Golden Gate Law School is doing a Film/Law series that both PJ readers in the Bay Area and PJ readers who will be visiting SF between July and October might find interesting. The series is called A CENTURY IN THE CITY: A Film Retrospective Dealing with the Legal Issues that Shaped San Francisco

JULY 5, 2001

The Silent Era: Legal Repression and the Asian Immigrants Who Built the West Film: The Tong Man, 1919 Speaker: The Hon. Harry Low Delancey Street Theater, 600 The Embarcadero Reception 6:30; program 7:00 Sessue Hayakawa's film is itself a legal artifact. In early 20th century San Francisco, the headline "Tong War" sent the same reactionary message that "Drive-By" conveyed eight decades later.

The result in both cases was repressive legislation and repellent stereotyping. But Chinese-Americans turned to the courts, challenging -- and eradicating -- virtually every legal practice intended to disempower them. Not surprisingly, Chinatown's famous organization of businessmen, the Six Companies, attempted to enjoin screenings of The Tong Man, fearful of the racist content they had come to expect from early Hollywood: In fact, the film may be the first ever shown in a local courtroom. But the plaintiffs were wrong. Hayakawa, one of early Hollywood's biggest stars, meant his infinitely human story to be a powerful antidote to racism. Now you can judge the film again. Aided by Justice Harry Low, the first Chinese- American to serve on the Court of Appeal and one of California's most-respected former jurists, we'll use The Tong Man to examine how legal policy worked to make "outlaws" of the men and women who created modern California.

July 19, 2001

The New Deal Thirties: Law and the Soothing of Class Rebellion Film: San Francisco, 1936 Speakers: David F. Sevin and Kevin J. Mullen, historians   Delancey Street Theater, 600 The Embarcadero Reception 6:30; program 7:00 Americans are notoriously resistant to political films--unless, of course, a movie's ideology is muffled by metaphor. Thus, San Francisco, one of the Depression's most politically-motivated products became one of MGM's most enduring hits. In the mid- Thirties, as violent strikes paralyzed the City and a socialist (Upton Sinclair)   seemed likely to win the governor's race,  capitalism appeared to be on the verge of collapse.

Hollywood conservatives fought back with storylines that suggested a democratic utopia, where grossly-disparate economic classes--Barbary Coast rogues (Clark Gable) and Nob Hill high-brows (Jeanette MacDonald)--merged in times of trouble. Standing in for the nation's financial collapse was the film's famous recreation of the 1906 Quake. But the nation's chief lawman, Franklin Roosevelt, rejected romantic odes to rugged individualism in favor of federal action through the National Recovery Act, a reinterpretation of constitutional power that allowed the White House to take bold steps to address joblessness and deprivation. Did democratic capitalism survive because of--or in spite of--the legal policies of the New Deal? Our guests are uniquely suited to offer answers.

David F. Selvin is a California labor historian whose book, A Terrible Anger: The 1934 Waterfront and General Strikes in San Francisco, presents an unforgettable portrait of workers who believed that free enterprise had abandoned them. Offering an engagingly different perspective is Kevin J. Mullen, an expert in the history of local law enforcement and the business interests that drove it. (Let Justice Be Done: Crime and Politics in Early San Francisco). Don't miss this lively exploration of a period when law seemed unable to check economic upheaval.       

August 2, 2001

The Post-Pearl Harbor Forties: Law and the Ratification of Racism Film: Jack London, 1943 Speaker: Fred Korematsu, civil rights activist Delancey Street Theater, 600 The Embarcadero Reception 6:30; program 7:00 Today it seems inconceivable that federal courts would have sanctioned laws that allowed American citizens to be assembled under force, deprived of personal property, and transferred under guard to desolate internment camps. Yet the relocations occurred, and both courts and civil libertarians approved them--stripping away constitutional rights under a reactionary theory of "dangerousness" that popular culture helped to disseminate. While not the first or the worst of the cultural products that corrupted the Constitution, Jack London shows how distorted messages seeped into the most basic genre stories: Here, the Bay Area's beloved writer (played by Michael O‘Shea) witnesses such a capacity for Japanese cruelty, deceit, and megalomania that he and his wife (Susan Hayward) dedicate their lives to alerting unresponsive Americans to the threat. And who can argue with an icon?

We can, of course. Assisted by camp survivor Fred Korematsu, whose activism ultimately resulted in US acknowledgment that the internment was constitutionally insupportable, we'll examine the effect that screen images had--and continue to have--in rewriting American law.

August 16, 2001

Un-Americanism in the Fifties: Law and the Triumph of Reactionary Politics  Film: I Married a Communist, 1949 Speakers: Professor Alan Brotsky and Patrick Hallinan, Esq.    Delancey Street Theater, 600 The Embarcadero Reception 6:30; program 7:00 The post-WW II attack on American liberalism had a profound effect on Bay Area writers, artists, and educators. But the economic underpinning of the McCarthy years--the right-wing conviction that unions had gained too much power over wages and working conditions--was never more apparent than in RKO's I Married a Communist. Ironically, the film's producers claimed that its protagonist (Robert Ryan), a longshoreman and former Marxist hounded by Party functionaries, was inspired by SF labor leader Harry Bridges. But in truth, Bridges had been dogged for years by reactionary Red-baiters who twisted legal process in unceasing attempts to denounce, discredit and deport him. In the end, the film's ideological excesses may have backfired: Ten directors reportedly refused to be associated with it, and even Hollywood censors found its sexually-compliant secret agents more titillating than terrifying. During this very special evening, we'll be joined by two San Franciscans who paid the high price demanded of those who supported Constitutional liberties during the 1950's. Alan Brotsky, now professor emeritus at the Law School, began his lifelong fight for civil rights during the worst years of the American Inquisition. Attorney Patrick Hallinan derives his own commitment to law from the experiences of his famous parents, whose legal and political representation of "un-American" leftists, resulted in intimidation and incarceration. Be on hand for a discussion between these remarkable men, forced to watch as the American legal system became an instrument of political terror.         

