It Doesn't Belong to You

There is a lot of spilled ink going around about the design aesthetics of the new Hobbit movie. It cuts right to the heart of the copyright/intellectual property arguments that I have had for a long time. So lets meander through some ideas here tonight.

There are a certain class of media properties that people quite simply adore. They are almost always essentially the whole-cloth creation by a single artist or co-creators. Tolkien wrote his books by himself. Lucas pretty much came up with everything that went into the original Star Wars concept. The Simpsons and Family Guy are for the most part one-man shows. Star Trek is the child of Gene Roddenberry. Buffy and Firefly are all Whedon. Most of the World of Darkness comes from the foundational work of Mark Rein-Hagan. D&D, Battletech, South Park, Seinfeld, the Daily Show, and many other great properties are co-created.

Very rarely is something created by a writing staff begun that way. They can be maintained that way (see Simpsons, Daily Show, etc) but at their very core the great media properties are the work of either one or two people.

This is important.

Because of this, people who enjoy the property can develop a sense of what the property "is" based on whether or not the original creator would agree with it. This is how people can say "that's not the Dwarves from the hobbit!" because they have a very clear conception in their mind of how those Dwarves are supposed to be.

I know what is probably nagging you right about now. What about Jar Jar? I threw that pic up early, then I mention George Lucas glowingly, wtf am I doing here?

Well, here is the rub.

As I recently presented evidence for on this blog, George Lucas didn't know just what he fuck he did. He was lucky. And he KNEW IT. So he made the decision to become a licensing whore and he basically handed the movies off to other directors. Empire was directed by Kershner, Jedi by Marquand. Then the whole property turned into a massive clusterfuck. The feel of the movies were established by a lucky director and two good ones. Then torn to holy hell by a million licensing deals. What you thought was "Star Wars" ended up not being such. The re-releases even added some of the idiocy to the original films. The property is corrupt in the worst possible way.

And what George Lucas did consciously, a thousand others have done accidentally or through lack of concern or through death. The original property is lost is a sea of profiteering. See once you stop trying to make art and instead you try to make money; that is the path to the destruction.

The aesthetics of the new Hobbit isn't about trying to stay true to the feel of the book. It is about trying to make money. They want money. And they will do anything to get it, your beloved property be damned. They will rape your precious Hobbit until gold coins pop out of his head. They don't care about what you want, lover of the true vision of Tolkein. You are only good for them in so much as you can be turned into a quick buck.

An actress is not a machine, but they treat you like a machine. A money machine.
- Marilyn Monroe

Just like South Park parodied, they raped Indiana Jones. And they raped Star Wars. And they raped Battletech (see Mech Assault). Hell, just look at every video game based on a movie. They all fucking suck. They just want your goddamn money. Wake up and smell the coffee.

You don't own the Hobbit. They do. And they could give two fucks what you think about it.

Which brings us to the philosophical / legal point...

At a certain point, every copyright expires. Why? Why don't they last forever? If we care so much about the power of the creator, why don't they just extend into infinity? Inheritable assets passed down for generations? Why shouldn't you have to pay the decendents of Leonardo DaVinci when you look at the Mona Lisa?

Copyrights end because we recognize that while the author has a right to control the property up to a point, society also has a right to take that control away. 

In the past few decades, we have seen society's rights stripped away and handed in chunks to creators. You know the Sonny Bono Act that extended copyrights by a huge number of years? It was passed 1 year before Steamboat Willie would have entered the public domain. Chew on that.

Do you really think that after all these years, with Walt Disney dead and gone, that the rights of the Disney Corporation to Mickey Mouse should remain? Or should he be a part of OUR culture, OUR society, OUR way of life. Like Mona Lisa or the Sistine Chapel or the Night Watch or Beethoven's 5th.

All the anger over the Hobbit comes down to the simple fact that despite being published in 1937, the Hobbit is not yet in the public domain. The rights were sold to a corporation and the Bono Act protected them under that aegis for a long long time. Way longer than anyone would every really believe legitimate, I think. In the end, despite it's long history, it isn't YOUR Hobbit yet. He is still dancing to the jig of the monied interests. Bilbo is a corporate shill.

And that's why they fuck you. Because when all is said and done... it just doesn't belong to you.

I think it should