blog starts off with no readership except for Julie’s mother, who sends her messages questioning the advisability of the blog. When Julie starts to question her project she discovers, however, that she has readers and fans, and soon the blog becomes a top-rated blog. From there the fan base continues to grow, with readers offering suggestions and comments online. The boundaries of the online and concrete start to cross, however, when readers begin to send Julie cooking products in the mail and when the blog catches the attention of traditional media. This cross-over continues into Julie’s personal life, when she insists that she has to keep up with the project because of her readers even when her marriage starts to suffer. It continues when her husband tells her not to mention him in the blog and when her boss nearly fires her for calling in sick when it was clear from the blog that she was quite healthy. Further, her boss makes it clear that she would lose her job if any references were made to him in the blog. In the end, Julie completes her project and, in a bittersweet blog posting, also ends the blog despite the national attention that it has gathered throughout the course of the year.

Thus, Julie is faithful to the law she established regarding the duration of the blog. However, it becomes apparent throughout the movie that she cannot enforce some of the other laws and rules she established for the blog community at the beginning of her project. Julie does establish a community in which she and her talents for writing and cooking are validated, and in which she does not shy away from open dialogue regarding her successes and failures. However, she cannot keep this community from crossing over into her concrete, quotidian community and life. The blog becomes a source of tension between Julie and her husband, both in terms of her dedication to the community which sprung up around it and in terms of his inclusion in it. By reading her blog posts, Julie’s boss was clearly able to ascertain that she was not ill when she claimed to be, indicating that membership in the community expanded beyond those who were truly interested in the project, as originally intended. The attention garnered by the blog ultimately demonstrated that, while Julie could set the basic parameters of the community as she envisioned it, her ability to control the community and enforce these parameters was limited given the fluid nature of the internet.

Ultimately, Julie’s blog demonstrates that the internet is indeed a democratic medium in which individual people can not only speak their minds but also create communities around their interests. Julie’s blog also demonstrates the difficulties associated with enforcing the laws and norms of an online community and in keeping this community separate from one’s concrete community.

Interstellar Omissions

In my previous blog posting, "Interstellar Intimacies", I spoke about Star Trek's commitment toward exploring and defying restrictive socio-cultural boundaries, particularly with respect to race. The original Star Trek series in the late 1960s featured the first interracial kiss between a White (Captain James Kirk) and a Black person (Lt. Nyota Uhura) on television - this during the era of still-entrenched racism and bigotry toward African-Americans and people of colour. As the series was also filmed during the cold war, the presence of a Russian crew member, Pavel Chekov, also suggested a visionary collaboration in the future between two then-competing and antagonistic superpowers.

The latest film installment (released earlier this year) in many ways reproduces some of these traditional motifs of the Star Trek universe as it traces the beginnings of the original crew members. Yet it also fails to address one of the more compelling social, political and legal issues today, the struggle for equality and inclusiveness by gays and lesbians - particularly in the context of serving openly in the military.

While the USS Enterprise and other Starfleet vessels operate within a diplomatic and exploratory mandate, they are also armed military ships that engage in combat (afterall, who would realistically watch any Star Trek episode or film if the central focus of each plot was to dramatize the complexities of conducting geological surveys on lifeless moons or uninhabitable planets). Conspicuous by their absence, at least within the latest film, are any mention or inference of openly gay or lesbian characters serving within the ranks of Starfleet.

By mentioning the idea of including openly gay or lesbian characters, I am not speaking of introducing crude caricatures or making any such particular character's sexual identity an explicit part of the plot. Just as the original Star Trek series took it as a given that in the future, people of different races and ethnicities would and could be a part of a cooperative military and exploratory adventure together, the same could be done here with gays and lesbians.

References can be made subtly, perhaps even more more so than a scene that has a young cadet Kirk making out with a green-skinned female alien (no offense to extra-terrestrials intended). For example, as or before Kirk is about to enter a shuttle transporting him to Starfleet Academy, he could have been shown passing a character leaving to attend Starfleet Academy as well who is saying goodbye to their same-sex spouse and in such a manner as to suggest they are more than just "friends". This implicitly would speak both to the acceptability of open same-sex marriages/relationships and to the ability of gays and lesbians serving openly in the military being a given in some future context, without it becoming the central focus of any story.

