Audience studies

[rivkat]

So, I've got a colleague writing about images of lawyers in popular culture, only she wants to get beyond "images of" and into how various groups perceive lawyers in TV shows/movies. Is anyone aware of any work on this? Reception studies involving Ally McBeal or LA Law? Even if there's only a mention of reaction to a legal storyline in a larger study of a non-legal show or movie, that would be a huge addition to the project -- because right now she's got theory and no practice. No pun intended.

Also, if anyone knew of a good place to go for a recent reception studies bibliography, that would be great.

Comments

[ladyagnew.livejournal.com]

I don't know how much this will help but I've been reading Fielding's Joseph Andrews (so, not pop culture) for a class and there are some choice passages, my favorite is this, an authorial editorial:

I describe not Men, but Manners; not an Individual, but a Species. Perhaps it will be answered, Are not the Characters then taken from Life? To which I answer in the Affirmative; nay, I believe I might aver, that I have writ little more than I have seen. The Lawyer is not only alive, but hath been so these 5000 Years, and I hope G— will indulge his Life as many yet to come. He hath not indeed confined himself to one Profession, one Religion, or one Country; but when the first mean selfish Creature appeared on the human Stage, who made Self the Centre of the whole Creation; would give himself no Pain, incur no Danger, advance no Money to assist, or preserve his Fellow-Creatures; then was our Lawyer born; and whilst such a Person as I have described, exists on Earth, so long shall he remain upon it. It is therefore doing him little Honour, to imagine he endeavours to mimick some little obscure Fellow, because he happens to resemble him in one particular Feature, or perhaps in his Profession; whereas his Appearance in the World is calculated for much more general and noble Purposes, than to expose one pitiful Wretch, to the small Circle of his Acquaintance; but to hold the Glass to thousands in their Closets, that they may contemplate their Deformity, and endeavour to reduce it, and thus by suffering private Mortification may avoid public Shame. This places the Boundary between, and distinguishes the Satirist from the Libeller; for the former privately corrects the Fault for the Benefit of the Person, like a Parent; the latter publickly exposes the Person himself, as an Example to others, like an Executioner.