pesch
08-17-2003, 09:56 PM
Law professor and blogger Eugene Volokh (http://volokh.com/) needs some information for an article about a legal case against a comic book, and I'm hoping some of the Dopers can come up with some facts to help.
He's writing about the Tony Twist case, in which the hockey player sued a comic book and its writers because they used his name for one of their characters. Note, they didn't use him as a character, just his name. To quote Volokh's blog:
The Missouri Supreme Court has just held that it violated the "right of publicity" for a comic book to name an obviously fictional character after "Tony Twist," a noted hockey player. The Court rejected the First Amendment defense -- which I think should have prevailed here, for reasons that I explain in this article -- because it concluded that "the metaphorical reference to Twist, though a literary device, has very little literary value compared to its commercial value."
Now, Volokh's writing a response to his case, and he's looking for this:
Can you point me to works of fiction -- the more prominent and mainstream the better -- where a character has a name or nickname that's obviously based on the name of a prominent real person, living or recently dead, and where the connection is just a literary touch that has some relevance to the story but is not deeply intertwined with the story?
Also,
can anyone point to some such examples in science fiction books, where characters have names or nicknames that are obviously based on the name of some 20th-century figure?
He's not looking for real people who have popped up in books, however, but examples from the movies like Hedley Lamarr in "Blazing Saddles" or Yogi Bear, or Archibald Leach (Cary Grant's birth name) from "A Fish Called Wanda." But for the purposes of his article, he needs examples from literature, and the more prominent, the better.
Since he's defending the artistic right of a creator to name his characters any damn way he wants, it's time for like-minded readers to come to Gene's aid. Unfortunately, I'm coming up blank. Since there are tons of well-read book lovers in Cafe Society, I'm sure someone can help.
(If you want more information, Volokh's original post can be found here (http://volokh.com/2003_08_10_volokh_archive.html#106088448473908746)).
He's writing about the Tony Twist case, in which the hockey player sued a comic book and its writers because they used his name for one of their characters. Note, they didn't use him as a character, just his name. To quote Volokh's blog:
The Missouri Supreme Court has just held that it violated the "right of publicity" for a comic book to name an obviously fictional character after "Tony Twist," a noted hockey player. The Court rejected the First Amendment defense -- which I think should have prevailed here, for reasons that I explain in this article -- because it concluded that "the metaphorical reference to Twist, though a literary device, has very little literary value compared to its commercial value."
Now, Volokh's writing a response to his case, and he's looking for this:
Can you point me to works of fiction -- the more prominent and mainstream the better -- where a character has a name or nickname that's obviously based on the name of a prominent real person, living or recently dead, and where the connection is just a literary touch that has some relevance to the story but is not deeply intertwined with the story?
Also,
can anyone point to some such examples in science fiction books, where characters have names or nicknames that are obviously based on the name of some 20th-century figure?
He's not looking for real people who have popped up in books, however, but examples from the movies like Hedley Lamarr in "Blazing Saddles" or Yogi Bear, or Archibald Leach (Cary Grant's birth name) from "A Fish Called Wanda." But for the purposes of his article, he needs examples from literature, and the more prominent, the better.
Since he's defending the artistic right of a creator to name his characters any damn way he wants, it's time for like-minded readers to come to Gene's aid. Unfortunately, I'm coming up blank. Since there are tons of well-read book lovers in Cafe Society, I'm sure someone can help.
(If you want more information, Volokh's original post can be found here (http://volokh.com/2003_08_10_volokh_archive.html#106088448473908746)).