I strongly suspect that Ben Jones, when pushed on the issue, would have been happy to go on about corporate intellectual property, that corporations have a right to shut down fan fiction sites and so on. (Unfortunately it seems he left Congress too early to find a voting record that really deals with issues like copyright extension or DMCA, but that's what I'd expect from a former actor from GA.)
As the saying has it, what goes around comes around. That's what it means to concede the point that a corporation has sole rights to cultural IP, that the public to whom that cultural IP matters has no rights whatsoever.
You're sympathetic to the idea that "The Dukes of Hazzard" is good, family-oriented fun which is being ruined by the movie?
Uh, yes? Am I misremembering something? Boys will be boys, girls are fer bein' looked at (and they're wily!), stick it to the man, respect your elders. Same show, right?
I don't have a problem with corporations shutting down fan fiction, or having the right to. At least, I don't have a very large problem with it.
Fan fiction is good for the owners of trademark; in many cases the owner would choose not to shut it down.
If the owner of trademark is adding nothing to the mark itself, and shuts down anyone else from improving on it, the owner will not continue to make money off of it for long. I would not be surprised if Disney fell into a serious financial hole --- worse than the one it is in -- in the next ten years or so.
And in the end, creative people can continue to make art, and get around the trademark issues without too much trouble. The creative input increases the value of the mark, and if the owner is too stupid to see that, it will pay for it down the road.
I hear Casey Kasem was mighty pissed at Hanna-Barbera for betraying the spirit of Scooby-Doo when the movie came out. That guy went on hunger strike for weeks.
By the way, and this is strictly out of curiosity, what definition of "heritage" are you using that separates "white Southern Confederate heritage" from "race"?
I was actually a huge fan of Dukes of Hazzard as a kid - I think I even had a board game based on the series. Also, the brother of the step dad of one of my friends in junior high played Luke. I never met him, though.
Re the Heritage stuff: *I* was joking, but that line is something you hear constantly if you talk to defenders of the Confederate flag. They claim that they are just honoring their ancestors, and not endorsing slavery. Same issue as honoring German soldiers from WWII, more or less.
you don't see a lot of mussolini nostalgia either.
the thing is, a lot of southerners have a pretty big inferiority complex, and it comes out in a lot of desctructive ways. My whole family is southern. What would be healthful would be to squash out the antebellum airs whenever they peep through.
There was a country song when I was a small boy titled "if the south would have won, we'd have had it made."
The Germans have been much more strict about suppressing that stuff.
To be fair, we didn't spend 100 years telling the Germans that it was OK to kick Jews, just not to kill them, and then take it all away. Mixed messages, and all that.
That's a what-if that I've spent a lot of time wondering about. Imagine a history where the South had been effectively shamed about slavery, as Germany was about fascism -- what would the past hundred and fifty years have been like?
Certainly, not just the South. Where the country as a whole had recognized slavery as something shameful, and the wealth derived from it as ill-gotten.
Russia doesn't seem to shame itself very well (with the exception of some individual Russians), though other countries have shamed it for all of these things.
Russia successfully shamed the East Germans for Nazism, despite Russia's own history of antisemitism -- the North might have done the same to the South. (At least I think that was his point.)
26: I really think that we wouldn't have had all these problems over all these years if that had happened. (I have a rule of thumb about Confed. nostalgia--Robert E. Lee/ordinary soldiers probably OK, Jeff Davis/battle flag bad. I'm also pretty sure I'm not going to have the guts to put a Union battle flag on my car when I get to Texas, though it would be a nice way to show off my pride in my heritage.)
On the topic of the main post, I see Cooter's point a little too, though I would see it more if it were phrased "Stop Hollywood from making crappy remakes of shows that were pretty crappy in the first place, but at least have the hazy glow of nostalgia going for them." OTOH, if not for the movie we would likely not have Neptune from this Galaxy of Fame. Johnny Knoxville? Oh the humanity!
As the saying has it, what goes around comes around. That's what it means to concede the point that a corporation has sole rights to cultural IP, that the public to whom that cultural IP matters has no rights whatsoever.
