This Blog Is Full Of Crap

Now there's a new visualization of the books coming to the big screen. I've looked at the trailer, and the visualization of Zaphod's second head and Marvin's appearance are vastly different from the cheap mini-series, and they're certainly different from what I'd imagined back in the radio serial and book days.

They are not my Marvin and Zaphod. They are not my Vogons.

I guess this is just the way things are. Before movies and television, people had a vision of what Ebenezer Scrooge looked like in their heads. Then, the movies came out, and an image was established. And reworked. Again and again. Until it became an annual challenge to filmmakers to contaminate the original concept in their own special way.

Maybe that's what we're seeing with the Bugs/Buzz Bunny thing. A revisualization that conflicts severely with the original concepts. And as long as there's only one entity revisualizing the content for a single outlet without providing enough new material based on the original-style content, there will be conflict and many of the old devotees will be left wanting.

Chuck Kuffner mentioned something about public domain possibly being the solution, affording independent producers and developers to play with the original concepts but respect them in ways that their current corporate owners don't seem to be doing. I was pondering "open source" cartooning for classic characters, and I wonder how old-timey cartoons that haven't had mega-corporation monsters like Walt Disney Corporation and AOL-TimeWarner Unconstitutionally hoarding the rights and lobbying for extended imprisonment of their cash-cows (or cash-mouses and cash-rabbits) have fared.

Has Popeye become public domain yet? What about Felix the Cat? What independent productions have starred these classics and have the revisualizations respected the original characters while successfully "porting" them into a modern or different setting? Which have failed miserably? What quality have the bootleg and pirated concepts with these characters been? How does that translate into dollars?

Thinking of this as Coke - New Coke - Coke Classic is one way to demonstrate that the public's disapproval can force a mega-corporation to relent on an unnecessary change. However, you can also ponder the Cherry Coke and other flavors of Coke in production as a lesson to be learned. After all, it's sodajerks and carhops that have been adding vanilla and cherry syrup and other flavors to Coke and Pepsi all this time that the big corporations took a long time to pick up on, package, and sell on their own.

If the Coca-Cola Corporation had the same rights as Disney and Time Warner have with their characters, you wouldn't have seen a Cherry Coke. Or a Diet Vanilla Pepsi. Or even Rum and Cokes, because using the original Coke with anything else for a new concept without Coke's permission would be forbidden.

Cherry Coke was a hit. On the other hand, Crystal Pepsi and Pepsi Blue and C-2 are, pretty much, failures. But it's the risk that needs to be run, because innovation can't always come out of thin air. Somethings, it has to build on the original concept.

I want to know what new and bold ideas are out there in the Ideasphere for these old concepts. They have become enough of an influence on the public that the public now has the right to influence them back, whether respectfully or not, and the public can determine for itself whether those interpretations and revisualizations thrive or fail. I want to experience the next natural stage in intellectual property rights evolution.

Whether you have two heads side-by-side or one hiding along your neck, it doesn't take both to know that indefinite corporate ownership of these icons is unnatural, unhealthy for the public, and unhealthy for the icons themselves. Forget Mumia and Mandela - free Mickey and Bugs now!