-
4 votes
-
'Better Call Saul' failed to win at the Emmys despite forty-six nominations in six seasons
4 votes -
The value of artistic legacy
My initial reaction to cloud_loud's post about the upcoming Winnie the Pooh slasher movie was viscerally negative - my gut feeling is that my life would be objectively better without a movie like...
My initial reaction to cloud_loud's post about the upcoming Winnie the Pooh slasher movie was viscerally negative - my gut feeling is that my life would be objectively better without a movie like this in the world tainting a treasured childhood memory for millions of people.
Then I thought back to my reaction to the Wednesday Addams trailer and it became immediately clear to me that it was just a 'me problem' - I had no sentimental ties to the Addams Family as a kid, but Winnie the Pooh was one of my mum's bedtime story staples. I trust Tim Burton based on his track record to bring a high-quality rendition of Wednesday to the screen, but these nameless & faceless filmmakers were suddenly antagonists in my mind for turning an innocent story about a talking teddy bear into a trashy slasher. But apples & oranges comparison aside, just like how there will be people against the idea of Burton's vision of the Addams family or Tom Hanks' portrayal of Mr. Rogers, there most likely will be people who enjoy this movie when it releases - it just won't be my cup of tea.
I then started thinking about the implications of franchises reaching public domain like in this scenario - for better or worse, creators can now build upon, remix or bastardize the world and characters of Winnie the Pooh. I recently had a conversation here on Tildes about the necessity of copyright, patent and intellectual property law where @archevel raised the question of whether a person/entity should be able to 'own' an idea, and on the surface the immediate answer is a resounding "no". But thinking deeper about it (especially in this context) pushed me down a different path, calling someone's creation simply an 'idea' is very reductionist. To me, an idea is 'a honey-obsessed talking teddy bear' - there's no characterisation to that, no soul, no story, no sense of being. An idea is a I-V-VI-IV chord progression (and thus holds no legal protections), but shouldn't the artistic integrity of Journey's Don't Stop Believing be protected even after the creators are gone? Why are we so indifferent towards parodies like this when it could just as easily be something more offensive like this that can harm the legacy of the creator just by association? I've always been a proponent of free speech/freedom of expression but thinking about it from this perspective is fascinating to me.
That's not inherently an issue of something becoming public domain though, it's an issue of preserving the creator's legacy. Copyright doesn't just protect the creator's means to compensation, it protects their right to control their creations - the right to control their artistic integrity and the legacy they leave behind. Knowing that Milne and Shepard created Pooh to entertain children in a wholesome way, I think it's fairly safe to say they would not be happy with a slasher adaptation if they were still alive. If these filmmakers were using Pooh's likeness to parody Xi Jinping and push a communist agenda, would we care more about preserving Milne's legacy then?
All that brought me to the question of decency - whose moral compass should we guide ourselves by? Where is the line between socially-acceptable satire and obscenity? Western culture has been extremely cagey about some of the most natural things like nudity and sexuality, but here in Australia our government has no issue plastering billboards, bus stops and cigarette cartons with images of nicotine-stained teeth, abscessed mouths and diseased organs in an attempt to warn people of the dangers of smoking & excess sugar consumption - all in the name of public health. Everybody has genitals, why is our government happy to tell us that seeing boobs on a billboard could be potentially shocking for children to see when kids are exposed to NSFL images just by walking past the cigarette shelf in a store or a discarded carton in the street? When our cultural morality is so cagey about something as innocuous as a natural human body, why are we so unconcerned when someone perverts the life's work of a creator just because it's turned public domain? Should the creator have the right to protect their work from beyond the grave?
I'm willing to bet when Mickey Mouse turns public domain in 2024 the internet will be flooded with Beeple-style grotesqueries (NSFW) and everyone will get sick of profane parodies very quickly.
Just wanted to post a frame-by-frame analysis of the philosophical rabbit hole I went down today and hopefully stir up a conversation - I know these are fairly deep questions that none of us can really answer definitively but I still love to hear different people's thoughts and perspectives regardless :)
10 votes -
Poor teeth - If you have a mouthful of teeth shaped by a childhood in poverty, don’t go knocking on the door of American privilege
13 votes -
Film productions from around the world are eager to capture Iceland's dramatic landscapes – and to take advantage of an attractive incentive scheme
3 votes -
House of the Dragon S01E01 - "The Heirs of the Dragon"
5 votes -
Where are all the cool alien movies and TV shows?