I'm all for loosening intellectual property protections... but how would that stop this movie from getting made? Conversations about giving public a greater stake in ownership of our culture don't usually include the ability for the public to censor trash. If anything, it would make it easier for various cinematic abominations to be released. If Congressman Cooter is generally in favor of tighter IP laws, then this statement seems consistent with his beliefs.
you don't see a lot of mussolini nostalgia either
Try talking to just about any Italian about any public works project. There's a good chance you'll get some Mussolini nostalgia thrown in. Terrible man, very bad, appropriate qualifications on any praise, etc, etc. But there was a guy who could get things done. Or so the popular perception seems to go.
Anyway, about the DoH movie... can anything involving Willie Nelson be evil? Before seeing the preview last night, I wouldn't have thought so.
37 -- yes, there could be an awful lot of mussolini nostalgia, actually, and I would be quite ignorant of it, in that my knowledge of Italian culture derives solely from, well, nothing. I have seen a few Fellini movies.
I'm not totally following Cooter's reasoning and his "family values."
The show was a counter-culture anti-establishment show where the "law" was inept and corrupt and the rebels were the good guys. The language and images were kept PG but there was plenty of eye candy.
Good music, eye candy, cool cars, that was about it.
And yes I am old enough to have watched the original broadcasts. I wasn't a regular viewer, but did watch now and then.
Cooter says,
Hmm.
Did you catch that he was a Democrat? And, ok, I admit it, I'm a little sympathetic to his point.
Posted by ogged | Link to this comment | 07-19-05 11:27 AM
"New Daisy Dukes Chafe Old Cooter"?
Posted by ogmb | Link to this comment | 07-19-05 1:21 PM
You're sympathetic to the idea that "The Dukes of Hazzard" is good, family-oriented fun which is being ruined by the movie?
Damn. This *is* a rough crowd, this week.
Posted by FL | Link to this comment | 07-19-05 1:22 PM
I strongly suspect that Ben Jones, when pushed on the issue, would have been happy to go on about corporate intellectual property, that corporations have a right to shut down fan fiction sites and so on. (Unfortunately it seems he left Congress too early to find a voting record that really deals with issues like copyright extension or DMCA, but that's what I'd expect from a former actor from GA.)
As the saying has it, what goes around comes around. That's what it means to concede the point that a corporation has sole rights to cultural IP, that the public to whom that cultural IP matters has no rights whatsoever.
Posted by Maynard Handley | Link to this comment | 07-19-05 2:07 PM
You're sympathetic to the idea that "The Dukes of Hazzard" is good, family-oriented fun which is being ruined by the movie?
Uh, yes? Am I misremembering something? Boys will be boys, girls are fer bein' looked at (and they're wily!), stick it to the man, respect your elders. Same show, right?
Posted by ogged | Link to this comment | 07-19-05 3:44 PM
And the Confederate battle flag is wholesome all-American automotive decor.
Posted by LizardBreath | Link to this comment | 07-19-05 3:45 PM
I don't have a problem with corporations shutting down fan fiction, or having the right to. At least, I don't have a very large problem with it.
Fan fiction is good for the owners of trademark; in many cases the owner would choose not to shut it down.
If the owner of trademark is adding nothing to the mark itself, and shuts down anyone else from improving on it, the owner will not continue to make money off of it for long. I would not be surprised if Disney fell into a serious financial hole --- worse than the one it is in -- in the next ten years or so.
And in the end, creative people can continue to make art, and get around the trademark issues without too much trouble. The creative input increases the value of the mark, and if the owner is too stupid to see that, it will pay for it down the road.
Posted by text | Link to this comment | 07-19-05 3:46 PM
Oh, the flag. I knew there was some PC violation I was overlooking. The flag is about heritage, not race, Yankee girl.
Posted by ogged | Link to this comment | 07-19-05 3:47 PM
Plus, adfenestration.
Posted by Standpipe Bridgeplate | Link to this comment | 07-19-05 3:47 PM
And I was very fond of the show as a child, myself, so I shouldn't talk.
Posted by LizardBreath | Link to this comment | 07-19-05 3:50 PM
I hear Casey Kasem was mighty pissed at Hanna-Barbera for betraying the spirit of Scooby-Doo when the movie came out. That guy went on hunger strike for weeks.
Posted by Isle of Toads | Link to this comment | 07-19-05 3:51 PM
The Dukes induced lots of children to attempt dangerous "through the window" car-entry maneuvers, resulting in serious thumb and apholstery damage.
Posted by text | Link to this comment | 07-19-05 3:53 PM
What's the heritage about?
Posted by eb | Link to this comment | 07-19-05 3:53 PM
[redacted]
Posted by [redacted] | Link to this comment | 07-19-05 3:54 PM
Scooby-Doo would have been a good show if it hadn't been for those meddling kids.
Posted by eb | Link to this comment | 07-19-05 3:54 PM
By the way, and this is strictly out of curiosity, what definition of "heritage" are you using that separates "white Southern Confederate heritage" from "race"?
Posted by Isle of Toads | Link to this comment | 07-19-05 3:55 PM
Also, I should admit to really liking Uncle Jesse, and I think it's awesome that he's played by Willie Nelson.
Posted by FL | Link to this comment | 07-19-05 3:55 PM
I was actually a huge fan of Dukes of Hazzard as a kid - I think I even had a board game based on the series. Also, the brother of the step dad of one of my friends in junior high played Luke. I never met him, though.
Posted by eb | Link to this comment | 07-19-05 3:58 PM
Re the Heritage stuff: *I* was joking, but that line is something you hear constantly if you talk to defenders of the Confederate flag. They claim that they are just honoring their ancestors, and not endorsing slavery. Same issue as honoring German soldiers from WWII, more or less.
Posted by ogged | Link to this comment | 07-19-05 3:58 PM
If you honored them by putting a swastika on your car, I guess. We'll see in about 40 years, anyway.
Posted by SomeCallMeTim | Link to this comment | 07-19-05 4:05 PM
If you honored them by putting a swastika on your car, I guess.
Yeah, I think that's the analogy. The Germans have been much more strict about suppressing that stuff.
Posted by ogged | Link to this comment | 07-19-05 4:07 PM
you don't see a lot of mussolini nostalgia either.
the thing is, a lot of southerners have a pretty big inferiority complex, and it comes out in a lot of desctructive ways. My whole family is southern. What would be healthful would be to squash out the antebellum airs whenever they peep through.
There was a country song when I was a small boy titled "if the south would have won, we'd have had it made."
Posted by text | Link to this comment | 07-19-05 4:18 PM
Unfogged: your place to meet men who want to shoot things with exploding arrows.
Which is—if we're honest—pretty much all of them, right?
Posted by ben wolfson | Link to this comment | 07-19-05 4:22 PM
People generally, I should think.
Posted by LizardBreath | Link to this comment | 07-19-05 4:23 PM
The Germans have been much more strict about suppressing that stuff.
To be fair, we didn't spend 100 years telling the Germans that it was OK to kick Jews, just not to kill them, and then take it all away. Mixed messages, and all that.
Posted by SomeCallMeTim | Link to this comment | 07-19-05 4:39 PM
That's a what-if that I've spent a lot of time wondering about. Imagine a history where the South had been effectively shamed about slavery, as Germany was about fascism -- what would the past hundred and fifty years have been like?
Posted by LizardBreath | Link to this comment | 07-19-05 5:02 PM
Well, we'd have to have shamed ourselves (the North) a bit, too. That's probably the sticking point.
Posted by SomeCallMeTim | Link to this comment | 07-19-05 5:11 PM
Certainly, not just the South. Where the country as a whole had recognized slavery as something shameful, and the wealth derived from it as ill-gotten.
Posted by LizardBreath | Link to this comment | 07-19-05 5:15 PM
Well, we'd have to have shamed ourselves (the North) a bit, too. That's probably the sticking point.
Was Russia shamed about the pogroms?
Posted by ben wolfson | Link to this comment | 07-19-05 5:16 PM
Or serfdom? Or the purges? Or the gulag?
Russia doesn't seem to shame itself very well (with the exception of some individual Russians), though other countries have shamed it for all of these things.
Posted by eb | Link to this comment | 07-19-05 5:20 PM
I'm not sure I see your point, Ben.
