Parabasis

Our Mythology Under Lock and Key

By Isaac Butler

I'm guessing 0% of the readers of Parabasis failed to notice that Disney has aquired Lucasfilm to the tune of $4.05 billion dollars (or roughly 63 Spider-Men).  Much attention has focused on the Mouse's decision to churn out a new Star Wars movie every few years, with people worried, after the prequels, about what little legacy of quality that franchise has left. 

I'm a little less concerned about that.  What I am concerned about is Disney's ongoing intellectual property aquisition strategy. 

Disney owns Pixar, Marvel Comics and Lucasfilm. This means they own Buzz and Woody, Indiana Jones, Luke and Leah and Han (who shot first, damnit). They own Captain America and the X-Men. They own Luke Cage and Iron Fist. They own Daredevil. They own Jareth. They own the gang from American Graffiti. They own the Brownies from Willow. On top of this, they continue to own the properties they've created as well.  Mickey and Minnie. Belle. Ariel. Ursula. 

Disney is also one of the prime movers behnd the Copyright Extension Act of 1998.  In fact, their lobbying efforts in favor of the bill were so intense that it got nicknamed The Mickey Mouse Protection Act (poor Mickey was about to enter the public domain and who knows what the grubby plebes would've done with him!). As I wrote about over at Howlround, the copyright term extension act insures that no works have entered the public domain since, and none will enter until 2019.

Now, 2019 is only seven years away (I hear you exclaim).  I don't want to be hysterical here, but I seriously, seriously doubt Disney is going to roll over and let Mickey enter the public domain that easily.  I would guess that, in the lead-up to 2019, we'll be looking at a serious effort on the part of Disney and other Intellectual Property-based companies to continue extending the copyright term another twenty years or so.

What this means is that Disney is hoarding up the closest thing 20th and 21st century culture has to folk tales and mythology, and locking them up in a safe where we can't touch it without getting sued. As artists, we should be deeply troubled by this. And for those of you who think that things like Fair Use and Parody exemptions will protect, you're wrong. It's not like a lawsuit magically goes away because it's spurious. It costs money to fight these things, as David Adjmi recently found out .  As This American Life discussed in the software industry, overly expansive IP laws combined with powerful, litigious companies are a toxic combination that squeezes out creativity and limits the possibility of what we can achieve.

This is what you should be worried about. Not what Star Wars VII might look like, but what our work begins to look like when our shared mythology is off limits.

Here's the thing though: there is no way to solve this problem without giving something up.  And that something is the amount of time our own copyright over our own work lasts. Fair Use is an ad hoc system cobbled together by appellate judges. It's chaotic and contradictory and not a lasting solution.  Parody exemptions don't work when you have to bankrupt yourself to prove them. The only way this problem gets better is if we creative folk fight to lower the amount of time that copyright lasts to something more reasonable and more fitting with copyright's original stated mission of encouragin creativity and the useful arts. 

That means that we as writers need to get used to our work going into the public domain sooner.  Possibly within our lifetimes. I know that it feels like we're giving something up. But for most of us, we aren't. The current copyright system only really protects the very wealthy and the very well-known, those who can still make money off their work decades after it was made.  The number of Van Goghs in this world are few and far between. Just like with our tax system, I don't think we want to be supporting a regime that benefits the few and powerful simply because we hope to one day be one of them.

Today in shameless self-promotion...

Read my thoughts on seriality, addiction, and Victorian novels over at Points: the Blog of the Alcohol and Drugs History Society. This is the first of three posts--next week, I'll look at The Wire's relationship to 12-step recovery culture, and then in two weeks, I'll write about daytime soaps and the relationship between gender and addiction.

Also, check out their backlog! There's some really fantastic stuff there.

