Seen Enough?

Before the fall when they wrote it on the wall
When there wasn't even any Hollywood
They heard the call
And they wrote it on the wall
For you and me and we understood
-The Caves of Altamira, Steely Dan (1977)

Triplets 14th Street, heather, 2007

No-one is ever paid royalties for Robin Hood and the Monk - the oldest attested ballad of the titular archer. Look at the diverse productions derived from the folk tale of Robin Hood. Where would the modern entertainment industry be without the stories collected by the Brothers Grimm? Such public domain works preceded the shift from cultural to economic capital. The wealth of the developed nations is today largely composed of intangible assets, mainly concepts and ideas and their resultant products, which once known are easily reproducible. This is a problem as our wealth then lies in a naturally infinite source. In this context it's plain to see why copyright terms are continually extended; and if the industry lobbies are correct in their assertions of economic clout, then I can confidently predict that in twenty years a defrosted Cliff Richard and a waxwork Mick Jagger will once again be campaigning for the prolonging of terms for another generation. When these terms exceed the average lifetime they will in effect be infinite. The only ones around to observe the passing of a century-scale 'time limited monopoly' will be perpetual corporations.

Lose Control

Star Wars Collection, Brian Hathcock, 2007

When I was a child in the early 90s, Star Wars seemed to have faded from view. It was actually Muppet Babies that introduced me to it, though I had no idea at the time what it was they were parodying. It wasn't until one of my uncles who grew up with Star Wars got hold of a widescreen VHS of A New Hope that my brother and I were properly presented with the phenomenon. A year or two later the Special Editions were in cinemas and I recall a children's programme looking at the digital insertion of Jabba the Hutt into Episode IV. At the time I thought this was a good thing, bringing it closer to what was intended but couldn't be technologically achieved in 1976. If what we got was a compromised realisation of Lucas' vision then how could we not welcome improvement? But the changes kept coming, and not just the little visual and audio retouches that go unnoticed. Fans of a certain calibre are acutely aware of all the alterations that Lucas has made over the years, and they will certainly be aware of the incongruous modification to Return of the Jedi that will be imposed with the forthcoming Blu-Ray® release.

Great Times in Commotion

9/11 Flipbook, scott_bl8ke, 2011

When I was in Primary 7 we had to spend Wednesday afternoon doing drama. At one point this neatly crossed over with our study of the Second World War - in groups of three we had pretend it was 1939 and we had just heard Neville Chamberlain's declaration of war against Germany. I simply couldn't act as if I was shocked by the start of the war. It meant nothing to me and there was nothing in my own living memory at the age of 11 that came anywhere near that event that I could draw upon. To me, the war was documentaries looking back half a century and old Sunday afternoon films about heroic adventures (it hadn't yet been fully abused and commercialised by first person shooters) which was not the context the people of the real 1939 were living in. That drama class is over half my lifetime ago, so I can't remember what response I acted if any.