By not including this or something similar, I am not in any way suggesting that the producers and writers of the recent film did so intentionally or out of malice. In rebooting the original Star Trek narrative, a central focus will naturally be on re-establishing the audience's connection with the new actors who are playing hallowed characters within the science fiction genre. The new film rewrites the history of the Star Trek universe, and thus allows for the introduction of new characters going forward in sequels. Perhaps writers for the next film(s) will take the opportunity to consider how to address the issue of inclusiveness of gays and lesbians in the military and as equal members of civil society. This could serve as as a powerful comment on their present inability to serve openly, not only in the United States but in other polities.

Interstellar Intimacies

The Star Trek universe, whether on television or film has fascinated viewers for decades now. More than just a medium of entertainment, its themes have striking resonance for those studying international law and international relations (see the sources section below). The most recent addition to the science fiction enterprise (no pun intended) is the recent film, simply titled, Star Trek. In addition to exploring (legal) issues related to torture and genocide (as my Jurisculture partner in crime Alexandra examined in her posting "Genocidal Trek" from earlier this year) this film focuses, in part, on the origins of the characters from the original 1960s television series that made the Star Trek industry famous. In so doing, it draws attention to themes that made the original Star Trek series so revolutionary for its time - the breaking of socially-constructed boundaries.

In tracing the origins of one of Star Trek's leading characters, Spock, the film touches upon issues of discrimination and ostracism experienced by individuals of mixed racial parentage. Spock, as many are surely aware, is the progeny of a Vulcan father, Sarek, and a human mother, Amanda. Although a bi-racial child, in the literal sense, Spock is raised (culturally) in the Vulcan way - that is, he is raised to subordinate all personal emotions and subjective feelings to the demands of logic and scientific thinking.

While culturally and by all appearances Vulcan, a young Spock is shown being taunted and ostracized by fellow Vulcan students on account of his mixed parentage, and particularly for being the son of a human mother. Spock gives into his emotions and attacks one of his peers who insults his mother. From the Vulcan perspective, humans are largely derided as emotional, intemperate, undisciplined and most sinfully, illogical beings. This explicit prejudice follows Spock throughout his life. During an assembly where he is granted admission into the Vulcan Science Academy (considered a rather prestigious honour for Vulcans), Spock is given a backhanded compliment by a high official about his ability to succeed notwithstanding his biological deficit. Consequently, Spock declines the offer of admission and instead opts for a seat in Starfleet Academy, situated in San Francisco.

Interestingly, while Spock is derided by his fellow Vulcans as being too human, and not Vulcan enough, he is similarly not fully at ease amongst his human counterparts, except with perhaps cadet Uhura. Indeed, amongst humans and his Starfleet colleagues, Spock identifies himself and is identified as a Vulcan, rather than as biracial. This is usually raised by the emotional and antagonistic Dr. Leonard McCoy who has in previous films and the television series referred to Spock as inhuman, replete with references to Spock's pointy Vulcan ears.

Spock's challenge as a bi-racial child to navigate between two worlds that do not completely accept him is something that many bi-racial children experience today. There are challenges to navigating between two different normative structures each replete with their own set of values and expectations for individuals within their respective systems. Although there are probably few countries that formally prohibit interracial relationships as a matter of state law, there is still a tremendous degree of resistance by members of different civil societies across the world toward such relationships.

This resistance can even impact upon the decisions of legal actors. One need only recall a Justice of the Peace in Louisiana who, this past summer, refused to marry an interracial couple on the basis that he was concerned about the effect that such a relationship would have on the couple's prospective offspring and their acceptance in a racialized society. While the Justice certainly had no legal right to abstain from performing the marriage on this ground, his belief is not completely unfounded as there are certainly parents and families who still evidence significant resistance towards one of their own marrying someone outside of their particular ethnic, class, linguistic and caste group. This isn't to suggest that such barriers and resistance shouldn't be broken or challenged, merely that such resistance is palpable and needs to be addressed. The Justice's decision should have been geared toward confronting those barriers rather than succumbing to them.

But returning to Spock's narrative and its relevance to interracial relationships in our time(s) and place(s) speaks to something far from anachronistic, not only in North America (the cultural backdrop for the creators and writers of Star Trek), but around the world. It speaks to some rather powerful and pervasive non-state legal orders that can have an impact on the decision of interracial couples (or couples who cross distinct cultural boundaries) to pursue their unions or have children. In some cases, the opposition will be limited to mild ostracism while in other extremes, it might lead to physical harm, if not execution. Whatever their forms, these are types of enforcement within socio-legal systems that do not recognize or accept such unions.