Declassified

by 99 Seats

I have been crazy-super-busy of late, but I did have time to see ARGO. Which is a pretty fine film, all told, despite the very bizarre choice of casting Ben Affleck as a man named Tony Mendez (it's funny watching the movie hold back his last name as long as it possibly can). Affleck is a confident, assured director, the movie looks good and the story is pretty compelling. It also fits in the sweet spot for "based on a true story" type deals: the story is new and unknown enough that the outcome is in doubt the whole time, even if you kind of know that it's not in doubt at all. The supporting cast, particular John Goodman, Alan Arkin and Scoot McNairy, is all grand. So...yay, good movie!

But, of course, during the movie, I couldn't get the other spectacle of the week out of my head: Mitt Romney's attempt to "gotcha" President Obama during the town hall debate over the administration's shifting rationales for the attack on the embassy in Benghazi. It was clearly one of the most compelling moments of the debate and, even the campaign. And, ahead of the "foreign policy" debate on Monday, it's looking to loom large in the rest of the campaign.

The moment was interesting not just for the failed gotcha, or the live fact-checking, but also because it offered a quick glimpse into the fevered world of the far right. Romney was caught completely flat-footed by the facts. He was totally convinced that President Obama hadn't used the phrase "act of terror." This is a shibboleth on the right, something that, over the last few months, has become an article of faith. Except for the fact that not only is not true, it's easy to show that it's objectively not true. And yet, conservatives believe it. In fact, it's so important to their beliefs that they're now engaged in semantic hair-splitting to back up their larger point: for some nefarious reason, the administration is invested in covering up the circumstances of the Benghazi's attack.

Josh Marshall and Talking Points Memo have done really great work following this line of thinking on the right. They also note that, in the WaPo, David Ignatius is reporting that the CIA supports the "smoking gun" of the Benghazi myth: Susan Rice's description of the attack as at least partially springing from protests over the much-reviled Innocence of Muslims video, hastily arranged and not professionally carried out. Of course, there remains an ongoing investigation, so it's likely more facts will come to light.

But, after seeing ARGO, I think there's a larger point about how government works, especially in regards to national security, to consider. Because this isn't the first time the charge of "shifting narratives" has come into play for the Obama administration: similar charges were made about the story of the assassination of Osama bin Laden. I think it's easy to lapse into cynicism and paranoia about all of this, especially after the Bush years and their vast politicization of the national security infrastructure (threat level Orange, anyone?), but, beyond that, there's the very real question of how much honesty does our government owe us, particularly about actions outside of our borders.

For those who don't know, Argo tells the story of the rescue of six US embassy workers and diplomats from Tehran after the fall of the Shah and the taking of the US embassy there, when 52 hostages were taken. The film does a great job of capturing the chaos and unpredictability of that time, both here in the US and in Iran. Revolutions are messy, sometimes scary things, as we all know, and the Iranian revolution was no different (for another great take on it, you simply must read/see Persepolis, if you haven't). At any time, the US diplomats in Tehran could be captured, killed, tortured. A CIA agent develops a just-crazy-enough-to-work plan to get the 6 diplomats, who are hiding in the residence of the Canadian ambassador, out: have them pretend to be a film crew, complete with a whole fake movie. The play is indeed just crazy enough to work and so it does...at great personal and professional risk for all of the CIA agents involved. And when it does work, their great job is celebrated in their office for a few seconds and then classified and buried. In the film, that indignity is compounded by the official cover story: that the Canadians (CANADIANS!) pulled it all off on their own. (In addition to the casting issue, there does seem to be some legit controversy about the portrayal of the Canadian ambassador who is mostly seen nobly cowering in fear.) It's grimly noted that, if the CIA had taken credit, the remaining hostages would have paid the price. So no credit was given, an award was given in a secret, private ceremony and then immediately taken back and not conferred until the '90s. There's a great, stiff-upper-lip, all-for-country feel to the latter part of the movie. They don't do it for the glory, these CIA agents.

