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Justice in the Plays and Films of Martin McDonagh 1st ed. 2019


Justice in the Plays and Films of Martin McDonagh 1st ed. 2019

Hardback by Jordan, Eamonn

Justice in the Plays and Films of Martin McDonagh

£49.99

ISBN:
9783030304522
Publication Date:
20 Nov 2019
Edition/language:
1st ed. 2019 / English
Publisher:
Springer Nature Switzerland AG
Pages:
145 pages
Format:
Hardback
For delivery:
Estimated despatch 27 May - 1 Jun 2024
Justice in the Plays and Films of Martin McDonagh

Description

This book interrogates the various manifestations of rival systems of justice in the plays and films of Martin McDonagh, in analysis informed by the critical writings of Michael J. Sandel, Steven Pinker, Julia Kristeva, and in particular Amartya Sen on violence, justice, equality and the law. In McDonagh's works, failures to investigate adequately criminal actions are matched by multiple forced confessions and umpteen miscarriages of justice. The author explores McDonagh's creative worlds as ones where distinctions between victim and perpetrator and guilt and innocence are precarious, where the burden of truth seldom reaches the threshold of beyond reasonable doubt and where the punishments and rewards of justice are applied randomly. This project considers the abject nature of justice in McDonagh's writing, with the vast implications of justice being fragile, suspect, piecemeal, deviant, haphazard and random. Tentative forms of justice are tempered and then threatened by provocative, anarchic and abject humour. As the author argues, McDonagh's writing cleverly circulates rival, incompatible and comparative systems of justice in order to substantiate the necessities and virtues of justice.

Contents

Introduction: Beware of Justice.- 1. CSI Connemara and State Incompetence: The Beauty Queen of Leenane, A Skull in Connemara (1997) and The Lonesome West.- 2. Unreasonable Doubt: Hangmen.- 3. To the Letter of the Law:The Pillowman.- 4. To the Victim the Spoils of Justice: Six Shooter, A Behanding in Spokane and The Lieutenant of Inishmore.- 5. Revengers' Charter: In Bruges, Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri and Seven Psychopaths.- 6. Conclusion: Abject Justice/Abject Laughter.

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