{"id":20248,"date":"2013-05-27T14:09:30","date_gmt":"2013-05-27T19:09:30","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/?p=20248"},"modified":"2013-05-27T15:24:23","modified_gmt":"2013-05-27T20:24:23","slug":"tickling-adams-rib","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/2013\/05\/tickling-adams-rib\/","title":{"rendered":"Tickling \u201cAdam\u2019s Rib\u201d"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"imagesCAX2MCOU\"<\/a>I recently got around to watching the classic 1949 movie \u201cAdam\u2019s Rib,\u201d<\/a> featuring the charismatic duo Spencer Tracy and Katharine Hepburn.<\/p>\n

The movie is about a married couple\u2014Tracy and Hepburn\u2014who are also lawyers.\u00a0 Tracy\u2019s character, Adam Bonner, is an assistant district attorney.\u00a0 Hepburn\u2019s character, Amanda Bonner, is a Yale law grad and apparently in private practice.\u00a0 The two live what we might these days call a DINK (double income, no kids) lifestyle. They live in a fabulously decorated two-story apartment filled with expensive looking furniture and paintings, where their maid prepares them breakfast and serves it to them in their bedroom on a silver tray; they enjoy retreating to their country home in Connecticut (fully paid for in only six years, they tell their accountant); and when it comes time for dressing, they retreat to their his-and-hers closets where, particularly in Hepburn\u2019s case, there is an abundance of incredible clothes for all occasions. Adam and Amanda are obviously in love. It appears that for each of them, the other\u2019s accomplishments are a source of pride.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Until the day Adam is assigned to prosecute Doris Attinger.<\/p>\n

Doris Attinger followed her husband Warren one day to his lover\u2019s apartment.\u00a0 There, after consulting the instruction booklet for her newly purchased gun, she confronted her husband and his lover in an intimate embrace and randomly fired shots into the room. One of them hit her husband.<\/p>\n

The story makes the news and Adam and Amanda discuss it over their breakfast in bed, each with their own morning paper, and it\u2019s clear they disagree.\u00a0 It\u2019s obvious to Adam that Doris should be charged with (and guilty of) a crime.\u00a0 But Amanda has this \u201ccrazy\u201d idea that women should be equal before the law.\u00a0 That is, a man in Doris\u2019 situation would likely be acquitted, forgiven if you will, for such a response to catching his wife with another man; thus, so should Doris.<\/p>\n

When Adam arrives at work that morning, he finds that he has been assigned the Attinger case. When Amanda learns of this, she decides to represent Doris Attinger. And so begins State v. Attinger<\/i>, Adam v. Amanda, the rule of law v. the spirit of law.<\/p>\n

As my colleague David Papke notes in Genre, Gender, and Jurisprudence in <\/i>Adam\u2019s Rib (1949)<\/i>, Adam \u201cis the legal positivist par excellence<\/i>. He believes in rules and rights and expects law and legal proceedings to embody the things he holds most dear.\u201d Screening Justice\u2014The Cinema of Law: Significant Films of Law, Order and Social Justice 77 (Strickland et al., eds. 2006). Adam does not believe in trying to circumvent the law, which is what he believes Amanda is trying to do with her defense of Doris Attinger. He believes she is showing \u201ccontempt for the law,\u201d and \u201cinsult[ing] . . . the dignity of the court.\u201d As Papke notes, \u201cAmanda . . . is more equitable and contextual. Her law and legal system care for people in a supporting, tolerant way.\u201d Id.<\/i> While Papke correctly notes that the film genders the jurisprudences, we can acknowledge that, in actuality, our legal system contains both.<\/p>\n

How the trial plays out and who wins is almost secondary to how the trial affects Adam and Amanda at home.\u00a0 Amanda behaves almost like a man in the stereotyped sense that she seems to be able to separate work and home. After a day at trial, she returns to their spectacular apartment and expects her relationship with Adam to be the same as it had been. He would commend her on her good work in court and they would be loving and affectionate as always.\u00a0 She finds that this is not what happens.\u00a0 Adam cannot separate the Amanda at trial from the Amanda at home and feels he doesn\u2019t know\u2014or much like\u2014either of them.\u00a0 As he says during one of their quarrels, \u201cI don\u2019t want a competitor, I want a wife!\u201d<\/p>\n

For all the apparent seriousness of the themes in \u201cAdam\u2019s Rib,\u201d it is not a serious movie.\u00a0 Papke classifies it as a \u201cscrewball comedy,\u201d Id. <\/i>at 69-71. There are laugh-aloud moments through the film, including my favorite line from Adam and Amanda\u2019s neighbor, Kip. Kip, a singer-songwriter, has a none-too-subtle crush on Amanda. At one point, when Adam and Amanda are separated, Kip makes his move. His best line<\/a>: \u201cLawyers should never marry other lawyers. This is called in-breeding; from this comes idiot children . . . and other lawyers.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

The screwball comedy clearly has a place, particularly in that era.\u00a0 Such comedies \u201ccreated an America of perfect unity: all classes as one, the rural-urban divide breached, love and decency and neighborliness ascendant,\u201d says Andrew Bergman, a historian of Great Depression movies. (quoted in id.<\/i> at 71). Americans of the Depression and World War II eras needed such myths presented with such humor.\u00a0<\/p>\n

But I can\u2019t help but think of the possibilities in an \u201cAdam\u2019s Rib\u201d drama. For example, Amanda Bonner is a Yale law grad in an era when an incredibly tiny number of women were in law school. Assuming that in 1949 Amanda was roughly 40 years old that means she would have been a law student in the mid-1930s. How interesting it would be to know more about that part of her life. Why did she want to be a lawyer? Did she meet Adam then? If so, what did the more traditional Adam think of the woman who dared to enter the men\u2019s profession?<\/p>\n