I'm kidding a bit, but it does raise the obvious question about current events: is it really so implausible that the CIA (and the FBI, which is investigating the Benghazi attack) would want a false story about our working theory of the attack to be the "official" word? Let's say you're the person who pulled off a successful, well-planned and coordinated attack and you hear that we're looking at a disorganized spontaneous attack. Maybe you'd lower your guard a little bit and not expect to get caught. I mean, I just watch a whole lot of cop shows and this is a pretty common ploy. Let's remember that this is still the investigation of a crime.

But there is also the larger picture. A lot of the current dissatisifaction with the administration from the left comes in the realm of "national security," how wars are prosecuted and how the government decribes it. I'm not arguing that the government has complete latitude to tell its people untruths (again, see the Bush years for the worst of that), but...isn't there some room for, well, less than truthiness, in service of larger goals, that may not be obvious to us here? I can see how attractive the charges of "liar" are, especially to the GOP, whose standard bearer has, shall we say, a bit of a problem with that. But I can also see how compelling the desire to "get to the bottom" of things is. It's just not always appropriate. Argo hasn't really entered the political conversation (and it shouldn't...it's a pretty apolitical movie), but it does reflect our time. Carter lost the 1980, in no small part, because of his perceived weakness on the Iran hostage crisis. Having the Canadians take credit for a major coup must have added fuel to the fire, but still, they took the hit. I'm glad that the Obama administration is standing up with some passion (I don't think he needed an anger translator for that section of the debate), but I'd also like them to articulate a little more clearly how it fits into his vision of how government works.

The Curious Case of The Mountaintop

By Isaac Butler

So.  According to TCG, the fifth most produced regional play for the 2012-2013 is (or will be) Katori Hall's The Mountaintop. It's not atypical for plays that have been on Broadway and garnered box office success to end up making the regional rounds. One of the other top ten plays is The Motherfucker With the Hat. What I cannot recall, however, is a play that garnered such a cool reception from both critics and awards voters ending up in the list. (Here, for example, isMotherfucker's Stagegrade). 

I was not a fan of The Mountaintop (I saw an earlier workshop of the play with different actors although I'm told the text remained largely the same) and I didn't see Hurt Village. I was living in another state during both productions. I am, however, a fan of Katori Hall in general, both as a human being and as an artist.

Certainly, there are plenty of cases of shows and playwrights that are regularly ignored by New York winding up on the list.  Amy Freed's The Beard of Avon was a regional sensation prior to coming to New York, Steven Dietz is regularly produced everywhere except, it seems, for the isle of Manhattan. But it's an interesting moment, to have this show blowing up regionally despite its reception here. So her seeing more success is, I think, a good thing.

 But I remain befuddled by the play's post-Broadway success. The cynical way to look at is that it is cheap (it's a one-set two hander) and, given the star studded nature of its Broadway cast (which featured Samuel L. Jackson and Angela Bassett) it will have name recognition despite what critics said. 

But there's also another, more hopeful way to think about this.  Perhaps this shows a lessening of Brantley and Isherwood's influence over what regional producers will program.  The running joke about Isherwood, after all, is that as the #2 reviewer at the Times and the one most likely to encounter and review mainstreamish new work, he is the de facto literary manager of American Regional Theater.  But if American Regional Theater is going to be truly regional, which is to say, focused on its region, producing plays that don't have a great pull quote from the Times is important.

Meanwhile, in this profile written by Alexis Soloski, Katori Hall talks about her work's critical reception:

Yet American critics didn’t warm to the play as the English ones had, and it received no Tony nominations. Hall attributes this difference to U.S. attitudes toward King. Americans, she believes, prefer to see King as a saint rather than a man. Her play desires the opposite, as when Camae scents King’s shoes and crows, “Dr. Kang got stanky feet. Oooo! And you got holes in your socks, too?” Besides, says Hall, displaying some of the outspokenness she often reveals in interviews and in her lively Twitter feed, “I think critics tend to be dismissive toward young women writers anyway.”