The relationship between Sarek and Amanda also speaks to the norms that may govern the raising of children in such contexts. Although half-human, Spock is rather explicitly raised in the Vulcan way. Anything human is derided as clearly inferior and lacking in logical thinking. In many mixed families (whether the mix is on the basis of race, religion and/or other distinction), the cultural values of one spouse may dominate over the other's in the raising of their children. Rather than both cultural frameworks having equal representation, there is perhaps in many instances a pattern of dominance. One of the cultural frameworks, whether explicitly or implicitly is presented as dominant so as to impose some sense of uniformity. One of the spouses "converts" and/or otherwise accepts and assimilates (although perhaps not completely) the other spouse's cultural framework and the norms that come with it. The children are raised within the dominant framework while the other may be diminished. This is of course not the case in every such familial context.

Star Trek, as always presents its viewers with a wide range of norms and normative structures. In this posting, I have focused on what the film has shown. In a subsequent posting, I shall explore what was left out and was such omissions suggest about the limitations of Star Trek's implicit commitment to breaking social, political and legal boundaries.

Sources consulted:

Randall Kennedy, Interracial Intimacies: Sex Marriage, Identity and Adoption (New York: Pantheon Books, 2003).

Michael Scharf and Lawrence Roberts, "The Interstellar Relations of the Federation: International Law and Star Trek: The Next Generation" (1994) 25 University of Toledo Law review 577.

Star Trek (Paramount Pictures 2009).

Janie's Got A Gun and Justified Private Violence

Twenty years ago, Boston-based rock band Aerosmith released its highly successful album Pump. Amongst Pump's various tracks was the Grammy award-winning song (and MTV award winning music video directed by David Fincher) Janie's Got A Gun (JGAG). The song highlighted a significant social and legal issue - sexual abuse and incest. JGAG conveys the narrative of the song's protagonist Janie who kills her father for having raped her (presumably not for the first time).

In this blog post, I want to briefly explore how the song deals with the idea of private violence in a familial context. In JGAG, there are fundamentally two acts of familial violence that transpire:, where one causally leads to the other: 1) a father raping his daughter; and 2) the daughter killing her father, both in response to and in order to stop prospective rapes by him against her.

The father and his acts are accurately characterized for what they are - as unjustifiable and wrongful. The rape of one's own child (and anyone else for that matter) is an act of a troubled and disturbed mind - although not necessarily a product of legal insanity. This is conveyed in the following lyrics:

What did her daddy do?
He jacked a little bitty baby
The man has got to be insane

They say the spell that he was under the
lightning and the thunder knew that
someone had to stop the rain

Although Janie is a teenager (as suggested at least in the music video), the father's death is justifiably violent - as justification for raping a "little bitty baby". It also conveys the power imbalance that exists between a parent and child, even when that child is a teenager.

Janie's violence is justified as more than just an act of retribution. It is also presented as a form of remedial action and prospective self-defence. She is the "someone" who "had to stop the rain." As with many individuals who suffer from private violence, there is a fear of revealing it to others only to be disbelieved or to have no action taken to stop it.

They said when Janie was arrested they
found him underneath a train
But man he had it coming
Now that Janie's got a gun she ain't never
gonna be the same.

...

She had to take him down easy and put a
bullet in his brain
She said cause nobody believes me
The man was such a sleaze, he ain't never
gonna be the same.

Janie in this narrative is not presented as just an object of her father's madness/lust/desire, but she is also an agent who takes control of that which causes her utmost pain. Notwithstanding and perhaps in spite of her father's depravity and metaphorical insanity, her agency is nevertheless manifested through a sense of humanity - by taking him down easy and putting a bullet in his brain. One could easily imagine more painful, deserved and vengeful instantiations.

Janie's actions taken against her father are analogous to those who suffer from Battered Spouse Syndrome, where the act of violence waged against an abusive spouse leading to the latter's death does not take place at the time of or in expectation of an imminent attack. It occurs while the abuser is or might be caught unaware of his/her impending death- perhaps even after an abusive act has transpired. In the music video for JGAG, Janie kills her father while he sits in his study, after having just raped her.

The song does not reveal Janie's ultimate fate following her arrest. The song does however convey, intended or otherwise, a sense of justice, retribution and self-defence through Janie's actions.

Deterring misconduct

Rules are ubiquitous and inescapable. This is what Serena Williams discovered in her semi-final match against opponent Kim Clijsters.

Trailing in what turned out to the final game of the second set, Williams was serving when she committed what the line judge determined to be a foot fault (and because this immediately followed a previous serving fault), she lost the point. This brought the score to 15-40 and match point for Clijsters. Williams argued with the line judge and then returned to the line to serve. However, she returned back to apparently express a few more words to the line judge. This entailed shaking the ball in the judge's face and apparently threatening her.

