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."
Now that Geoge Takei has come out, there will probably be some revision of Star Trek films for some Red States, where it's still illegal to be a homosexual starship commander.
"Make it the commander Ronald Reagan."
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
I recognize all of these words individually, but strung together like this they make absolutely no sense.
(oh, and Han shot first...in bed.)
Mox
"Movies are never finished, only abandoned."
It's just not possible to get a movie -- or any artistic work, whether we're talking serious art or pop culture -- to the state where it's absolutely, 100% perfect. There's always some fine tuning, some tweaking, and at some point you have to say "That's it, we're done." It's not completely bug-free, but you've fixed all the big problems and you've gotta ship it sometime.
But with re-releases, DVDs, special screenings, etc. (and sufficient funding), people have the opportunity to go back and do a director's cut, or release two versions of a film (one short enough for theaters, one for people who can hit "pause" and take a bathroom break in the middle), or go back and fix that embarrasment of a first novel that you wrote when you were young and didn't understand the craft of writing as well as you do now.
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.
CAPITALIZE I!
Ask Apple :)
Absolutely!
I've found that my posts don't format quite right w/o a sig.
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~
In a way it's good that a director can go back to their film and put bits in that they had orgionally intended to be in the movie, but as with star wars they have to be careful that the don't alienate existing fans...
Schrodinger's cat- A cat is put in a sealed box. Attached to which is a radioactive nucleus and a canister of poison gas
"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.
Legend holds that Shakespeare *never* rewrote any of his plays or poems. He didn't even bother to cross out anything as he wrote. But then, we're not all Shakespeare's are we? Still I think there's something to be said for leaving well enough alone. When we change what we believe is a flaw, it also changes much of the original genius and beauty of a work.
Well, there was that one Pink Floyd album released after The Wall...
Don't blame me, I voted for Kodos
> from the this-post-to-be-re-edited-for-future-audiences dept.
n ce dept.
from the this-post-to-be-re-edited-for-the-very-same-audie
The Louvre announced that it was lowering the bustline of the Mona Lisa to attract more visitors.
Almost always.
I've found that my posts don't format quite right w/o a sig.
It's fine to go back and rework something to make it better as long as the reworked version is labeled as such. I think it is deceptive to present something as the "classic Hollywood masterpiece" as some stations do and then show a version which has been edited for content (other than swear words and nudity in the case of the networks).
Sure, artistic tinkering is nice and all. Get that movie to match up more exactly with your vision just like a software update. The reason that this happens is because it is profitable. How many people bought the first DVD of Lord of the Rings and then bought the extended version when it came out months later? An 'updated' release allows the movie companies to pretend that there's something really new and start a marketing campaign. Not unlike drug companies finding 'new' uses for their drugs in order to extend the patent.
As long as people keep buying them, they'll keep producing them.
steampunk web design
How prophetic Orwell was...
Unfortunately with political correctness becoming the norm, I don't see things like this not happening. Anti smoking advocates already scream if a movie shows a "good guy" smoking. How hard would it be to start protesting old movies that contain positive images of smoking?
Genius is one percent inspiration and 99 percent perspiration, which is why engineers sometimes smell really bad.
What they have been showing of TV just isn't the same anymore. There's a whole lot of stuff involving Mongo that got cut out. Much of it is some of the funniest stuff in the movie.
Sad really.
A goal is a dream with a deadline
As for movies, these are art - as the artist sees fit, they can muck about with their creations. Ownership though, can be a little fuzzy, if for example the rights are owned by a company and not an individual.
Curb CO2 emissions: Kill yourself today!
...then what is Apple charging for?
Unpossible! Seriously, stop hiring 15 year olds as editors. Some of us actually paid enough attention in school to learn how to spell.
This revisionist film-making has to stop.
Sam
My guess is no because even the Pink Floyd album The Final Cut was re-released/re-cut in 2004
But as we saw, it was followed by a reunion of Gilmour and Waters.
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
Yea but look at how long it took them to write that.
A goal is a dream with a deadline
"I hate to advocate drugs, alcohol, violence or insanity but they've always worked for me" - HST
99.999% of the past is not just irrelevant, but harmful, in my opinion.
Do we ever learn that politicians are liars?
Do we ever learn that war is worthwhile?
Do we ever learn to marry the right person at the right time?
Do we ever learn to stop making video games about blockbuster movies?
To me, change is good. As a society, my fellow citizens are more and more unable to adapt. Look at steel tariffs and help desk outsourcing.
Our best 0.001% of anything never need changes. The rest is dust in the wind. Take an imperfect story, product or relationship and keep redoing it unitil it is perfect for the parties involved. Future generations should do the same.
That's why I hate copyright, patents and government licensing.
Circumcision - one cut away from the final...
You can't handle the truth.
Most of the time there's a final cut. Sometimes you just have to revise.
I've found that my posts don't format quite right w/o a sig.
The bible has been "translated" and revised throughout history. Not sure about holy works from other religions but I would imagine it is similar.
Is that a ding I hear? GET BACK IN THE MAGIC HOUSE!!!
And Lucas certainly showed how to do that, editing out the actor who originally played Darth Vader, his face and likeness. I was rather disgusted by that tawdryness.
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
considering that many art scholars believe the Mona List is a self portrait.
A goal is a dream with a deadline
Connie Willis wrote about this years ago, in a novella called "Remake." In it, an angst-ridden young man working for some hollywood company digitally edits old movies based on the mores and whims of the whatever passes for political correctness. For instance, throughout most of the story, he's editing scenes in old movies, taking out all references to alchohol. He digitally changes drinks into... other things.
It predates the Steven Spielberg South Park episode by several years, but otherwise is almost identical. Guns replaced with walkie-talkies. That's just funny.
Microsoft is to software what Budweiser is to beer.
Just take a look at a few of this last years issues of Wired Magazine. A couple of the covers talk about the "remix culture." And articles on the inside are all about Creative Commons, Remixing ideas, Freeing IP (not addresses). