THE SOCRATIC SCREENPLAY: LAW, ALLEGORY AND SCIENCE FICTION IN JOHN AND JOYCE CORRINGTON’S SCREENPLAYS FOR THE OMEGA MAN

• Date: 01 April 2004
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/S1059-4337(03)32003-4
• Pages: 79-120
• Published date: 01 April 2004
• Author: Lenora Ledwon

THE SOCRATIC SCREENPLAY: LAW,

ALLEGORY AND SCIENCE FICTION

IN JOHN AND JOYCE CORRINGTON’S

SCREENPLAYS FOR THE OMEGA MAN

AND BATTLE FOR THE PLANET OF

THE APES

Lenora Ledwon

ABSTRACT

The law-oriented short stories and novels of lawyer/English professor John

William Corrington are receiving increasing attention from legal scholars.

However, no one has analyzed the science fiction screenplays he co-wrote

with his wife, Joyce, from a legal perspective. This article analyzes two such

screenplays and concludes that they are “Socratic” texts whose narrative

structures and epistemological processeswork in much the same way that the

traditional participatory exchange works in law school.My analysis explores

the links between law, allegoryand science fiction as intersecting methods to

imagine the possibilities for the future.

I have a mythological mind. My first real sally into the world of rationality was law school,

which I found exceedingly easy because all that was required was mere rationality and any fool

can do that. John William Corrington (Parrill, 1994, p. 193).

Studies in Law, Politics, and Society

Studies in Law, Politics, and Society,Volume 32, 79–120

© 2004 Published by Elsevier Ltd.

ISSN: 1059-4337/doi:10.1016/S1059-4337(03)32003-4

79

80 LENORA LEDWON

Law, allegory and science fiction intersect at two critical points: (1) the problem

of representation; and (2) the systemic (and paradoxical) preference for controlled

meaning. Each enterprise relies on interpretive protocols which, at the most fun-

damental level, evoke a powerstruggle to impose meaning on the text/world. The

screenplays for The Omega Man and Battle for the Planet of the Apes, co-authored

by John William (“Bill”) and Joyce Corrington, employ these intersections to

create a juridical and numinous world animated by a Socratic spirit.

The Corringtons between them had an astounding breadth of knowledge, as

evidenced by their screenplays. In addition to their prolific careers as writers for

films and television, Joyce had been a Chemistry professor and Bill had been a

lawyer, English professor, and lawyer. Bill had his own wry comments on his

Hollywood writing career:

I never wanted to do it, I don’tpresently want to do it, and next year I will not want to do it. But

I can make more money on one crummy piece of TV than I can on five books. I did a lecture in

Shreveport last year, and I said: you must understand the spiritual confusion of a man who has

seen the best work he ever did go for peanuts, and the most banal crap his mind could conceive

of paid for at the rate of $200,000 to $300,000 a year. But maybe I’m mistaken. Eliot said that

Dante after all was an indifferent critic of Dante. It seems we’re talking about a non-culture

called America, but perhaps I’m part of that, and it’s the films and TV – not the writing that’s

worthwhile (Parrill, 1994, p. 192).

The reference to Dante is no accident. Dante, too, was an allegorist. He too,

spun tales of marvelous journeys to strange worlds. And Dante, too, was at home

in high as well as popular culture. While Bill’s very literary short stories and

novels (several of the novels co-written with his wife, Joyce) are exceptional

and compelling works, easily fitting within the realm of “high” culture, clearly

something in the science fiction screenplays touched a chord in mass culture. I

would like to suggest that what resonated with a mass audience had much to do

with the allegorical imagination. While Dante’s works today occupy the space of

“high culture,” many of the same allegorical techniques Dante used are evidentin

contemporary popular culture such as the science fiction screenplays written by

the Corringtons.

Bill Corrington’s law-oriented writings are receiving increasing attention from

legal scholars, particularly his superb short stories featuring lawyers and judges

as protagonists.1However, for this article I chose to focus on the Corringtons’

science fiction screenplays, notwithstanding Bill’s well-known feelings about

Hollywood. I had two reasons I wanted to work on the science fiction screenplays.

First, I delight in popular culture. (By “popular culture,” I mean generally what

Herbert Gans has discussed as mass culture, a type of “cultural democracy,” a

culture that “reflects and expresses the aesthetic and other wants of many people”

(Gans, 1974, p. vii).) The Corringtons had continuing ties with popular culture

The Socratic Screenplay 81

throughout their careers, and they wrote the screenplays for The Omega Man and

Battle for the Planet of the Apes, two fine examples of popular culture (Corrington,

J. W.& Corrington, J. H., 1970, 1973). Second, and more important, while reading

Bill Corrington’s law-oriented short stories, I had been struck by his compelling

use of allegory and thus was doubly intrigued to note that allegory also was a

critical component in both screenplays. Reviewing the videos of the two films,

it is impossible not to notice the use of allegory. (For example, what are we to

make of a world where talking apes are in charge? Or a world where the last man

on earth gives his blood in order to save humanity?) Even starting from the most

general definition of “allegory” as an extended metaphor, both of the films are

highly allegorical. I wanted to explore some connections I saw between allegory

and law in the films, connections that resonate with overtones of the Socratic

Method. The fact that Bill was a law student when he and Joyce wrote Battle for

the Planet of the Apes solidified the connections between law,allegory and science

fiction for me.

Traditionally, the Socratic Method in law school has been considered the

pedagogical process whereby a law student learns to “think like a lawyer” through

engaging in critical dialogue/conversation with the professor concerning a case.

Bill was familiar with the law school versionof the Socratic Method as exemplified

by the dreaded Professor Kingsfield in The Paper Chase. Its relative merits as a

pedagogical tool have been hotly debated by many, and famously criticized by

Lani Guinier (Guinier et al., 1997).2The screenplays do sometimes employ a

question and answer sequence, but they are Socratic in a deeper sense. By calling

the Corringtons’ screenplays “Socratic,” I am referring to several foundational

similarities with the Socratic Method, including: the foregrounding of uncertainty;

an emphasis on critical questioning/thinking; and the constant testing of “fit” (an

attitude of sceptical scrutiny). Like the Socratic Method, allegory possesses a

capacity for rhetorical play and multi-leveled meaning that stimulates the same

kind of cognitive engagement we hope to encourage in law school classes. The

same kind of “pleasures of the text” are present in allegorical science fiction and in

the Socratic Method, particularly when we consider Augustine’s admonition that

meanings that are difficult to understand are more pleasurably found.3The Omega

Man and Battle for the Planet of the Apes provide occasion to explore the problem

of representation, the paradox of controlled meaning, and the engagement in a

Socratic exchange that marks the mind of the lawyer.

To facilitate this inquiry, I will first define “allegory” (particularly its double

existence as both genre and mode of thought). Second, I will describe the

relationships between allegory and law in the two science fiction screenplays,

The Omega Man and Battle for the Planet of the Apes, exploring the problem of

representation and the paradox of controlled meaning in each film. Finally, I will