Tangentially connected to The Gleaners and I: One of the wittier elements of the film are the sequences in which robed jurists are stand in fields or on the streets and are made to recite and explain relevant passages of the French penal code concerning “unowned property” (tomatoes, refrigerators), the upshot being that the law considers such stuff fair game. (Though on the agricultural side, the situation seems to vary a lot with location, crop, and the attitude of the growers.) Of course, one notes that the law cannot by its nature make these allowances except by treating such items as potential property that just happens to be judged not to stand in any property relation at the moment; hence it may be appropriated. Resonant with [34] Bernard Edelman’s The Ownership of the Image (1973; trans. Elizabeth Kingdom, 1979, RKP), which uses changing and inconsistent statutes on rights and copyrights on photography as the thin wedge for a deconstruction of the ideological principles behind French law. I’m not well-versed enough to understand just how Edelman’s account differs from other French Marxist legal theorists (Pashukanis and Renner, according to editor Paul Q Hirst’s introduction); it all seems heavily Althusserian to me. Immediate interest for me are some passages from Alphonse de Lamartine, who sounds exactly like Roger Scruton: In the same way that a musician would not be an artist if with the aid of an orchestra he restricted himself to imitating the noise of a cauldron on the firedog or the noise of a hammer on the anil, so a painter would not be a creator if he restricted himself to tracing nature without choice, without feeling, without embellishment. It is because of the servility of photograph that I am fundamentally contemptuous of this chance invention which will never be an art but which plagiarises nature by means of optics. Is the reflection of a glass on paper an art? No, it is a sunbeam caught in an instant by a manoeuvre. But where is the conception of man? Where is the choice? In the crystal, perhaps. But, one thing for sure, it is not in Man. (45) It emerges that as photography becomes an object of commerce and industry in the new century, the legal system falls all over itself revising this opinion, with the eye of finding someone to assign property rights in the results of this natural process: on some judgments, the owners of the film stock! Also: [35] “Cheap,” a red-vinyl no p/s 7” by Jennifer & The Qualifiers, circa '78-79. Musically, this is sub-Patti Smith Group rock-as-punk with an indulgent lead guitarist, but the grottiness fits well with frontwoman Jennifer Blowdryer’s glaneuserie (well, let’s pretend it’s a word): “You can spend a lot of money/on a shirt/or you can buy it for a dollar/on the street/you could love someone with all your heart or you could love who you happen to meet/I’ve tried it both ways now I do it for cheap/cheap cheap cheap.” The B-side is the kicker: Johnny Mercer/Matty Malneck’s 1936 “Goody Goody,” with corrupted chord changes. I would have pegged this for an LES artifact, but apparently they were Bay Area-based. Ms. Blowdryer, the internets reveal was later on the ground floor of the Annie Sprinkle/Slut Fest scene, and continues to write books and plays.