Slashdot Mirror
Is There Such A Thing As A Final Cut?
heidi writes "There's an insightful article over at CNN's entertainment section about the tinkering of recent cultural history. Apparently, there is no such thing as a final draft any more, and author Todd Leopold does a great job of showing how this is revisionist history at its, well, oddest. Aside from the many examples he cites, such as the 'new' Capote novel and the changing of Star Wars to show that Greedo shot first, i can think of the 'new' Camus novel that i read a few years ago and the way that The Wizard of Oz had the 'ding dong the witch is dead' song edited out. In an era where our entertainment has come to define us and to fill, however (un)completely, the spiritual void that we inherited from the Boomers, messing with our stories isn't necessarily a positive thing, creative genius aside."
I used to say the same thing about software.
An application is Beta until it's retired.
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
Did it make you cringe when you first heard one of your favorite songs used in a car commercial?? Damn you Modest Mouse, damn you...
To me, the final cut for music should be when they put it out on CD.. , with alterations allowed when I pay to see the performer live...
Not some 45 second edit of the song, playing the backdrop for a LandRover commercial.
~jennifer.k~
"Ding, dong, the witch is dead" was edited out of The Wizard of Oz? I don't get it. Why?
If you don't know where you are going, you will wind up somewhere else.
Well, there was that one Pink Floyd album released after The Wall...
Don't blame me, I voted for Kodos
How prophetic Orwell was...
Unpossible! Seriously, stop hiring 15 year olds as editors. Some of us actually paid enough attention in school to learn how to spell.
and what will all this re-editing and revision do to games like Star Wars Trivial Pursuit? man, there goes my one offline game :)
And there's the real victim of where we seem to be headed with intellectual property: our cultural history.
Picture the broadcast flag, coupled with on-demand movies. Toss in changes of the medium du jour crippled with mostly effective DRM, and you're losing history left and right. There's a new release of, say, E.T. on Blu-Ray. Everyone (not literally everyone, of course, but you get the idea) replaces their old, worn-out VHS (or Beta, in the case of my parents) tapes. Now there's very little evidence that there were ever guns in the movie.
Or pay-per-view/on demand becomes the common way of watching movies. The broadcast flag prevents keeping a copy, of course. So all you'll ever be able to see is the latest version of the movie. Hell, look at Dumbo: can you even buy a copy of the movie that still has the crows singing? They certainly don't show it on television.
Or how about Aladdin? I can't be the only person who remembers the opening song's lyric containing a line about cutting off your hand for stealing a loaf of bread. But good luck proving that it ever even existed - to the best of my knowledge, that didn't even make into the first release of the movie to stores, much less subsequent ones.
The more consumers lose control of the media they consume - not being able to make/keep copies, being forced into a subscription model of media delivery - the more this is going to happen. We've got the technical capacity right now to preserve a closer-to-perfect record of our culture than has ever existed in human history, and we're wasting it. It's being lost to political correctness, revisionist history, and George Lucas.
Reality has a conservative bias: it conserves mass, energy, momentum...
And where should we stop? Should we reprint and remove or rewrite politically uncorrect sequences and dialog from Anne Frank, Huck Finn, and Uncle Tom's cabin? I think not. Such revisionism hides whatever insights we might gain into the attitudes and social mores and culture of the time.
And in the case of, say, SW (ANH), replacing scenes and effects MAY make the movie look better, but it's not as we remembered it, and we lose all appreciation of the techniques and the cinematic "state of the art" available at the time. I still cringe every time I see the new, improved Death Star "ring" explosion.
Any sect, cult, or religion will legislate its creed into law if it acquires the political power to do so.
This is nothing new. To give a serious example, Charles Darwin issued six different editions of The Origin of Species during his lifetime. Each new edition contained material in response to reactions to previous editions. The phrases "evolution" and "survival of the fittest" were first introduced in these follow-on editions.
Most of these changes improved the book, but some did not. So, which edition is "definitive"?
The most rabid believers in American Exceptionalism are the exact same people whose policies are destroying it.
Should we reprint and remove or rewrite politically uncorrect sequences and dialog from Anne Frank, Huck Finn, and Uncle Tom's cabin?
As long as the original is still available, sure.
This is a shout out to any lame asses (you know who you are) who can \stomach\ episode IV with the ultra lame-dick \enhancements\ that were added. Get a life and watch the original. When I saw the "gee-wiz, look what I can do with FX" krap that was added, I almost blew chunks. Sure, deride me all you want you cultural cretins, but the original episode IV was a film making landmark, that Lucas in his divine SkyWalker Ranchette wisdom peed all over with his \enhancements\.
We play the game with the bravery of being out of range
The problem is, people think the edited version is the original, if they've never been exposed to any other.
People need to suck it up. If they're fragile psyche's can't handle it the way it is, then they should just avoid it entirely, rather than corrupt the author's original intent.
ad logicam Claiming a proposition is false because it was presented as the conclusion of a fallacious argument.
"Sure, Lucas can go back and revise history so Greedo shoots first<snip>"
You bet, that is Lucas' prerogative. You know what really grinds my gears, though? The fact that after Lucas does his new cut, the old ones are never to see the light of day. Outside of bootlegs, we will never see Greedo shoot first on DVD, or E.T. chased by gun toting F.B.I. agents. They will be stuck on a crappy medium (VHS) until those tapes stop working. Who even knows if the original 35mm prints are still saved.
This leads to the lapses in history. I couldn't believe when I watched a show about how ground breaking the special effects in Star Wars were back in 1977 and all the clips were from the re-release! They even played the clip with the Death Star exploding with the new enegery ring! Ughhhh.... That wasn't 1977, that was a couple of years ago.
