Endless rehashes and reboots from potential randos and weirdos > endless rehashes and reboots from the same 3 multibillion dollar multinational media conglomerates.
Face it, remixing is the natural state of human culture. All works that you know and love are remakes of other older works on some level. Narrative innovation insofar as it even exists is only incremental.
I do think it's best for very old works to be in the public domain just because the marginal impact on incentive to create of the hundredth year if royalties is virtually nil, but I've always kind of rolled my eyes at claims that inability to crib famous character designs is holding back a tsunami of creativity. Who are these people who are so creative but can't come up with their own characters?
Who are these people who are so creative but can't come up with their own characters?
I view it a different way. What's so important about pointless innovation?
Right after Star Wars, there were a bunch of follow-the-leader movies in the 70's and 80's that had their own laser-sword wielding heroes that couldn't be called "lightsabers", and I just wonder what that added to our culture? Does us calling them "laser swords" or "plasma swords" instead of "lightsabers" really add anything of value to our culture, or is it pointless innovation for innovations sake? Effectively, we have one highly iconic and recognizable object - so recognizable everyone knows they're looking at a lightsaber, but copyright law forces us to call it something different. (Or at least creates enough of a chilling effect that most people aren't willing to risk calling their laser swords "lightsabers.")
When the ancients wanted to use an iconic character or object to tell a new story, they just told it. Instead, we have to pointlessly scratch the serial numbers off of anything to tell the stories we want to tell.
Is Cuphead better for the fact that the main characters aren't just Mickey Mouse and Oswald the Lucky Rabbit? Is Invincible better for the fact that "Superman" becomes "Omni-man", and the "Justice League" become the "Guardians of the Globe", etc.?
Imagine if Shakespeare had to rename the well-known stories he was retelling. Instead of recognizable anglicized characters like "Romeo and Juliet", what if he had to call them "Giovanni and Gianna" or something. One, he'd have to spend pointless time at the beginning telling an audience that this is basically just a retelling of the story of Romeus and Juliet, and then he could actually tell the story he wanted to tell. It just seems like we've replaced evocation of the muses with a few minutes where we just tell the audience in as many ways as possible: "This is basically Superman, go it?" and I just don't see what that adds to our culture. Why can't we just have a bunch of stories about Superman?
If copyright protected fixed works, like it used to, and not derivative works, then I think that would be a better system. (Especially with goofy interpretations we end up getting. Winnie the Pooh is in the public domain, but if you even think about giving him a red shirt Disney's lawyers will breathe down your back. Is the creative addition of a red shirt so important that it's worth having legal protections for it?)
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Notes -
Finally we can enjoy even more remakes and reboots!!!!
Endless rehashes and reboots from potential randos and weirdos > endless rehashes and reboots from the same 3 multibillion dollar multinational media conglomerates.
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Face it, remixing is the natural state of human culture. All works that you know and love are remakes of other older works on some level. Narrative innovation insofar as it even exists is only incremental.
Just think of tropes like Hero's Journey. That's been repeated for at least three thousand years in various permutations.
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I do think it's best for very old works to be in the public domain just because the marginal impact on incentive to create of the hundredth year if royalties is virtually nil, but I've always kind of rolled my eyes at claims that inability to crib famous character designs is holding back a tsunami of creativity. Who are these people who are so creative but can't come up with their own characters?
I view it a different way. What's so important about pointless innovation?
Right after Star Wars, there were a bunch of follow-the-leader movies in the 70's and 80's that had their own laser-sword wielding heroes that couldn't be called "lightsabers", and I just wonder what that added to our culture? Does us calling them "laser swords" or "plasma swords" instead of "lightsabers" really add anything of value to our culture, or is it pointless innovation for innovations sake? Effectively, we have one highly iconic and recognizable object - so recognizable everyone knows they're looking at a lightsaber, but copyright law forces us to call it something different. (Or at least creates enough of a chilling effect that most people aren't willing to risk calling their laser swords "lightsabers.")
When the ancients wanted to use an iconic character or object to tell a new story, they just told it. Instead, we have to pointlessly scratch the serial numbers off of anything to tell the stories we want to tell.
Is Cuphead better for the fact that the main characters aren't just Mickey Mouse and Oswald the Lucky Rabbit? Is Invincible better for the fact that "Superman" becomes "Omni-man", and the "Justice League" become the "Guardians of the Globe", etc.?
Imagine if Shakespeare had to rename the well-known stories he was retelling. Instead of recognizable anglicized characters like "Romeo and Juliet", what if he had to call them "Giovanni and Gianna" or something. One, he'd have to spend pointless time at the beginning telling an audience that this is basically just a retelling of the story of Romeus and Juliet, and then he could actually tell the story he wanted to tell. It just seems like we've replaced evocation of the muses with a few minutes where we just tell the audience in as many ways as possible: "This is basically Superman, go it?" and I just don't see what that adds to our culture. Why can't we just have a bunch of stories about Superman?
If copyright protected fixed works, like it used to, and not derivative works, then I think that would be a better system. (Especially with goofy interpretations we end up getting. Winnie the Pooh is in the public domain, but if you even think about giving him a red shirt Disney's lawyers will breathe down your back. Is the creative addition of a red shirt so important that it's worth having legal protections for it?)
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They are Homer, they are Vergil, they are the authors of the holy bible. It's just how people do.
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