September 6, 2001

The Riotous Sixties: Law and the Emergence of the Middle Class Outlaw Film: Petulia, 1968 Speaker: Dan Siegel, Esq. Delancey Street Theater, 600 The Embarcadero Reception 6:30; program 7:00   Richard Lester's seldom-seen Petulia is a favorite among critics who are invariably impressed by its innovations in sound, editing, and narrative style. But the film may also be the best single representation of a period that is too often remembered in parody. In Lester's film, a San Francisco doctor in the throes of a mid-life crisis (George C. Scott), stands in for an American middle class that is also disastrously out of synch with its times.

Thus, while Petulia captures the music (a pre-stardom Janis Joplin), the manic sexual adventurism (an enchanting but emotionally unstable Julie Christie), and the Mod posturing of the Summer of Love, it also depicts a bourgeois society that is both attracted to and repelled by au courantlawlessness. Lester reminds us that at the heart of "radical chic" lay a profound inquiry: To what extent does the fashion of the moment render law negotiable? Unlike some Sixties survivors, Dan Siegel never simply talked the talk of civil disobedience: In 1965, he traveled with other college students to work for voter registration in the segregated South. At the height of the Vietnam War, he moved to Berkeley to enter law school and, eventually, to become a leader in the nation's highest-profile anti-War Movement. Still an activist and an outspoken member of the Oakland School Board, Siegel offers an undiluted perspective on the political movements that led so many Americans to trade middle class comfort for  confrontation.         

September 20, 2001 

The Seventies: Law and the Assimilation of Black Culture Film: The Mack, 1973 Speaker: TBA Delancey Street Theater, 600 The Embarcadero Reception 6:30; program 7:00 Thirty years after its emergence, Blaxploitation has been reappraised by critics who can now appreciate it for what it was--an attempt to tell stories of the black experience from a black point of view. Indeed, the characteristics that led mainstream audiences to disparage the genre--skimpy sets, inexperienced actors, poor sound quality, etc.--are today recognized as signs of resistance to the white- controlled studio financing that might have improved production values, but that would certainly have diluted the films' African-American perspectives. More importantly, the films' aesthetic rough edges have begun to seem entirely appropriate to the genre's storylines--unsparing depictions of life under a legal system that, in denying opportunities to African-Americans, consigned black ambition to "illegitimate" business, i.e., the narcotics, prostitution and gambling enterprises that mirrored white capitalism. Set in Oakland during a period when African-Americans struggled to identify the lines between lawlessness and political action, The Mack offers an American morality tale told from the vantage point of a young pimp (Max Julien) and his pal (Richard Pryor).

Join us after tonight's film for a lively exchange in which we'll hear first-hand perspectives on the racial cataclysm that shook the Bay Area in the Seventies. We'll assess it all, with the help of people who saw it all: from armed confrontations in the streets to ideologically-charged exchanges in the courtrooms, from the marketing of white paranoia to the emergence of the Black Panther Party. Be on hand for a conversation with the people whose experiences in the post-Civil Rights era initiated lifelong commitments to better lives for black Americans.

October 4, 2001

The Reagan-Bush Revolution: Law and the Great Anti-Feminist Backlash   Film: Class Action, 1991 Speaker: Drucilla S. Ramey, Esq. Delancey Street Theater, 600 The Embarcadero Reception 6:30; program 7:00 It's possible that American conservatism's single most successful socio-political project has been the discrediting of the Women's Movement--an undertaking accomplished through unremitting cultural assaults in the media and well- strategized legal battles in the federal courts. Certainly, by the mid-Eighties, feminism had become a dirty word, with high-profile apologists expressing regret that they had pursued equal rights so aggressively, and with cultural products that demonstrated how unhappy women professionals really were. Indeed, Class Actionmay be the paradigm of Backlash vehicles, a prestigiously-cast, high-budget feature in which a woman lawyer's (Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio) joyful surrender to her own patriarch (Gene Hackman) is disguised as a courtroom thriller. Outside the theater, court contests were far less suspenseful, of course, as decisions in Webster, Lorance and Sears brought back the hierarchies that Class Action and its ilk were depicting as so very desirable.

Even if you've already seen Class Action, don't miss this terrific evening, during which we'll expose the troubling gender messages of this and a half-dozen other mainstream films. We'll be aided in the unmasking by Drucilla S. Ramey, former executive director of the Bar Association of San Francisco and an innovator whose efforts to ensure gender parity in local courtrooms and partners' meetings have made her a national legend.   

October 18, 2001

The Nineties: Law and the Stigmatization of Homosexuality Films: "I Thought Saw a Kulturkampf," a compilation of clips and shorts exposing the role of law in vilifying non-heterosexual conduct during the 1990s Speaker: Mary C. Dunlap, Esq. Delancey Street Theater, 600 The Embarcadero Reception 6:30; program 7:00 In years to come, scholars may remember the Nineties as a time when law worked overtime to identify constitutionally cognizable differences between homosexuals and Everybody Else. From the "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" debacle, to anti-gay "civil rights" initiatives, to the fight for legal recognition of same-sex marriages, to the legislative antipathy toward hate crimes statutes, American law mirrored mainstream resistance to the assimilation of gays and lesbians into the national community. While some cultural vehicles worked to dispel the notions of difference that shaped political attitudes, other pop products continued to suggest there were good reasons to discriminate.