Posted by SomeCallMeTim | Link to this comment | 07-19-05 5:25 PM
Russia successfully shamed the East Germans for Nazism, despite Russia's own history of antisemitism -- the North might have done the same to the South. (At least I think that was his point.)
Posted by LizardBreath | Link to this comment | 07-19-05 5:29 PM
But anti-semitism continued in Russia, to the point that there was a large emigration in the 1970s.
And come to think of it, you could argue that the Soviet Union was built on shaming Russia for the legacies of serfdom.
Posted by eb | Link to this comment | 07-19-05 5:33 PM
I've never seen Dukes of Hazzard - before my time. Man you people are old.
Posted by Michael | Link to this comment | 07-19-05 7:46 PM
Re-runs, Michael, re-runs. Still makes me older than you, I suspect, since until recently even the re-runs were off the air.
I liked it almost entirely for the car-jumping and window-entering, by the way. Don't know what I'd think of it now.
Posted by eb | Link to this comment | 07-19-05 7:49 PM
26: I really think that we wouldn't have had all these problems over all these years if that had happened. (I have a rule of thumb about Confed. nostalgia--Robert E. Lee/ordinary soldiers probably OK, Jeff Davis/battle flag bad. I'm also pretty sure I'm not going to have the guts to put a Union battle flag on my car when I get to Texas, though it would be a nice way to show off my pride in my heritage.)
On the topic of the main post, I see Cooter's point a little too, though I would see it more if it were phrased "Stop Hollywood from making crappy remakes of shows that were pretty crappy in the first place, but at least have the hazy glow of nostalgia going for them." OTOH, if not for the movie we would likely not have Neptune from this Galaxy of Fame. Johnny Knoxville? Oh the humanity!
Posted by Matt Weiner | Link to this comment | 07-20-05 8:02 AM
As the saying has it, what goes around comes around. That's what it means to concede the point that a corporation has sole rights to cultural IP, that the public to whom that cultural IP matters has no rights whatsoever.
I'm all for loosening intellectual property protections... but how would that stop this movie from getting made? Conversations about giving public a greater stake in ownership of our culture don't usually include the ability for the public to censor trash. If anything, it would make it easier for various cinematic abominations to be released. If Congressman Cooter is generally in favor of tighter IP laws, then this statement seems consistent with his beliefs.
you don't see a lot of mussolini nostalgia either
Try talking to just about any Italian about any public works project. There's a good chance you'll get some Mussolini nostalgia thrown in. Terrible man, very bad, appropriate qualifications on any praise, etc, etc. But there was a guy who could get things done. Or so the popular perception seems to go.
Anyway, about the DoH movie... can anything involving Willie Nelson be evil? Before seeing the preview last night, I wouldn't have thought so.
Posted by tom | Link to this comment | 07-20-05 8:05 AM
Made the trains run on time.
Posted by ben wolfson | Link to this comment | 07-20-05 8:25 AM
37 -- yes, there could be an awful lot of mussolini nostalgia, actually, and I would be quite ignorant of it, in that my knowledge of Italian culture derives solely from, well, nothing. I have seen a few Fellini movies.
So I have no basis at all for what I write here.
Posted by text | Link to this comment | 07-20-05 9:10 AM
Neptune from this Galaxy of Fame.
I have such an enormous crush on whoever WC is. Great site.
Posted by SomeCallMeTim | Link to this comment | 07-20-05 9:27 AM
Made the trains run on time.
Heh. He's reponsible for the excavation of large parts of the Roman Forum, too, from what I hear (seriously).
Posted by tom | Link to this comment | 07-20-05 9:58 AM
On the other hand, he paved over the Appian Way! Not cool.
Posted by andrew | Link to this comment | 07-20-05 10:18 AM
I'm not totally following Cooter's reasoning and his "family values."
The show was a counter-culture anti-establishment show where the "law" was inept and corrupt and the rebels were the good guys. The language and images were kept PG but there was plenty of eye candy.
Good music, eye candy, cool cars, that was about it.
And yes I am old enough to have watched the original broadcasts. I wasn't a regular viewer, but did watch now and then.
Posted by Tripp | Link to this comment | 07-20-05 12:12 PM
Made the trains run on time.
Apparently not.
Posted by Mitch Mills | Link to this comment | 07-22-05 8:26 PM