As reported in the New York Times:

Reporters who were courtside said that Williams approached the line judge and they heard Williams shout profanity at her. Holding a ball, Williams said to the lineswoman that “you don’t know me,” appearing to inject it with profanity. Then Williams added that the linewoman was lucky that Williams was not, according to The Miami Herald, “shoving this ball down your throat.”

After this altercation, the Chair Umpire called the line judge over to her chair to disclose what just transpired. The Chair Umpire then determined that Williams would be assessed a one point penalty for a code violation - "unsportsmanlike conduct". This ultimately resulted in Williams losing the final point of the game and finally the match to Clijsters.

What we observe (as if it weren't evident already) is that different institutions and entities within civil society have applicable rules for human conduct and modes of enforcement over whom they have jurisdiction. While most people don't attend court proceedings, many are often spectators and witnesses at popular cultural and sporting events such as tennis and hockey. Spectators witness how "disputes" are adjudicated by "parties" to the game - in the case of Williams-Clijsters match, enforcement of the rules can lead to an anti-climactic result in an otherwise entertaining and dynamic match.

The dispute that took place at the end of the Williams-Clijsters match was particularly interesting from the point of view of the application of the rules to player conduct. Normally, if there is a dispute in tennis about a technical violation and a judge's call on the violation, there is recourse to technical assistance - i.e. computer-generated reconstructions to assess whether the ball was in or out. Here, there was a dispute over what Williams actually said to the line judge. In ruling against Williams, the Chief Umpire opted to believe the line judge's account about what it was that Williams said. Williams could be overheard imploring the umpire that she didn't threaten the line judge's life. The Chief Umpire's decision to positively view the line judge's credibility was probably helped by the threatening gestures Williams had made toward the latter as she was threatening her (not to mention a reputation for losing her cool on the tennis court).

The episode demonstrates the speed at which justice can (and probably needs to) be dispensed at a live sporting event and the serious consequences for a top-seeded player - both with respect to winnings that can be potentially earned and the prestige to be gained from winning the US Open. As in all systems, some rules are designed to encourage or discourage certain types of conduct - for example rules punishing unsportsmanlike conduct. Whether this will ultimately deter Williams or other players with anger management issues, time will tell. But for now it seems to illustrate that tennis has a type of legal system in operation and it is enforced in such a way as to fell one of its foremost athletes at a critical moment of a match.

Truth and Treason

As with many artistic mediums that we explore on this blawg, theatre has been no stranger to themes of law, politics and resistance. One Montreal-based theatre company in particular, Teesri Duniya Theatre (Third World Theatre in Hindustani) has tackled many such themes over the course of its close to 30 year history. Its latest production, Truth and Treason, written by Teesri's artistic director and playwright Rahul Varma is no exception. Set in Iraq in the aftermath of the US-led invasion of the country, the play examines a variety of issues that stem from the invasion and occupation - many of which implicate the law (particularly the laws of armed conflict, treatment of civilians as well as corruption) into the matrix. Rather than spoiling the play by inadvertently revealing too much information, I provide a brief synopsis of the play here, furnished on the Theatre's website:

At a checkpoint in Iraq, a 10-year-old girl named Ghazal is shot by an unidentified U.S. soldier. Behind the checkpoint, a conference on rebuilding Iraq – attended by high-profile Iraqi and American delegates – is underway. The girl’s condition is critical. Captain Edward Alston, the officer in charge of the checkpoint, learns that Ghazal has a rare blood type and requires an immediate transfusion from her father, a jailed Iraqi writer. Captain Alston tries to arrange for a transfusion. He is also about to let the girl’s distraught mother Nahla, a Canadian woman, go past security to be with her daughter when he is overruled by his superior, Commander Hektor Frank. Why? Because the girl’s father Omar, imprisoned for his writings by the now-overthrown dictator Saddam, is classified as a terrorist by the U.S. government. While the two officers argue over the father’s alleged terrorist history, the girl dies in U.S. custody. A complex story arises involving characters in tension with each other and themselves: Nahla, who can use her Canadian passport to free Omar, but only if he stops threatening to avenge Ghazal’s death; Omar, whose family’s survival is threatened by his activities but who feels bound to serve his troubled country; Captain Alston, who must reconcile his duties as a patriot with his conscience; Commander Frank, who harbours a secret past and can’t take any chances; and the clergyman who turns a personal tragedy into a public fatwa by calling upon Muslims to kill Edward for ‘preventing a mother from seeing her child.’ Truth and Treason invites us to discover the real truth behind the war on terror…

