"Judge Judy" (1996)TV series 1996-????

Creators:

Sandi Spreckman
Kaye Switzer

Seasons:

11 | unknown

Genre:

Comedy | Reality-TV

Tagline:

The people are real. The cases are real. The rulings are final.

Plot:

Judge Judy Sheindlin, a former judge from New York, tackles real-life small claims cases with her no...

Plot Keywords:

Court | Civil Court | Court Trial | Courtroom | Defendant

Awards:

12 nominations

US TV Schedule:

Wed. July 23	4:00 PM	CBS
Wed. July 23	4:30 PM	CBS

Cast

Judge Judy Sheindlin	...	Herself - The Judge (3 episodes, 1996-2006)
Petri Hawkins-Byrd	...	Himself - Bailiff (3 episodes, 1996-2006)

Runtime:

30 min

Country:

USA

Language:

English

Color:

Color

Sound Mix:

Stereo

Certification:

Australia:PG (some episodes) | Australia:G

Filming Locations:

Hollywood Center Studios - 1040 N. Las Palmas Avenue, Hollywood, Los Angeles, California, USA

Company:

Paramount Domestic Television

Quotes:

Judge Judy: In court, I ask the questions; you answer them. And so far, you've gotten most of them wrong.

Movie Connections:

Referenced in Boy Culture (2006)

The crazy lady as God

For a while I've been nursing the idea that the pretend-courtroom shows on TV reflect the theologies of their respective fans in the various characters of the judges themselves, which accord with the fans' different conceptions of God. The God of the Hebrews, for example--stern but kindly, just but merciful, and occasionally quick to wrath--is personified in Judge Joe Brown. My own idea of God is approached most closely by Judge Milian on "The People's Court," who comes across as the sexiest wife in her suburb, the one woman that every man desires but none will ever have--a pretty accurate carnal analogy to man's yearning for the divine.

The most popular (or at any rate the most famous) pretend-court judge is Judge Judy, and I don't doubt that most of her viewers are of the same class as most of her litigants, so-called: working- (or non-working-) class people, who if asked outright would never describe God as looking or sounding like Judge J, but whose view of His universe and its mysterious ways, as discovered through experience--especially experience of the temporal powers--is epitomized in Judge J's court: if you stand up asking for simple justice, you're as liable as not to be knocked down, depending on the whim of the deity; you come complaining of undeserved ill treatment, receive more of it, and end with even less dignity than you started.

Often on "reality" shows you're seeing something other than you think you're seeing; possibly the TV judges are all playing parts, and Judge J isn't what she appears to be--a disgusting bully. But the viewer can only go by appearances. If Judge J really behaved in court as she behaves on this show, she was a disgrace to the bench; now she's a disgrace to the tube, if that's possible. The victims of her persecution are usually poor, ill-educated, and not fully articulate; and these handicaps, which should stir her pity, only stir a desire to harass. One of her favorite bully's tricks is to ask her victim an unanswerable question, and then, after he or she struggles to piece out a response, trying hard to get it right, to use this a basis for insult. When she takes a dislike to a litigant, she may deny him what he's legally entitled to, and when he protests, another of her favorite pieces of mockery is to say "'bye-bye" in a baby voice, rubbing salt in the wound. In one case, a woman who had done her homework before coming to court began to cite the law on which her claim was based claim; hardly had she begun than Judge J cut her off, screaming, "DON'T YOU SPOUT LAW TO ME!!!" This amounted to: Don't try to make competent, I'd rather stay an ignorant bitch.

To hear her, however, she's the only smart person in the room. With weary regularity she insults people to their faces on the slightest provocation, or none: "YOU'RE A BUM!!!" "YOU'RE STUPID!!!" "YOU'RE A LIAR!!!" The last, she especially favors. That it often is untrue can be seen from the dismay on her victims' faces, and when they start to protest that they are not liars, she's yells at them to shut up. In short, she acts like the crazy lady in your neighborhood who screams out her upstairs window at random passers-by. Yet on this show, through a bizarre but characteristic quirk of the universe, she has been put on a judge's bench (or pretend-bench). So why would anyone have trouble imagining that she or her counterpart will be manning that greater bench when the roll is called up yonder? The Crazy Lady as God.

To me the incident that revealed the essential unhealthiness of the entire Judy-icial system was one in which a woman had come to recover the cost of a car somehow appropriated away from herself. In passing, she mentioned that the car had a stereo system--which of course it was necessary for her to mention in order to recover the full value--and which of course set her up to be shoved around. "Do you have a college fund for your daughter?" Judge J snapped. The woman--poor, struggling, living on food stamps--at first was baffled by the patent absurdity of the question, but finally admitted she had not done so. "SO YOUR CAR IS MORE IMPORTANT TO YOU THAN YOUR DAUGHTER!!!" saith Judge J. Of course the woman denied it--and the response of her rich, well-educated unignorant tormentor was to shout the same accusation at her again, in the same words.

What the woman in this case might have replied--except that it would only have earned her more nastiness--was: No, but the addition of a car stereo (if you can get a break on it, which you always can) is within imagining and achieving for a person on food stamps, as a college fund is not, and besides, music is more important even than college. If she had dared to say something like this--if any of Judge J's victims ever did--it might surprise her into betraying the kind of response she would really like to give: "YOU DON'T DESERVE MUSIC!!! YOU DESERVE NOTHING GOOD!!! YOU'RE POOR!!! THE POOR ARE STUPID LAZY SCUM!!! THE GOOD THINGS ARE FOR MONEYED PEOPLE LIKE ME!!!" Then she probably would have flogged the woman if she could have. But, come to think of it, even as it was, without the provocation of defiance, and using the weapons available to her--words, and a pretend-court judgment--she did.