Page 46 - Courting the Media Contemporary Perspectives on Media and Law

The Man in the Gallery with the Writing on His Face 37

audience and the subsequent representation of that performance at the Diana
Inquest is an example of an intriguing interweaving between public concern
and the affairs of state. Indeed, the question of whether or not the social
performance of the public audience in the courtroom provides a participatory
form of resistance to authority, or merely a rather pathetic misreading of the
true nature of social relations is central to media reportage and discussion of
the Diana Inquest.

THE COURTROOM AS A
PERFORMANCE ENVIRONMENT

In print, electronic and online coverage of the Inquest, its meanings were
seen to reside not only in legal judgements on evidence delivered but also in
the ‗live‘ social performance of the courtroom. A performance analysis of the
proceedings might focus on those elements of ‗offstage‘ activity in this space
which Pavis suggests. The Inquest was held in what appeared to be a
converted office space. The Coroner sat on a raised dais with court officials
before him and a Royal crest behind. To his right a further dais held the jury,
to his left was the witness stand. In the well of the court sat counsel. To their
right were seats reserved for family and friends of the interested parties. At the
rear of the court, in raised tiers, were rows of plastic seats, on one side
reserved for press, on the other for the public. Video screens relayed medium
close shots of courtroom participants, or replayed video materials or evidence
relays from Paris. Alongside these screens others carried the LiveNote
transcription of proceedings, producing an instant written record of verbal
exchanges. These materials were also carried on the screens in the Annexe, so
that fixed viewpoints of counsel and of witnesses (but not of Jury, or, at least
directly, of public or family) were available to the Annexe audience.
Significant elements to be considered in an analysis of the performative
elements of this setting and of the proceedings played out in it would be; the
proximity of parties in this live encounter; the reading and negotiation of
relationships of status and social function in this setting which are created by
the relative lack of architectural ‗authority‘ in the dividing of the separated
spaces for the various groups in the courtroom; the interaction between the
formal and the informal in this environment and the associated and perhaps
inadvertent foregrounding in the courtroom of its position as a site for the
negotiation of a web of contrasting and contradictory narratives. In this