Amidst the political statement(s) against the war, about the lies that led to the war in Iraq and the tragedies that have ensued as a consequence are some interesting legal issues that emerge from the play. In connection with the theme of resistance and the law that I have written about on this blawg, one of the legal themes that arises is the conflict that develops between Captain Alston and Commander Frank over the mistreatment and killings of Iraqi civilians by US soldiers - murders that are covered up in order to avoid bringing the military presence into disrepute or to impose liability on those who perpetrated the acts. Alston's efforts to uncover and reveal the extent of the killings and their cover up leads to his disobedience of Frank's orders to remain silent about what is transpiring. Like many resisters, Alston is confronted with the stark choice of being perceived as a patriot or a traitor for his critique of the military's treatment in Iraq.

Confronting unlawful actions advocated by and sustained by military superiors is very real and challenging, whether it is an American soldier in Iraq (or in an earlier period in Vietnam) or other military personnel in various conflicts. As many studies point out, there is a tendency towards obedience, even when such obedience leads to the commission of crimes or their facilitation. Many such individuals face a court-martial, prison and limited career prospects after their incarceration for their disobedience. Some flee and seek asylum in other states only to be denied. Truth and Treason provides a sense of the intense internal struggle one undergoes in challenging their own state and superior officers, particularly when doing otherwise might not only mean a contravention of law, but a violation of one's own moral code.

Cultures of (il)Legality

This December will mark the 20th anniversary of the Ecole Polytechnique massacres that took place at the University of Montreal and resulted in the murder of fourteen women and injuries to fourteen women and men at the hands of a disturbed misogynist, Marc Lepine. A film was recently produced, simply called "Polytechnique" that recounts some of the narratives about and surrounding that day. One of the thematic narratives at play in the film is a culture of illegality out of which Lepine emerged.

The obvious epicenter of the illegality featured in the film is the actual murders and injuries inflicted - fueled by an unyielding hatred against women who Lepine deemed to be feminists unworthy to be studying engineering. Yet what the film seems to suggest is that the misogyny that prompted the killer's rampage was but an extreme manifestation of the discrimination experienced by women, particularly in a field of study and profession that looked negatively upon their presence (as has been the case in most traditionally male-dominated white and blue collar professions).

This was strikingly illustrated in one particular scene. Valerie, one of the central characters in the film (who was later shot by Lepine) attends an interview for a very lucrative internship position with an aeronautics firm. During the interview, her male interviewer overtly communicates his skepticism and surprise that Valerie, as a woman, is interested in pursuing her studies and a career in mechanical engineering, rather than a seemingly less demanding career as a civil engineer where she could more easily pursue a family life. The underlying assumption being that all or most women are driven by some primordial maternal instinct to have a family and raise children. Ultimately, we learn that Valerie is offered the internship position but only after affirming that she does not plan to have children, thus making her more acceptable. The hiring or refusal to hire someone on account of their potential decision to one day have children is patently illegal under today's legal norms (see for example - the Ontario Human Rights Code s.10(2)).

This scene, coupled with the more gruesome shooting sequences illustrates a larger culture of illegal discrimination that once existed (and arguably still exists on some level). While Lepine's shooting spree targetting women was exceptional (in the manner it was carried out), violence against women still substantially continues today in private spheres (as it did then). Furthermore, notwithstanding the legal system's formal intolerance of the type of treatment Valerie experienced during her interview, the attitudes that fostered that treatment still exist (in a variety of employment contexts) and become manifested in more subtle ways during interviews (and in other instances - not so subtly). More often than not, many interviewees will not pursue any action and thus such norms of discrimination and unlawful business actions can continue with impunity.

Interestingly, the interview scene also introduces (at least with respect to the time period of the late 1980s) the idea of an informal caste system where civil engineers appear to occupy a lower status in the engineering hierarchy, a caste which women are expected to occupy because of some presumed desire to have children. Further above is mechanical engineering, which appears to be less amenable and open to women and dominated by men. In order for Valerie to be accepted into this male-dominated caste, she must accept the (arbitrary and discriminatory) norms imposed, as enforced by the male interviewer/gatekeeper. The most blatant norm seems to be that in order to accepted, Valerie must diminish if not eliminate one of the markers that distinguishes her as a woman from her male counterparts, her ability to bear children.

Ultimately, the film attempts to demonstrate that such killings don't transpire in a vacuum. What existed was a(n) (il)legal culture of discrimination that tolerated a certain degree of discrimination against women that Lepine took to an extreme.