Cinematic perspectives on international law

Sufyan Droubi, Olivier Corten, Francois Dubuisson, Martyna Falkowska-Clarys

• Publisher: Manchester University Press
• Year: 2021
• ISBN:
  9781526149909
• Topic: Diritto
• Subtopic: Diritto internazionale

The proposed volume consists of an edited collection within the new Melland Schill Guidebooks on International Law (MSGIL) series. In line with the MSGIL objective of inclusiveness, originality, perspectivism and critical thought, the book is the first of an intended series pertaining to perspectives related to the ways in which the arts influence the perception and attitude of the public towards international law, and the manner this affects the discipline, both in terms of its own development and in terms of its social legitimacy.The book contrasts the narratives of international law depicted in cinema and TV productions with the corresponding narratives advanced by legal scholars. It identifies a cognitive dissonance between them and ascertains its implications on general perceptions of international law.

1

International law on the screen: determining the methodology

Olivier Corten and François Dubuisson

In The Bridge on the River Kwai (David Lean, UK, 1957), whose action takes place during the Second World War, British soldiers are captured by the Japanese army, the occupying power of Burma at the time. Colonel Saito plans to construct a bridge that would be decisive for the army’s communications. He wants all the detained prisoners, soldiers and officers alike, to participate in the construction of the bridge. In a scene taking place in the middle of the prisoners’ camp, in full view, the head of the contingent of British prisoners, Lieutenant Colonel Nicholson, invokes article 27 of the 1929 Geneva Convention relating to the protection of prisoners of war, according to which ‘[b]‌elligerents may employ as workmen prisoners of war who are physically fit, other than officers’.¹ This is the dialogue that follows:

Colonel Saito: Give me the book.

Lt Col. Nicholson: By all means. You read English I take it.

Colonel Saito: Do you read Japanese?

Lt Col. Nicholson: I’m sorry, no. But if it is a matter of precise translation, I’m sure that can be arranged. You see the code specifically states that the …

Colonel Saito then violently slaps the Lieutenant Colonel in the face with the text of the convention, wounding him slightly on the lips: ‘You speak to me of code? What code? The cowards’ code!’ He throws the text of the convention on the ground. ‘What do you know of the soldier’s code? Of bushido? Nothing! You are unworthy of command.’ Lieutenant Colonel Nicholson steps over and, in a dignified way, picks up the text of the convention, before the eyes of his soldiers standing at attention, apparently stoic. He cleans the text from the dust, folds it almost ceremoniously, and says in a calm but firm voice: ‘Since you refuse to abide by the laws of the civilised world, we must consider ourselves absolved from our duty to obey you. My officers will not do manual labour.’ ‘We shall see’ replies Colonel Saito.

The renowned international humanitarian law specialist Eric David explains that this scene, which he saw when he was an adolescent, remained engraved in his memory, particularly as an expression of the Japanese official’s contempt for the law.² This anecdote has inspired a section dedicated to ‘International Law and Cinema’ on the website of the International Law Centre of the Free University of Brussels (Université libre de Bruxelles, ULB).³ The section was created in January 2013 and contains numerous commentaries of films or TV series, alongside the scene from The Bridge on the River Kwai presented above. Given the interest, not to say the enthusiasm, for this initiative, the ULB International Law Centre took up this theme for the conference celebrating the Centre’s fiftieth anniversary in 2014, and published a book containing the contributions presented at the conference: Du droit international au cinéma.⁴ The timeliness of the project is further illustrated by the fact that, in the 10th Anniversary Conference of the European Society of International Law, held in September 2014 in Vienna, an Agora was dedicated to ‘International Law and Film: The Power of Pictures’.⁵ In 2015, the International Law Centre launched a more global online publishing project, covering various aspects of the relationship between pop culture and international law: in addition to cinema, analyses focus on music, literature, comics, theatre, video games and the visual arts.⁶

In the years that followed, several studies on the representation of international law in film were published, but they remained relatively rare and isolated (see below). This book is thus conceived as a first, more global and coherent approach to the analysis of the issue of the representation of international law in film, in English. The innovative nature of this research project requires, as a first step, the definition and formulation of a methodological framework. This is the object of this introductory chapter. The methodological indications set out here have guided the contributors to this book in the analysis of their respective subjects, but they are also intended to contribute to the conduct of other future research in this area.

International law and cinema: a subject still little explored

For social sciences, cinema has been a subject of research for some time now. However, it must be noted that the place of international law in film productions has not yet been much studied. Existing analyses mainly focus either on the application of domestic law in a national context or on international relations from a political science perspective.

