The Seamless Web: A Blog on Law, Popular Culture and Related Issues

A Look Into the Last Century

Louis Mantin's home is finally opening to the public, 100 years after he died and left it to the French town of Moulins. He specified that nothing in it be changed, and so it shall be. Here's more from CNN.com.

A Website Devoted To Lawyers

Jon Robins of The Guardian discusses Rick Kordowski's website "Solicitors From Hell."

Godzilla Returns!

NPR's Neta Ulaby discusses radiation and movie monsters in this Morning Edition story. Here's a related story from Bob Mondello.

Oh, those Google logos...

Looking for Google logos? Here's a collection (including Google doodles).

"The Kennedys," "The Borgias" Debut On April 3

Some big family dramas coming up on the cable networks in the next week or so. The Kennedys mini-series has found a home on the ReelzChannel and debuts Sunday, April 3, as does Showtime's The Borgias, which the network is billing as "The Original Crime Family."

Here's what the New York Times has to say about The Kennedys, a series that the History Channel, which commissioned it originally, cancelled after it had second thoughts about the direction the series seemed to be taking. (may required subscription). Here's what The Hollywood Reporter says about The Borgias. Interesting that two dramas about two ambitious families are making debuts on the same night

UCLA's New Center For Psychoanalysis Sponsors Conference On Almodovar

From The Hollywood Reporter: The New Center for Psychoanalysis (UCLA) is sponsoring a conference April 16 on Mirrors of the Heart: The Films of Pedro Almodovar. More here.

Gender Stereotyping and Bootstrapping

Zachary A. Kramer, Arizona State University College of Law, has published Of Meat and Manhood in volume 89 of the Washington University Law Review (2011). Here is the abstract.

Sex discrimination law is at a crossroads. While Title VII of the Civil Rights Act has done much to combat formal sex discrimination in employment, the gender-stereotyping theory of sex discrimination – perhaps the most transformative theory of sex discrimination – has been eroded in the courts by a problematic way of thinking about discrimination – the bootstrapping logic. The bootstrapping logic reasons that an employee cannot raise an actionable theory of sex discrimination to “bootstrap” protection for an unprotected trait. This Article uses the cultural relationship between meat-eating and stereotypical notions of masculinity to critique the bootstrapping logic. The centerpiece of this critique is a case-study of an ongoing lawsuit in which an employee has brought a discrimination claim against his former employer, alleging that the employer discriminated against him because he is vegetarian. By focusing on the male vegetarian case study – which involves allegations of vegetarian, sexual orientation, and gender-stereotyping discrimination – the Article argues that sex discrimination often manifests as other forms of bias. In the case of the male vegetarian, what may look like vegetarian or sexual orientation discrimination is really sex discrimination in the form of gender stereotyping.

Download the article from SSRN at the link.

The History of the Comic Book

From The Hollywood Reporter's Esq. Blog, news about a comic book, the "all lawsuit issue," penned by Fred Van Lente and inked by Ryan Dunlavey. Check out Comic Book Comics at the link. Commentary from Lowering the Bar here.

Starting in the early 1950s, various legislators, psychologists and do-gooders decided that comic books were bad for the youth of America, and that popular reading material came under attack. David Hadju, among others, writes about the surge in condemnation of comic books in his work The Ten Cent Plague (Farrar, Straus, Giroux, 2008). Other books to check out on the subject:

Randy Duncan, The Power of Comics (Continuum, 2009).

Paul Lopes, Demanding Respect (Temple University Press, 2009).

Mike Madrid, The Supergirls: Fashion, Feminism, Fantasy, and the History of Comic Book Heroines (Exterminating Angel Press, 2009).

Lillian S. Robinson, Wonder Women (Routledge, 2004).

Bradford Wright, Comic Book Nation (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2003).

 

LOLA To Return With Extensive Changes

Dick Wolf's Law and Order: Los Angeles (also known as "LOLA") will be back April 11 after an extensive change. A number of its leads are gone, including Skeet Ulrich. Who's left? Not clear from the website.

Medicinal Alchemy

The Scientist's Cristina Luiggi discusses medieval medicinal alchemy here.