Code, Nintendo’s Super Mario and Digital Legality

2017

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This article is about time. It is about time, or more precisely, about the absence of time in law's digital future. It is also about time-travelling and the seemingly ever-popular BBC science fiction television series Doctor Who. Further, it is about law's timefullness; about law's pictorial past and the 'visual baroque' of its chronological fused future. Ultimately, it is about a time paradox of seeing time run to a time when time runs 'No More!' This 'timey-wimey' article is in three parts. The first part looks to a hazy remembered past of the legal emblem tradition as presented in Peter Goodrich's Legal Emblems and the Art of Law to learn visual litercy and also glimps the essential elements of modern legality with authority, decision and violence. The second part maps how these images and icons of modern legality are manifest in the Doctor Who fiftieth year anniversary special 'The Day of the Doctor.' The third stage looks beyond these first order meanings to understand the 2 chronological chaos of 'The Day of the Doctor.' The technicity of the image as a portal through time and space that the narrative revolves around charts the implications for the digital end of time for law.

Section: The Temporal Technicity Of the Imagementioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Law, the Digital and Time: The Legal Emblems of Doctor Who

2017

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“…Instead, the legality disclosed by bumper stickers is of the 'popular jurisprudence' variety, a recognition that in a culture drenched in legal thinking reflection on the essential nature of law is not quarantined within the specialists discourses of jurisprudence and legal theory, but rather pervades and oozes through the narratives and nuances of that culture [58: 1-10]. Within law and humanities such an approach has rendered novels [57], films [80,111], television [101], comic books [38], music [91] and computer games [79] as reflections, indeed, critiques of law [83: 495]. In moving the object of analysis from the produced narrational text (novel, film, television, etc.)…”

Section: Bumper Stickers On the Gold Coast Australia 2014mentioning

confidence: 99%

F#ck Your Family!: The Visual Jurisprudence of Automobility

Doyle

2016

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This paper considers the popular visual jurisprudence of bumper stickers. Drawing upon a sample sticker/driver/vehicle assemblages observed at the Gold Coast, Australia in 2014, we argue that the meanings and messages projected by the assemblages have a significant legal dimension. The argument is located at the intersection of past research into bumper stickers, increased scholarly interest in the relation of law to automobility and especially recent considerations of the popular visual jurisprudence of the motor vehicle, its cultures and semiotics. In particular we argue that the sticker/driver/vehicle assemblage represents an engagement with law and legality. We suggest this goes beyond immediate denotations of brands with intellectual property or flags and the sovereign nation state to more essential engagement with consumer capitalisms law of the image, the friend/enemy distinction, the ouroboros of rights and the essential legality of living in a polis.

“…Michael Barnett and Cassandra Sharp explore law, morality and choice through a close reading of the narrative choices [10] within the 2009 PlayStation 3 open world platforming action adventure inFAMOUS [95]. Ashley Pearson and Kieran Tranter highlight the importance of the video game medium as a way to approach digital legality through an analysis of the Nintendo's definitional platformer Super Mario franchise [73]. Robbie Sykes, in this issue, examines the 1997 PlayStation RPG Final Fantasy VII [94] to critique earth jurisprudence [92] and Ashley Pearson has recently identified in the cult 2008 PlayStation 2 RPG Persona 4 [4] the psychology and psychosis of the legal persona [72].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Seeing, Moving, Catching, Accumulating: Pokémon GO, and the Legal Subject

Shum¹,

2017

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This paper argues that the augmented reality gaming application for smart devices, Pokémon GO shows the fate of the legal subject as a neoliberal monster subjugated to the limitations imposed by hypercapitalism. The game, derived from Nintendo's iconic Pokémon franchise, reveals the legal subject as a frenzied, diminished and impulsive being, allowed to see, move, catch and accumulate but unable to participate in more meaningful self-narration. It is not that the game is lawless, notwithstanding, anxieties in the semiosphere about users trespassing or engaging in criminal behaviour. Rather the game is over structured and highly limited, both within its game-play which is repetitive and impulsive, and in its absence of narrative. Unlike the classic Nintendo Pokémon games which are within the role-playing game genre, Pokémon GO abstracts the seeing, moving, catching and accumulating features of the classic games without the overarching narrative, questing and competition. In this Pokémon GO manifests the transformation of the liberal legal subject of capitalism to the neoliberal subject of a digital orientated hypercapitalism where seeing, moving, catching and accumulating is immediate and impulsive, obliterating the 'prudent' subject participating in their own self-narration.