After re-watching the absolute masterpiece Close Encounters of the Third Kind (Spielberg, 1977), I was in awe. This got me thinking a lot about aliens, and it seems to me that that is an area...
After re-watching the absolute masterpiece Close Encounters of the Third Kind (Spielberg, 1977), I was in awe. This got me thinking a lot about aliens, and it seems to me that that is an area where movies and TV shows have been lacking in recent years.
When I say "aliens", I mean something truly alien, foreign, mind-bending, even terrifying (although I'm not very fond of horror) -- so not the tame, often humanoid extraterrestrials that we fully understand, like you usually see in Star Trek and Trek-like shows. But rather stories of contact that make us rethink the boundaries of existence.
A recent movie that touches on that was 2016's Arrival, which has more than one similarity with Close Encounters.... Another is Contact (Robert Zemeckis, 1997).
12 votes -
HBO Max removes about 200 ‘Sesame Street’ episodes
9 votes -
No show earned its ending more than ‘Better Call Saul’
10 votes -
Scores of historic jazz performances from the 1950s and 1960s are available on the Ed Sullivan Show's YouTube channel
6 votes -
Phineas and Ferb: Season 1
5 votes -
Nichelle Nichols, dies aged 89
25 votes -
Statues of Walter White and Jesse Pinkman unveiled in Albuquerque
15 votes -
‘Goodfellas,’ ‘Law & Order’ actor Paul Sorvino dies at 83
3 votes -
House of the Dragon | Official trailer
4 votes -
Rogers CEO says service back online for most Canadian customers, blames outage on 'network system failure'
17 votes -
The archive saving home sewing history from the trash
6 votes -
Philip Baker Hall, veteran character actor known for 'Seinfeld,' 'Boogie Nights,' dies at 90
6 votes -
Rumors abound that Netflix will buy Roku
6 votes -
House of the Dragon | Official teaser trailer
6 votes -
What lesser known intellectual properties you would like to see in movies or TV shows?
"Lesser known" can be relative to whatever you want, it doesn't need to be super obscure or unknown. Anxious to learn about the great IPs you love!
18 votes -
I can restore Star Trek Voyager and Deep Space Nine to HD, so why can’t Paramount?
14 votes -
Films made for Netflix look more like TV shows — here’s the technical reason why
12 votes -
Emilio Delgado, 'Sesame Street's' Luis for more than forty years, has died
7 votes -
My 90's TV!
14 votes -
Arthur S25E04 - Blabbermouth/All Grown Up (Series Finale)
5 votes -
Oscars: Twitter’s top fan-voted film will be recognized during broadcast
7 votes -
Imagine Dragons x JID - Enemy (Live at The Game Awards) (2021)
2 votes -
BBC licence fee to be abolished in 2027 and funding frozen
32 votes -
This is what happened inside the Golden Globes show that wasn’t televised
4 votes -
Five ice-age mammoths unearthed in Cotswolds after 220,000 years
9 votes -
Snoop Dogg announces Belfast, Squid Game, more at 2022 Golden Globe nominations: See the full list
4 votes -
Chris Wallace announces he is leaving Fox News, joining CNN+
11 votes -
Michael Nesmith, Monkees singer-songwriter, dead at 78
6 votes -
Little-known Black history comes to light in new documentary series
2 votes -
Imagine Dragons & JID - Enemy (Arcane soundtrack) (2021)
5 votes -
Mel Brooks writes it all down - The comedian will publish his memoirs at the age of ninety-five, and is at work on “History of the World, Part II”
9 votes -
British politician says female ‘Doctor Who’ leads to young men committing crime
5 votes -
‘Earthworm Jim’ TV series in development from Interplay Entertainment
3 votes -
‘Star Trek: Discovery’ exits Netflix; will launch on Paramount+ globally
7 votes -
Diners, Drive-ins, and Dives speaks to a homesick America
8 votes -
'Sesame Street' makes history as it adds first Asian American Muppet to cast
10 votes -
How Elvira busted through Hollywood to become the queen of Halloween
3 votes -
Star Trek Prodigy - S01E01 "Lost and Found"
6 votes -
Sinclair Broadcast Group was hit by ransomware over the weekend
13 votes -
Christopher Biggins’ car-crash Superman interview proves how toxic the media has become
6 votes -
Finally, on CBS, the football matches the business cards
2 votes -
‘Babylon 5’ series reboot from creator J. Michael Straczynski in works at the CW
16 votes -
TV stations are launching multicast networks as an opportunity to reach cord cutters
6 votes -
Behind the scenes with Formula E’s television production team
4 votes