First, some legal experts have reflected on the relationship between law and cinema, mostly in the context of domestic law.⁷ Indeed, a number of studies seek to analyse specific scenes or entire movies by confronting them to existent positive law, in what could be termed a ‘legal critic’ analysis. An example in this respect is the book Reel Justice: The Courtroom Goes to the Movies. In this book, the contributors comment critically on a large number of films, by comparing the cinematographic representation included therein to existent law and jurisprudence.⁸ Sometimes, as illustrated by Bruno Dayez’s Justice et cinéma, such comments are accompanied by information concerning the context relating to a film’s theatrical release or by an evaluation of the technical or aesthetic qualities of a film.⁹ Aside from books adopting this cross-sectional approach, others focus on one specific issue. This is for example the case of Framed: Women in Law and Films.¹⁰ In this context, the relationship between law and cinema can be considered as being part of a school of thought like the Cultural Studies,¹¹ which largely departs from positive law in order to study the representations of law in cultural phenomena: literature, comics, music, cinema and TV series, and video-games, to cite but a few.¹² These developments around the subject of ‘law and cinema’ can be explained by various factors, amongst which the existence of a rich cinematographic production of legal films seems to be one of the most important. Indeed, such films, particularly courtroom movies, have become a film genre of their own. On a methodological plane, another factor is the success of schools of legal thought such as the Critical Legal Studies, whose aim is to study the general discourse and reveal those representations which are inclined to foster the reproduction of conformist intellectual frameworks, as well as, in certain cases, power relations.¹³

Moreover, a large number of scholars have associated cinema with international relations.¹⁴ Several studies have focused on the relationship between Hollywood and the Pentagon, particularly between cinema and US foreign relations.¹⁵ However, in those studies, international law is only marginally invoked, if at all.¹⁶ This can be explained, at least partly, by the fact that international law occupies a relatively limited place in films in general, especially compared to domestic law. As the contributions to this book illustrate, scenes such as the one described at the beginning of this chapter are fairly rare. While in courtroom movies, the legal argumentation is extensively reproduced as such (which viewer does not remember one or the other memorable pleading by a lawyer, dramatized by a score aimed at highlighting its importance?), this is highly exceptional when it comes to international law. A priori, this is undoubtedly understandable. For the ordinary audience, the international legal order is too abstract compared to domestic law, with which the viewer is confronted every day and which he/she perceives as directly applicable and binding.¹⁷ In any case, while any quantitative evaluation remains a relative one, films scarcely feature international law, and when they do, they limit themselves to specific sets of rules such as international humanitarian law, human rights or diplomatic law.¹⁸ Therefore, it is not surprising that those analysing cinematographic productions invoke rarely, if ever, international law, even when their theoretical approach would justify such an invocation. Indeed, there is a tendency to associate cinema with ideology,¹⁹ and, in this context, to favour the analysis of representations, in parallel to the Cultural Legal Studies mentioned above. This applies even to specialists of international law who, when engaged in the study of films, abstain from developing a specific legal analysis. This can be evidenced by the work of Serge Sur, a specialist of both international law and international relations, who has published extensively on the analysis of cinematographic productions. His book Plaisirs du cinéma. Le monde et ses miroirs, published in 2010, offers a highly specialised study on classical and recent films, without focusing on international law as such.²⁰

Before concluding this general panoramic state of the art, we should mention two studies authored by members of the ULB International Law Centre that have inspired this book more or less directly. The first is Barbara Delcourt’s article ‘A propos du film Bosna. Analyse d’un discours idéal-type sur le conflit yougoslave’, published in 1997, that deconstructs the discourse developed by its director Bernard-Henri Lévy on the conflict in the former Yugoslavia. The author reveals that Lévy’s discourse is fraught with a number of representations obviously intended to foster support for the Bosnian government at the time in the context of the war.²¹ Although the author grounds her analysis mainly in theoretical tools relating to political science and international relations, the article does have a legal dimension, which, while incidental, is not devoid of interest. Indeed, Barbara Delcourt argues that the conception of human rights emerging from the film is associated with a largely apolitical theory, that is characterised by justice or moral being conceived as ‘natural’, and, therefore, essentialist or absolutist in nature.²² In other words, the promoted legal discourse is closely linked to jus naturalism, more specifically to a pre-modern understanding of the term, in that it distances itself from modern conceptions of reason. The second study on which this book draws is the article ‘Cinéma et idéologie: représentation et fonction du terrorisme dans le film d’action hollywoodien’, authored by François Dubuisson in 2004.²³ In this study, the author analyses how films depict terrorists as the incarnation of the ‘opposite’ of the United States and, consequently, how, through this projected image, films justify US hegemony in international relations.²⁴ Again, the article does not analyse international law as such. Nevertheless, the study has undeniably inspired the Centre’s project, mainly with respect to the method used. A particular mention should be made here of the high number of productions analysed. Moreover, it was decided to include mainstream productions which are generally considered as having little or no artistic cinematographic value, but which prove to be highly relevant as illustrations of a certain ideology. This is all the more so given that, in many cases, the impact of such productions goes beyond the small circle of cinephiles and reaches a wide audience.

Very recently, after the publication of the proceedings of the conference held by the International Law Centre,²⁵ several studies have been published, which specifically analyse the place of international law in films, mainly in the field of international criminal justice.²⁶

In the end, we find ourselves before a state of the art both rich, in the sense that it encompasses a great number of studies, and rather poor, in that international law as such comes up in these studies very rarely, or is subject to specifi...