Certainly, they didn’t react any more kindly to her next play, Hurt Village, which launched her tenure as one of Signature Theatre’s “Residency Five” playwrights, a five-year program that commissions and produces three plays per writer. James Houghton, the artistic director of the Signature, who had seen a workshop of Hurt Village during Hall’s time at Juilliard, calls Hall “fierce” and “fearless” and the play “an incredibly powerful piece of writing.” Set in a derelict housing project slated for demolition, it centers on Cookie, a mouthy, precocious 13-year-old, and the drug-doers, drug dealers and hard-scrabblers who surround her. “Folks round here so po’ we can’t even afford the r at the end,” Cookie tells us.

Only a few critics applauded the production, and several wrote reviews revealing a refusal to engage with the play and its characters. In some ways, Hall seems resigned to such analyses. “I can’t make them learn about being poor and black in Memphis, Tennessee,” she says, even as the play attempts to do just that. But then she adds, rather more darkly, “I must say, those critics do not want to be in a bar with me.”

There are a couple of inaccuracies in this section.  First off, critics did not ding the play for its desire to paint Dr. King as a man rather than a saint.  If anything, the Stagegrade roundup that the article links to leaves the reader with the opposite impression: that critics believed the play to be at times too saccharine and idealized (or to use David Cote's formulation "mawkish" and "triumphalis[t]"). In addition, most critics responded negatively to the production as much as the play, disliking the "miscast" leads (who were both over a decade older than the parts they were playing).  Critical reception of Hurt Village was also significantly better. Critics gave The Mountaintop a C- with the most frequent grade being in the D range, while giving Hurt Village a B, with the B rangealso marking the data set's mode. The reason why "only a few critics" applauded it is that half as many critics reviewed Hurt Village.

  Alexis is right about the lower-end reviews in Hurt Village reflecting a lack of willingness to engage with it.  I did the Stagegrade for that show and came away from those reviews disgusted-- actually revolted-- by some of what I read. For many years here at Parabasis we've advocated for and talked about ways to increase diversity in theater programming.  The trouble some critics have with actually  seeing the work in front of them when they confront cultural difference is a serious barrier to those efforts. 

 

Two Quick Thoughts Re: "Binders Full of Women"

By isaac Butler

(1) Binders Full of Women is clearly the meme of the night, giving birth to, amongst other things, this magical tumblr. But if you actuall look at the transcript, at the substance of what Romney said... what he was actually articulating was a robust case for and textbook example of affirmative action at work. He looked at his staff, it didn't have enough women in it, he put in great effort to try to fix this problem. He was, to put it in right wing parlance, showing "preference" for women which means (given the limited number of jobs available in his administration) "discriminating" against male candidates.  But when you actually explain what that "preference" and "discrimination" look like, and when you describe the problem that needed to be solved, it doesn't really seem so scary. This is no different from what colleges do when they take into account race as one of many factors in deciding who will attend their schools. Somehow, now that he's the candidate, I doubt that many on the Right will mind this.

(2) This is why I was quite disappointed as a human (although excited as a partisan) to find out that Romney's "Binder Full of Women" story is actually a lie.  The binder full of women was put together by a women's advocacy group before the winner of the election was known and presented to Governor-elect Romney as part of a concerted effort to get him to hire more women. Which he did. But the women he hired he tended to put in charge of departs he either did not care about or was in the process of trying to eliminate. He took, in other words, an opportunity to increase diversity and instead practiced tokenism. Maybe he was a right winger all along after all. 

Let's Not Get Hysterical Here...

By Isaac Butler

BoingBoing points our attention today to leaked documents from AT&T that state that " if a customer is flagged 4-5 times for copyright infringement, AT&T, Comcast, Cablevision, Time Warner Cable, and Verizon will block access to unspecified "popular sites" until the customer completes an 'online education tutorial on copyright.'" 