Those women who did graduate law school often did not obtain law-related jobs after graduation. Yet, Amanda Bonner has her own practice. What kind of practice is it? How does she get her clients? We see she has a female secretary who takes her dictation. \u00a0And at one point in her office, she calls a young man to bring her the morning paper. But when he tries to speak, she instantly dismisses him. Who was he? A runner? A clerk? Does anyone else work for her?<\/p>\n

When she appears in court, she appears to be taken seriously by the male judge, something that did not always happen, especially in that era with its more set socially prescribed roles for men and women. And would an \u201cAdam\u2019s Rib\u201d drama have handled differently Doris Attinger\u2019s reported verbal and physical abuse?<\/p>\n

Perhaps it would have been impossible in 1949 to present or develop these themes in a dramatic way and have a movie that anyone would see.\u00a0 So, instead, we have an entertaining screwball comedy that still can ignite some discussion on those themes, even more than 60 years later.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I recently got around to watching the classic 1949 movie \u201cAdam\u2019s Rib,\u201d featuring the charismatic duo Spencer Tracy and Katharine Hepburn. The movie is about a married couple\u2014Tracy and Hepburn\u2014who are also lawyers.\u00a0 Tracy\u2019s character, Adam Bonner, is an assistant district attorney.\u00a0 Hepburn\u2019s character, Amanda Bonner, is a Yale law grad and apparently in private […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":28,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ocean_post_layout":"","ocean_both_sidebars_style":"","ocean_both_sidebars_content_width":0,"ocean_both_sidebars_sidebars_width":0,"ocean_sidebar":"","ocean_second_sidebar":"","ocean_disable_margins":"enable","ocean_add_body_class":"","ocean_shortcode_before_top_bar":"","ocean_shortcode_after_top_bar":"","ocean_shortcode_before_header":"","ocean_shortcode_after_header":"","ocean_has_shortcode":"","ocean_shortcode_after_title":"","ocean_shortcode_before_footer_widgets":"","ocean_shortcode_after_footer_widgets":"","ocean_shortcode_before_footer_bottom":"","ocean_shortcode_after_footer_bottom":"","ocean_display_top_bar":"default","ocean_display_header":"default","ocean_header_style":"","ocean_center_header_left_menu":"","ocean_custom_header_template":"","ocean_custom_logo":0,"ocean_custom_retina_logo":0,"ocean_custom_logo_max_width":0,"ocean_custom_logo_tablet_max_width":0,"ocean_custom_logo_mobile_max_width":0,"ocean_custom_logo_max_height":0,"ocean_custom_logo_tablet_max_height":0,"ocean_custom_logo_mobile_max_height":0,"ocean_header_custom_menu":"","ocean_menu_typo_font_family":"","ocean_menu_typo_font_subset":"","ocean_menu_typo_font_size":0,"ocean_menu_typo_font_size_tablet":0,"ocean_menu_typo_font_size_mobile":0,"ocean_menu_typo_font_size_unit":"px","ocean_menu_typo_font_weight":"","ocean_menu_typo_font_weight_tablet":"","ocean_menu_typo_font_weight_mobile":"","ocean_menu_typo_transform":"","ocean_menu_typo_transform_tablet":"","ocean_menu_typo_transform_mobile":"","ocean_menu_typo_line_height":0,"ocean_menu_typo_line_height_tablet":0,"ocean_menu_typo_line_height_mobile":0,"ocean_menu_typo_line_height_unit":"","ocean_menu_typo_spacing":0,"ocean_menu_typo_spacing_tablet":0,"ocean_menu_typo_spacing_mobile":0,"ocean_menu_typo_spacing_unit":"","ocean_menu_link_color":"","ocean_menu_link_color_hover":"","ocean_menu_link_color_active":"","ocean_menu_link_background":"","ocean_menu_link_hover_background":"","ocean_menu_link_active_background":"","ocean_menu_social_links_bg":"","ocean_menu_social_hover_links_bg":"","ocean_menu_social_links_color":"","ocean_menu_social_hover_links_color":"","ocean_disable_title":"default","ocean_disable_heading":"default","ocean_post_title":"","ocean_post_subheading":"","ocean_post_title_style":"","ocean_post_title_background_color":"","ocean_post_title_background":0,"ocean_post_title_bg_image_position":"","ocean_post_title_bg_image_attachment":"","ocean_post_title_bg_image_repeat":"","ocean_post_title_bg_image_size":"","ocean_post_title_height":0,"ocean_post_title_bg_overlay":0.5,"ocean_post_title_bg_overlay_color":"","ocean_disable_breadcrumbs":"default","ocean_breadcrumbs_color":"","ocean_breadcrumbs_separator_color":"","ocean_breadcrumbs_links_color":"","ocean_breadcrumbs_links_hover_color":"","ocean_display_footer_widgets":"default","ocean_display_footer_bottom":"default","ocean_custom_footer_template":"","ocean_post_oembed":"","ocean_post_self_hosted_media":"","ocean_post_video_embed":"","ocean_link_format":"","ocean_link_format_target":"self","ocean_quote_format":"","ocean_quote_format_link":"post","ocean_gallery_link_images":"on","ocean_gallery_id":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[86,37,122],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-20248","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-feminism","category-popular-culture-and-law","category-public","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20248","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/28"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=20248"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20248\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=20248"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=20248"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=20248"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}