The Fugitive in Flight : Faith, Liberalism, and Law in a Classic TV Show
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Excerpt
In the stark television drama The Fugitive, Dr. Richard Kimble, an innocent man convicted of murder, is on the run from the police and in pursuit of the real killer. The award-winning show, which aired on ABC from 1963 to 1967 and inspired a 1993 blockbuster movie, still has many devoted fans, none more passionate than literary and legal theorist and intellectual provocateur Stanley Fish. In the Fugitive in Flight, Fish examines the moral structure of the long-running series and explains why he thinks it may well be the greatest show ever aired on American network television. -- Analyzing key episodes, The Fugitive in Flight goes beyond plot summaries and behind-the-scenes stories. For Fish, the real action of The Fugitive takes place in confined spaces where the men and women Richard Kimble encounters are forced to choose what kind of person they will be for the rest of their lives. Kimble is the catalyst of such choices, but he himself never changes. Breaking free from the political and social problems of his time, he is always the bearer and exemplar of the very middle-class values informing the system that has misjudged him. Kimble is the perfect representative of a midtwentieth-century liberalism that above all values independence, personal integrity, and the refusal to surrender oneself to obsessions or causes. He is so consistently faithful to his liberal vision of life that he displays both its virtues and its dark side, the side that flees attachments, entanglements, responsibilities, and human connections. Stanley Fish's Richard Kimble is the ultimate man in the gray flannel suit, even when he is wearing a windbreaker and walking down a dark, lonely road.
Description
152 pages : illustrations ; 23 cm
ISBN
9780812242775
Publication Date
2011
Publisher
University of Pennsylvania Press
City
Philadelphia, PN
Keywords
Performing Arts, Television, History & Criticism, Social Science, Media Studies, Film Studies, Cultural Studies
Disciplines
Arts and Humanities | Television
Recommended Citation
Fish, Stanley, "The Fugitive in Flight : Faith, Liberalism, and Law in a Classic TV Show" (2011). Faculty Books. 71.
https://ecollections.law.fiu.edu/faculty_books/71
Comments
Includes index. Includes bibliographical references and index.