That seems like a pretty shitty way to treat your customers, AT&T!  But BoingBoing decides to get a case of the vapors over this, calling the practice "send[ing] you to Copyright Reeducation Gulag," and quoting their tipster "David" as calling it "Soviet...  continuous surveillance that judges you via a faceless bureaucracy without appeal, and punishes you by blocking access to information until you come back from re-education camp. "

Guys. Chiill out.  I'm all in favor of loosening and adjusting copyright laws to encourage creativity and, you know, recognize fucking reality, but let's not get hysterical here. Your being asked to wade through some bureaucratic bullshit and fill out a few forms because you tried to watch Downton Abbey six months early is more akin to AT&T forcing you to go to the copyright DMV.  It's a minor hassle and inconvenience. The gulag on the other hand...

The Joke's On... Who?

By Isaac Butler

Making the rounds of the internet today is TheaterMania's new "Bros On Broadway" review of Cyrano. Reading it last night, part of me thought this feature a soup-to-nuts disaste while part of me thought it a hilarious, borderline work of genius.  Now I don't know what to think.

To recap: Josh Macin, a bro par excellance-- he's a barback and martial arts champion-- is sent by theatermania to see and review Cyrano, having never seen a play before. He ends up sending back such insights as:

The show started off with a lot of talking. The curtain went up, and a bunch of people onstage dressed like pictures in history books just started talking. I didn't know why, and I couldn't make sense of it. What sounded like animal noises eventually became recognizable words only after I realized every line was a rhyme.

Obviously, the POV here is a bit exagerated in that post-Tucker Max way and kinda fun up to a point (like all post-Tucker Max writing, all the broing gets boring).  But I couldn't help thinking while reading it about Howard Shapiro.

Shapiro, Philadelphia's lone full-time theater critic, just took a buyout from his home base at the Inquirer and will be freelancing from now on. That's right, Philadelphia, a city whose theater scene is, by reputation, pretty vibrant, will no longer have a full time critic. And as fun as experiments like TheaterMania's are, I worry about the compelte deprofessionalization of criticism and I worry even more about the growing idea that an ignorant opinion is of equivolent-- or even greater-- value than a learned one. I say this as someone who has been a nonprofessional for most of my writing career. 

The rise of the amateur critic in theatre has not been an unmitigated success. Particularly in the field of indie theatre where I cut my teeth, it's been a bit of a mixed bag. Yes, there are exciting, vibrant artists whom we never would've heard of without reviwers willing to spread the word for no pay.  But there's also at times a culture within that scene of relentless boosterism, of people publicly overpraising the work of their friends-- or of those they hope to one day work or be friends with-- to such an extent that I worry that we'll lose all sense of rigor.  I've probably benefited from this dynamic too, so complaining about it seems odd, but it's something I see that troubles me.

And yet. I do think it's important to have the non-expert and the non-professional voices in the mix (those are two different voices, btw, not every professional critic is really an expert and vice versa). If you overvalue expertise, you encourage the kind of insularity that's become problematic in both experimental theater and poetry circles, where the body of knowledge necessary for even cursory-level entry into the form is so high that most won't bother. If you undervalue it, then everything becomes about mere opinion of a work and, well, you know what they say about opinions and assholes.

Compared To What?

by Isaac Butler

Over at his joint, friend of the room Freddie DeBoer is continuing the make the case for voting against and loudly criticizing Obama. Additionally, he is addressing how narrow we on the left allow the acceptable conversation to be, to the point where we don't allow people to voice criticisms we ourselves agree with because the "time" isn't right.  Freddie further points out that to many, the time is never right. While I'll be voting for Obama and do, indeed, wonder if now is really the best of times to be bringing this stuff up. I do actually think criticisms of Obama (particualrly on foreign policy) are valid and need to be expressed publicly and be part of the conversation. There is a difference between wondering if now is the best time for something and saying that one shouldn't do it.

