Abstract
The essence of the previous chapters is about the challenges and difficulties in both the administration of criminal justice, and what crimes oblige characters to experience and how they respond. Because criminal justice, as both protection and enforcement, is so vulnerable, inconsistent and uncertain, it is the work of Julia Kristeva on abjection, with its emphasis on fluidity, boundary violation and precarity that serves to enhance my argument further. McDonagh emphasises the significance of violated bodies, deploys language practices that give expression to the crude and almost unsayable, dramatizes failed suicides in incongruous ways, and uses the symbolism associated with fire and burning. Notions of abject justice are conflated with abject laughter. Consequently, McDonagh’s interrogations of criminality and corruption stress the absolute centrality of justice to contemporary life.
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Works Cited
Arya, Rina. 2014. “The Many Faces of Abjection: A Review of Recent Literature.” Journal for Cultural Research 18 (4): 406–415. https://doi.org/10.1080/14797585.2014.941162.
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Jordan, Eamonn. 2014. From Leenane to LA: The Theatre and Cinema of Martin McDonagh. Dublin: Irish Academic Press.
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Primary Sources
McDonagh, Martin. 1997. The Cripple of Inishmaan. London. Methuen.
———. 1999. The Beauty Queen of Leenane, A Skull in Connemara, and The Lonesome West in Plays 1. London: Methuen.
———. 2001. The Lieutenant of Inishmore. London: Methuen.
———. 2003. The Pillowman. London: Faber and Faber.
———. 2008. In Bruges. London: Faber and Faber.
———. 2011. A Behanding in Spokane. New York. Dramatists Play Services Inc.
———. 2015. Hangmen. London: Faber and Faber.
———. 2017. Three Billboards Outside of Ebbing, Missouri. London: Faber and Faber.
———. 2018. A Very Very Very Dark Matter. London: Faber and Faber.
Films
———. 2005. Six Shooter (Written and Directed by Martin McDonagh) (A Missing in Action and Funny Farm Films Production, Film Four Bord Scannán Na hÉireann/The Irish Film Board).
———. 2008. In Bruges (Written and Directed by Martin McDonagh) (Blueprint Pictures, Film4, Focus Features and Scion Films).
———. 2012. Seven Psychopaths (Written and Directed by Martin McDonagh) (Film4, Blueprint Pictures, British Film Institute).
———. 2017. Three Billboards Outside of Ebbing, Missouri (Written and Directed by Martin McDonagh) (Film4 and British Film Institute, Hanway Films and Blueprint Pictures).
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Jordan, E. (2019). The Whole of Nothing. In: Justice in the Plays and Films of Martin McDonagh. Palgrave Pivot, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-30453-9_5
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-30453-9_5
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