09 Nov Introducing the 6th Annual Symposium on Pop Culture and International Law
I am very proud that Opinio Juris has managed to host a yearly online symposium that connects international law with pop culture for six years in a row. Scholars from all over the world send us tens of articles every year, discussing the most incredible topics in the most creative ways. It has become a bit of a staple of Opinio Juris by now, with colleagues sometimes telling me in conferences and casual conversations about the things they are thinking about writing for the symposium months away from our call for abstracts! It is a wonderful thing and I am so happy for the success of this project.
Having been around for six years, the Symposium has been ambitious in its content. It is my belief that we have covered every single possible medium in which pop culture is packaged: comic books, board games, video games, movies, books, poems, music, and a long etcetera – we even played a game of Dungeons & Dragons together! So the question of what is next loomed heavy in my mind this year, particularly as we start the next five years and potentially a full decade.
I am a firm believer that scholarly work should not be trapped in ivory towers, far away from people’s everyday concerns. This symposium was conceived from the idea that international law can be – if one can forgive the uncoolness of actually having to say it – well, cool. With this in mind, my hope is that we can take this symposium beyond the confines of Opinio Juris’ usual audience, dominated by academics, practitioners, advocates and the occasional ICJ Judge (congratulations Dapo!)
My hope is that we can continue to expand the reach of this symposium to a wider audience, beyond the international legal world. Scholarly research needs to be more accessible. My hope is this symposium can be a bridge to enable that connection between the wider audiences and academic themes.
With this in mind, this year we have a great selection of articles!
The Symposium opens today, Monday, with Christien Bianco’s critique of the Wizarding World’s main international instrument: the International Statute of Secrecy. How can rules, she asks us, contribute to Othering?
On Tuesday, the Symposium continues with Himani Jha and Garima Tiwari’s analysis of perfidy rules in Attack on Titan, where they wonder what exactly is the purpose of the rule? Mia Colliard follows later with her analysis of Austin Powers – specifically, Dr. Evil’s request for Sharks with frikin’ laserbeams attached to their heads. She explores what happens when animals are used as weapons, but more importantly asks what happens when the environment itself (or an endangered shark species) becomes a military target. It is a fun read, but also one that begs the disturbing question: would the rules of armed conflict protect a school (or fleet?) of endangered scalloped hammerhead sharks with frikin’ laserbeams attached to their heads more than a group of human civilians?
On Wednesday Shaoxuan Xu invites us to ponder on a common trope: an Alien asks us to take them to our leader. But, who is our leader? And who can speak for us? Shaoxuan unwraps that question by thinking about the Chinese Sci-Fi novel The Three Body Problem. The Symposium then continues with Laurence Atkin-Teillet’s discussion of genocide in the acclaimed turn-based RPG Claire Obscure: Expedition 33. Laurence asks us what exactly is it that the Genocide Convention seeks to protect. What is life at all? And should we protect it. If destroying magical paint-based creatures can make us feel the way the game makes us feel, prompting us to grab our copy of the Genocide Convention and ponder whether this was unlawful or not… what should we think about the systematic destruction of nature? Of ecocide? Of overfishing? Of the meat and poultry industries?
On Thursday, Lakshmidevi Somanath, former Judge in India’s Intellectual Property Appellate Board, discusses the lawfulness of using AI to “appropriate” a style, referencing the phenomenon a few months ago when social media was flooded with AI-made images done in “Studio Ghibli style”. Is this theft? Or acceptable fair use? Then, Estéfany Monteiro explores the world of One Piece, discussing whether the legality of the “Buster Call” (or, the attack, in non-otaku parlance) on the Ohara Library. What does it mean, she asks, to destroy a century-worth of a people’s history and culture?
The symposium closes on Friday with two posts. First, Lu Yaoyao invites us to rethink Chinese cinema and what it says about China’s engagement with international law through the lens of China’s recent blockbuster “Once Upon a Time in the Middle East”. Unlike traditional American blockbusters, which focus on the exploits of soldiers in war, this movie frames war (most likely the Iraq War) from the perspective of a Chinese immigrant trying to build a Chinese food restaurant in the Middle East. In this movie, food, not bullets, convey the meaning. And we experience the soldier not as the boot of empire, but as an individual distinct from the empire’s policies – a person who can share a meal and talk about home with a man thousands of miles away from home, establishing a human connection amidst the most inhuman thing a person can do. Alas, Yaoyao ponders, is this much needed distinction between people and their empire obscuring responsibilities for war and marginalising the local population under brutal occupation?
The Symposium closes with Nivedita S’s exploration of the crimes of slavery and persecution through the lens of American-Chinese-Japanese Dark fantasy comic book Monstress. Nivedita asks whether international criminal law has properly understood the extractive nature of these crimes. In Monstress, a class of being is used almost as crop, to extract some wondrous material from them. These individuals, known as monsters, must be “kept alive, but in a State of Injury”. While a work of fantasy, Nivedita ponders just how different this is from the real world. Are crimes such as slave plantations and forced labour camps any less extractive than the world of Monstress? By looking at Achille Mbembe’s Necropolitics, Nivedita asks us a crucial question: have we misunderstood the reality of slavery and forced labour and does existing international criminal law do enough to remedy their wrongs?
Finally, I also wanted to thank Ms. Alessia Corti, for her incredible help organising this year’s symposium.
I am extremely proud of these incredible articles and truly hope that you enjoy them. If you can, share them widely, so that our symposium can continue to grow, both in and beyond academia.