Earticle

Social Media, and especially video platforms, are media made by their users. They offer a digital play of material, reconfigurations and refashions by the practice of remediation (cf. Bolter/Grusin: 2002). Remediation is the encounter between media, a intermediate recycling of previous media forms.1) Users connect with each other easily and so communities of interests develop, e.g. in the case of video plattforms, around the audiovisual content. Video clips build rows of similarities and certain affiliations and offer experiences by exploring, commenting, liking or sharing them. Parodic remediations are one famous form of audiovisual participation online and this practice is illustrated here with the German controversy about Thilo Sarrazin as test case for heuristic micro analysis. Firstly I provide a concept of digital spaces of media lived experiences, with which I ask how video platforms could constitute lived experience spaces and reflect about the modern digital mundane life worlds. Secondly I provide a short introduction to the German controversy about Thilo Sarrazin. Subsequently I illustrate the cultural practice of remediation along the three characteristics of social media digitalness, networkedness and participation. Parody is besides other styles and genres one famous form of remediation in social media, therefore I provide finally with parodic practices a glimpse into social media users’ treatment of the Thilo Sarrazin Controversy.

Based on the assumption that Shakespeare is versed in the legal codes in his time, this paper intends to locate all the legal inaccuracies in The Merchant of Venice, a play known for its legal theme, and argues that these aberrations are consciously committed. Shakespeare deliberately creates a court scene that flouts important legal principles so as to reflect inequalities in the power relationships between various subcultures; law, the supposed embodiment of justice, is subtly tilted in favor of the more privileged groups and the more established discourses.

As in the film Samaritan Girl, Pieta illustrates women as the agent of salvation. Kim Ki-duk does not believe that humans can be saved by a religion. In the film, Gang-do ends up in a buddhist temple wandering around to find his mom, and encounters a monk on a wheelchair. However, the 'crippled Buddhism' fails to see the world beyond its stone wall. Was the director then aiming for a Christian salvation as many critics have mentioned? He certainly was not. Capitalism has made Gang-do a cold-hearted devil who is severely deprived of love since he has never been loved. He starts to recover a human side after he experiences a maternal love. Gang-do is a person who wishes he could go back to his mother's womb. He attempts to go inside his mother's womb to confirm if she is his real mother. After the mother kills herself, Gang-do digs her grave and lies down crouching like a fetus next to her and her real son. His desire to go back to the womb is an expression of his desire to be born again. This is in line with what Jacques Lacan said about how all human desire comes down to the desire to be saved by going back to the mother's womb. Another character in the film that reconfirms the message that salvation can only come from women is the truck-driving lady. She is willing to sell her body, in other words, her womb, to stop the loan sharks from crippling her husband. She does not abandon her husband even after he is crippled and takes to the road driving her truck to feed her family. It is an illustration of a woman as an agent of salvation. That is why Gang-do crawls under the lady's truck after losing his mother; He wants to cleanse his sin by doing so. However, such attempt fails. The failure was hinted in an earlier scene in which Gang-do tries to rape his mother in an attempt to go back to her womb but fails. Most sinners in Kim Ki-duk films seek for atonement in the poorest, most brutal way. However, atonement itself cannot bring self-salvation. Gang-do ties himself to the bottom of the truck of the lady whose life he mercilessly ruined, so he can pay for his sin and earn salvation. This may be his attempt to offer the lady an opportunity of revenge and to cleanse his sin. Through such act of atonement, he wishes to be saved and born again. However, the truck continues on its journey only leaving a trail of blood. Salvation is a gift that only those who are forgiven can enjoy. One can only be saved by god if he is forgiven by the victim of his wrongdoing. Gang-do can not be forgiven by the lady by tying himself under the truck. Nor is that the salvation by god. Imagine how the lady would feel when she gets off the truck and finds out the bloody death of Gang-do. She would be horrified once again by the cruel choice of Gang-do to pay for his sin. The director chose such dreadful ending to highlight the message that capitalism ultimately is a merciless ride leaving a trail of blood, and that humans cannot be saved by any act.

Classical legality tried all its might to keep law safe from politics; adjudication was either cast in declaratory terms or seen as strict application of rules; the judge was depicted as a featureless shadow of the law. General acknowledgment of the “open texture” in the first half of the twentieth century threw light on the dark box of judicial decision-making; the rise of legal realism initiated an unprecedented open discussion over the long obscured fact that judges, besides determining facts and interpreting laws, do make public policy choices. In the mid 20th century, political jurisprudence, including behavioralism and neo-institutionalism, offered a unique and revolutionary perspective by presenting judicial decision-making not as an autonomous organism but an integral part of the larger political process. Behavioralism saw judicial decision-making as a conscious and deliberate policy choice judges make in accordance with their partisan allegiance. New insitutionalism, however, criticized the exclusion of law and institutions in the behavioralist analysis and conceptualized the judicial decision-making process as a dynamic interplay of the legal doctrines, the judge and the institutions. Through a critical investigation into the academic terrain of judicial decision- making, its unfolding development and internal contentions, this thesis aims to explore the role of the American judge within the judicial decision-making scenario. The main body of this thesis consists of three chapters. Chapter One critically reviews the traditional jurisprudence, including the classical common law jurisprudence and the legal positivism that characterized the judge as either the detached interpreter or solely devoted to the scientific application of law. The rest of this chapter is devoted to a critical examination of American legal realism’s deconstruction of the mechanical, faceless, rule-bound figure of a judge. Against this historical backdrop, Chapter Two looks into the mid 20th century inroads made by political jurisprudence and the attitudinal model that swept through the academic terrain of judicial decision-making. This position, later known as the attitudinal model, was to be vehemently criticized by neo-institutionalist scholars as simplistic in its understanding of human behavior, reductionist in its erasure of legal doctrines and institutional restraints, and utilitarian in its notion of human rationality and autonomy. Chapter Three tries to probe into the theoretical core of the three branches of new institutionalism and their internal debates, building upon the eclectic, path- dependent, and multi-dimensional historical institutional paradigm to explore the dynamic and mutually constitutive interplay of legal doctrines, the judge and the institutions.