Happy Bloomsday! Let's sit down for pancakes and a talk about fair use and exploitation.

It's Bloomsday--on this day in 1904 James Joyce met his future wife Nora, and thus the day he chose for the chronological setting of Leopold Bloom's peregrinations in Ulysses, and double-thus the day for annual Bloomsday celebrations, which have been dampened of late by the litigious executor of Joyce's literary estate, Stephen Joyce, the author's grandson, who has made life miserable for Joyce lovers and Joycean scholars in particular.  This year marks the 71st year since the death of the creator of Leopold Bloom, meaning the grandson of the creator no longer holds the copyright.  So for the first time there can be public readings to mark the event, at least in the EU.  (Even in the big centennial year in 2004, Stephen Joyce threatened legal action for anyone who dared speak his grandfather's words aloud.)  Here's a link to Atlantic Wire and a discussion of copyright http://www.theatlanticwire.com/entertainment/2012/06/why-bloomsday-special-year/53620/

If it ain't Wham, it ain't ham!
Louise Beavers in "Mr.
Blandings Builds his Dream
House," in which Cary
Grant very debonairely pilfers
the domestic's line for his
ad campaign.   

Which brings me in a not totally unrelated way to Aunt Jemima, and what I learned yesterday from the website Mental Floss about her place in trademark law.  Inspired by a popular minstrel song of the time, R.T. Davis Mills created the character in the late 1800s to sell their pancake mix.  They hired a former slave, Nancy Green, to portray Aunt Jemima in public appearances, including a stint making pancakes at the 1893 Chicago World's Fair. America loved the idea that a mix could conjure up that wonderful time when someone "slaving away in the kitchen" really meant something--shall we call it the Swanee River Cruise effect?--and Aunt Jemima pancake mix began to sell like, well, hotcakes.  But then all sorts of Aunt Jemima products began to crop up, including an Aunt Jemima syrup, and in 1915 Davis Mills, now renamed Aunt Jemima Mills, went to court to prove ownership of the character played by a real woman who had once actually been owned.  Aunt Jemima (the company, not the character or the woman who played the character) won the suit, with lasting implications:  recently Quality Inns lost their bid to create McSleep Inns because "Mc" was deemed to be owned by McDonalds, but Hormel lost in trying to gain a trademark over internet "spam."  Here's the Mental Floss link:  http://www.mentalfloss.com/blogs/archives/111340

So how shall we make our own mark today?  Somehow the bloom is off the rose for corporate pancakes....so let's stay in bed all day and emulate Molly Bloom instead--yes! yes! yes!