Cloverfield and the Red Badge of Courage

I loved the movie Cloverfield. In fact I had my Slusho T-Shirt on when I went. If you don't know what slusho is, than you are not as lame as our programmer Jimmy. You probably get dates.

That said, many people are hailing the first person narrative, as being on the ground, in the heart of battle, lacking details and a precise understanding of the events by the narrator and viewer. It is heralded as innovative, fresh, new, and story telling for the modern ages / U-tube generation.

Couldn't help but think that is what they said about Stephen Crane's protagonist in The Red Badge of Courage. There we follow Henry Fleming, a lowly private as he traverses the battlefield, without ever knowing the true bigger picture. His travels and what the reader knows from the narrators perspective are equally opaque.

Of course that book was written in 1895. What is old is new again. That's why I have bell bottoms.

Pruneyard Revisited - Free Speech trumps common decency. - Law Students Shrug

The California Supremes said:

We granted the request of the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit to decide whether, under California law, a shopping mall may enforce a rule prohibiting persons from urging customers to boycott a store in the mall. For the reasons that follow, we hold that the right to free speech granted by article I, section 2 of the California Constitution includes the right to urge customers in a shopping mall to boycott one of the stores in the mall.

FASHION VALLEY MALL, LLC, v. NATION LABOR RELATIONS BOARD
D.C. Cir.Ct.App. No. 04-1411

Now the blogs are a buzz that this was surprising. See for example: LAW BLOG WSJ

But if you read Pruneyard in property class, you know this isn't a shocking extension of California Free Speech Jurisprudence. - primer on Pruneyard

Of course it is shocking is that by choosing to locate in a mall, you can't exclude naysayers from the front door of your store. It is just not new or surprising.