 I also think that, regardless of people's critiques from the left re: the President, that people should vote for him anyway, because the alternative so much, much worse on just about every issue.  I also think that a better way (not a "more appropriate" but just better) to deal with this stuff is a primary challenge. 

I also think that a better use of people's time and passion would be electing better Democrats on smaller levels than President, who has to be elected by, you know, everybody. In many ways, I think that Democrats have made a large tactical error by focusing so much passion on the Presidency and so little on local, state, and congressional elections. In other words, we need to get back to that slogan from eight years ago of Electing Better Democrats.

This is all a long throat clearing to Freddie' posed hypothetical: Would I be saying all of this if Zell Miller (or, more realistically, Joe Lieberman) was the Democratic nominee?

And I think it depends, as all of the questions re: Obama and his policies on answering the question... "Compared to what?" What are the rules of the universe we're talking about here?

Because it is worth noting that we're already going pretty heavy into a counterfactual universe just to get Joementum on the ticket. He'd have to no longer be an independent. No longer be viewed as a pariah by the rank and file of the party. And he'd actualy have to be able to win most of the primaries which he was unable to do when he ran in the past. This gets us back to the point: The primaries are how we deal with this stuff. Joe Lieberman was an unacceptable candidate. So he'd suddenly have to become an acceptable one without changing his positions on anything for this hypothetical to work.

Okay then.  So who he is running against? Is he running against Mitt Romney representing the current Republican Party?

I hate to say it, but were that the case, I probably would still vote for him, even though I hate him. Because the alternative would still be worse on domestic policy even though it would likely be actually identical on foreign policy and, to paraphrase Noam Chomsky, voting for the lesser of two evils still gets you less evil. But I would also work my ass off in the primaries to try to ensure he never got to the nomination in the first place. And once he got it, I would pour my energy and money into supporting progressive congressional candidates because the legislature can do a lot to stymie a shitty President's shitty agenda.

Why Do You Vote?

By Isaac Butler

The comments to 99's recent post, this post by George, this post by Freddie and  writing on the subject over at TBogg and Balloon Juice have got me a thinkering...

It seems to me the main issue here is a fundamentally disconnect on questions fo why we vote for President. I simply do not believe that in our current governmental system and the rules of how the Federal Government works that voting for President is a moment for personal self-expression. I believe it's a moment when we choose between the available options on who would do the best job running the Executive Branch of the country, which includes managing an enormous bureaucracy, appointing a wide slate of other executives (and judges) and working with the Legislative Branch to craft and pass laws.  There is no way that any candidate who is not a Republican or a Democrat can reasonbly be said to have the capacity to do those things, as many of them involve working with an entrenched two party system in the legistative branch.

I think there are all sorts of times when voting is to some (or even a large) extent about "voting one's conscience." Voting for specific bills, for example. Or voting in primaries. Since Freddie brings up this issue let me just say: I would've supported a primary challenge to Obama from the left. I might've even voted for whomever it was.  But it is simply a category error (in my view) to apply this rubric to the vote for President, because the President is not a King and does not single-handedly have the power to enact laws or fix problems.  

In this instance, it's helpful to think about many of Obama's larger failures as President.  Many of them can be traced to the legislature rather than to him. Cap and Trade was passed by the House and died in the Senate.  Olympia Snowe was never going to vote for a larger stimulus. Ben Nelson was never going to vote for a Public Option. Closing Guantanamo was a nonstarter.  The White House proposed a much stricter financial reform bill than what they got. 

Furthermore, the reason why Obama has been such a disappointment on civil liberties, international law and foreign policy is because (say it with me now) the. progressive. positions. on. these. issues. have. no. constituency. and. are. not. popular. It seems to me that, were one passionate about chanings these issues, changing that reality is where your money and time should be going. Not that you can't do both! I have friends who are! 

However, this is all because of what I think a vote for President is really for.  You might disagree. I'd love to know: Why do you vote for President? What is a vote for President for to you?