Video Monsters
It seems like, lately, I’ve been talking fandom or really the expression of fandom to everyone. From the dinner conversation where I tried to explain Lolita fashion to my mom, to a message board debate on this piece of Twilight fanfic. I love looking at cosplay pictures, I’m so amazed at the skill and dedication these people have in recreating their favorite characters. A coworker recently told me about machinima.
Then, driving to dinner a few days ago, my husband and I heard this NPR piece about vidders. I listened as talented artists explained their craft in ways I had never thought of. I love what the internet has done for fans. We can talk to each other, we can talk to creators, we influence how something is made. It’s “wikinomics” gone hypercolor, I think. These vidders, fanfic writers, cosplayer and machinimas create something out of something – rearraging worlds and ideas. It’s beautiful to me. It’s also somewhat illegal. Which is where our debate started. Mainly with these words from Lim, a vidder:
“We all speak the language of television, we all know the basic symbolism. Rain means redemption; an open window means a new choice or opportunity.” and “The media seems to think they own the things they’ve pumped into my brain in 27 years. It seems to me ludicrous that television spends so much time and so much money carefully colonizing my mind. But it is my mind.”
I took the stance that I could argue in court – duh, I’ve seen enough Law and Order episodes to know how to make a case in style – that she’s right. That her manipulation of copyrighted images is something born from her own mind and therefore is her intellectual property.
My husband – who does not watch nearly enough Law and Order to even begin to know what he is talking about and doesn’t say it with enough flair anyways – takes the stance that she is ripping off the characters. That even if she, say splices them into a video that looks somewhat like a warped “Take on Me” tribute – uses these images to define herself as a fan, how she feels about these colonies in her mind, how she uses them, judges them and worships them – well, they are still someone else’s creation and that person DESERVES TO BE PAID.
What do you think?
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Comments
I think you have introduced a huge topic for thought on the application of copyright in the creative process. For example the whole Shepard Fairey poster of Obama and resulting controversy and lawsuit. http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090204/ap_en_ot/obama_poster
I think Lim the vidder created her own work of art, whether it used other images or not. She didn’t download an episode and call it her own, she created original art.
Does anyone remember the short story Melancholy Elephants by Spider Robinson? “Art is long, not infinte. ‘The Magic goes away.’ One day we will use it up–unless we can learn to recycle it like any other finite resource.”
Well said Spider, in 1985.
Sadie, I just saw a February “Library Hotline” newsletter that mentioned Fordham University’s pioneering conference in January on the place of graphic novels in education. The article reports that there was much discussion of what to call the graphic novel/comic book format:
While “many said the term ‘graphica’ was too closely linked to ‘erotica’. . . . Jimmy Gownley, author of the best-selling ‘Amelia Rules’ series pondered that the format was ‘illustrated literature,’ so why not call it ‘illiterature’?”
The article also noted a survey of graphic novels checked out from libraries, the most popular of which weren’t superheroes or manga, surprisingly, but titles like Gene Luen Yang’s “American Born Chinese” and Jennifer and Matthew Holmes’s “Babymouse” series. There’s also a “Graphic Classroom” blog that promotes the use of “comic literature” (there’s another handy euphemism) in primary and secondary classrooms:
http://graphicclassroom.blogspot.com/
This all means that kids should definitely skip school this Friday to study “Watchmen” . . . .