Alternative Law Journal

Law & Culture - 2013 - Vol 38(4)

Law and Culture In our Law & Culture column, you will find original works of fiction, reviews of a wide range of publications — not just conventional legal texts — as well as broader cultural forms such as films, TV shows, CDs, DVDs, art exhibitions and so on. The column links in with the Alternative Law Journal’s focus on law for the disadvantaged, human rights law and law reform.

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West Of Memphis

Bill Swannie

West-of-Memphis Directed by Amy Berg; starring: Jessie Misskelley, Damien Echols and Jason Baldwin; Universal Sony, 2012, 147 mins, DVD $19.99

Nothing causes public hysteria and outrage like the murder of a young child. When three 8-year-old boys mysteriously disappear from the small town of West Memphis in 1993, and their naked bodies are later found in an irrigation ditch, the town’s residents demand quick and severe punishment for those responsible. Further details emerge during the rushed investigation, such as marks on the boy’s bodies (including their genitals) which look like knife wounds. Rumours circulate in the town that the deaths were part of a satanic ritual involving the drinking of human blood.

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(2013) 38(4) AltLJ 285

Category: Law & Culture - 2013 - Vol 38(4)

Griffith REVIEW 40: Women & Power

Rachael Field

womenpower Edited by Julianne Schultz; April 2013; paperback; $27.95

Griffith Review is increasingly known as an Australian literary journal that punches above its weight. Under the editorial guidance of founding editor Julianne Schultz, the Review offers an engaging mix of essays, memoir, reportage, short fiction and poetry on contemporary issues of concern and interest. Phillip Adams has said that the Review is ‘pretty much setting the agenda’, and The Weekend Australian claims it to be ‘essential reading’.

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(2013) 38(4) AltLJ 284

Category: Law & Culture - 2013 - Vol 38(4)

A Second Chance For Justice: The Prosecutions Of Gabe Watson For The Death Of Tina Thomas

Daniel Reynolds

SecondChanceforJustice Asher Flynn and Kate Fitz-Gibbon; Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2013; 270 pages; £44.99 (hardback)

A full decade since the tragic death of Tina Thomas during a diving expedition in Townsville, Queensland on 22 October 2003, there remain two competing versions of what occurred that day. It is common ground that Tina had married Gabe Watson a week earlier in Alabama, flown to Australia with him to celebrate their honeymoon, and that the two had signed up for a night-time dive to explore the wreck of the SS Yongala. This is where accounts begin to differ, with Gabe maintaining that Tina’s drowning was a freak accident which he simply failed to prevent. Prosecutors, on the other hand, alleged murder.

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(2013) 38(4) AltLJ 283

Category: Law & Culture - 2013 - Vol 38(4)

Side Effects

Stephen Tang and Mabel Tsui

side-effects-cover Director: Steven Soderbergh; starring: Jude Law, Rooney Mara, Channing Tatum and Catherine Zeta-Jones; Roadshow, 2013, 106 mins, available on DVD, $39.99

Side Effects, it initially seems, is a movie about the immorality of the pharmaceutical industry and those complicit in its excesses and evils.

Emily (Rooney Mara) has enjoyed the good life her investment banker husband Martin (Channing Tatum) was able to provide for her until he was arrested and sentenced to jail for insider trading. The film starts with his release and the young couple are looking forward to a new start in life. Then Emily deliberately crashes her car into a brick wall. Taken to hospital, she is assessed by psychiatrist Dr Jon Banks (Jude Law) who suspects Emily attempted suicide. He is persuaded not to treat her as an inpatient and instead prescribes an unnamed SSRI (Selective Serotonin Re-uptake Inhibitor) to help with her depression. Martin, asking what the medication does, is told that ‘it helps stop the brain from telling you you’re sad’. This commonly-used explanation is much nicer than the reality: that we don’t really know how SSRIs work for depression, or whether they’re effective at all.

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(2013) 38(4) AltLJ 282

Category: Law & Culture - 2013 - Vol 38(4)