Love Is in the Hair by Syrus Ware

Love Is in the Hair by Syrus Ware

This book engages with the place of law and legality within Australia's distinctive contribution to global televisual culture.

Australian popular culture has created a lasting legacy - for good or bad - of representations of law, lawyers and justice 'down-under.' Within films and television of striking landscapes-peopled with heroes, antiheroes, survivors and jokers, there is a fixation on law, conflicts between legal orders, of brutal violence and survival. Deeply compromised by the ongoing violence against the lives and laws of First Nation Australians, Australian film and television has sharply illuminated what it means to live with a 'rule of law' that rules with a legacy, and a reality, of deep injustice. This book is the first to bring together scholars to reflect on, and critically engage with, the representations and global implications of law, lawyers and justice captured through the lenses of Australian film, television and social media.

Exploring how distinctively Australian lenses captures uniquely Australian images and narratives, the book nevertheless engages these in order to provide broader insights into the contemporary translations and transmogrifications of law and justice.

Syrus Marcus Ware is a Canadian artist, activist and scholar. He is currently a CLA Assistant Professor in the School of the Arts at McMaster University. He has worked since 2014 as faculty and as a designer for The Banff Centre. Ware is a founding member of Black Lives Matter Toronto. For 13 years, he was the coordinator of the Art Gallery of Ontario's youth program. During that time Ware oversaw the creation of the Free After Three program and the expansion of the youth program into a multi pronged offering. He has published four books and in 2020 co-edited (with Rodney Diverlus and Sandy Hudson) Until We Are Free: Reflections on Black Lives Matter in Canada, a collection of reflections on the Black Lives Matter movement in Canada.