Plus, it is only going to get worse. As the lack of creativity increases in Hollywood, you'll see more re-releases and remakes where the original is left in a dusty back-lot room someplace.
Bryan R.
The price of freedom is eternal vigilance, or $12.50 as seen on eBay.....
If you believe that movies are an artform (or at least an individual movie can be art) then it is terrible that movies can be modified regardless of whether it is done by the original Director or a evil mindless executive 40 years later. The important thing about art is that you can never consider a piece of art on its own, you must take into consideration who created it and in which time it was created; something that is often missed by people who want to edit movies.
I am reminded of a documentery I once saw; it was about a woman who was trying to prevent Disney from re-releasing The Jungle Book because she claimed that the song 'Like you' was racist. Essentially, for those who are unaquainted with the movie, the song is about how the chimps and monkeys want to be like men because of the things men can do. She claimed that the meaning behind the song was that black people wanted to be just like white people; her interpretation was correct but she forgot to take into consideration the time when the movie was created.
The Jungle Book movie was created well before Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat, and black people didn't really have many rights. The point of the song was a commentary against the state of affairs, and is probably the most important point in the movie from a cultural stand point; something potentially lost because of poor education in interpreting art.
If Aliens came to earth the police would be carrying around guns not walkie talkies; and if a bounty hunter was threating you you'd shoot him before he got the chance. I'm just waiting for Indiana Jones to have the Nazis removed in favor of Republicans.
(As with so many things) most of this controversy could be resolved merely by enforcing proper labeling. E.g. ET - The 2005 Revision ...which is, after all, just a matter of full disclosure. The goods being delivered have changed, thus their name should too.
Seeing bad movies only encourages them. Watch responsibly
I think you nailed it. History and readings of old cultural works almost always involves choosing between different versions of a story. People tinker to "improve" stories the same way they refine technologies.
The technology for revising video landed in the hands of Lucas and Disney et al first, so thealterations that heidi cites look like poor executive decisions at best, and PC censorship at worst. But that technology will soon be in the hands of the people (if it isn't already), which means finally video will belong to the people, who will begin editing out the PC, having Free Willy kill the kid, etc.
Political correctness is the new McCarthyism. The prosecution of thought-crime under the banner of 'diversity'. No art is sacred.
I don't buy it.
This is one of the big fallacies of IP. I saw the original film, hell most everyone here did. When that happened, it ceased to be his movie and became our memory...The proof of that is the whole "Han Shot First" contraversy. We all knew it had been changed, though it took him a while to admit it. In this, he's not only messing with "his" movie, but our minds as well.
You can't release something to the world, and then work to eradicate it 20 years later because you changed your mind about what you meant. Frankly, I am of the opinion that, when he decided the original version wasn't the "real" version anymore, and discontinued it, it ceased to be his property.
The purpose of IP law is to allow artists to make money off their creations for a reasonable time, not to give them unlimited control over all derivations of their work, for years and years to come, and certainly not to say, "Just foolin" and try to remove a released work from its rightful place in the public domain.
ad logicam Claiming a proposition is false because it was presented as the conclusion of a fallacious argument.
In an era where our entertainment has come to define us and to fill, however (un)completely, the spiritual void that we inherited from the Boomers,...
The Boomers inherited their "spiritual void" from the genocidal war that killed 70 million people a decade before they were born, and the 'Great War' twenty years before that slaughtered an entire generation of European males for nothing.
Plus the boomers inherited an insane structure of military leaders on both sides of the Berlin Wall that were ready, willing, and able to burn the world and kill everyone over a minor disagreement of political doctrine.
What is considered the 'spiritual void' of the Boomers is actually a reasonable and humanistic retreat from the religious cult of omnicide (the destruction of all human life on earth) that infused the leaders of the world when the boomers came to maturity.
As for the sexuality of those who create the myths and plays of our culture, it is their concern. We admire the characters that they create, and respect the skills of the writers and actors that created them. If the actors wish to exclaim that an aspect of their personality, such as their sexuality, was an important aspect of their development of the character that they created, then fine.
If you want to make an apple pie from scratch, you must first create the universe. -- Carl Sagan
Is this good or bad? I think it's neither. It's a tool. It can be used well, or used poorly. Sure, Lucas can go back and revise history so Greedo shoots first, but he can also go back and clean up the lousy compositing in the Rancor pit, fix the transparency in the Hoth battle sequences, etc.
Bah, forget the process, some people just think that Lucus is a tool.
I would tend to distinguish art from software, I don't want to see art subject to unnecessary revisions, software is generally much more utilitarian than art. The compositing errors aren't a big deal to me, I would consider it part of the charm. Heck, for example, fixing Ed Wood movies would eliminate the reason to watch them.
Colorizing was doing your best to re-insert something that was present in the original, but lost due to technological limitations. What Lucas is doing is changing his mind the morning after.
Why do we care about the author's original intent?
Because the original work gained a reputation, and applying that reputation to other works which are miscontrued as to be the originals is forgery.
Also, who are we to edit the great works? Many people alive to day think that Shakespeare was a genius, but if all we had of his works were the re-written scripts of the nineteenth century (which Dickens delighted in making such fun of in Nicholas Nickelby) then today we would consider his works second-rate mawkish melodrama.
The Oz disc should have carried a warning label: PARENTAL ADVISORY: All edginess and potential embarassment has been deleted from this film in order to prevent creating a topic for conversation. Watching this film may cause symptoms of mental sluggishness. If extreme stupidity occurs, discontinue use. If symptoms persist, consult a physician,
"Will future ages believe that such stupid bigotry ever existed!" -- Ivanhoe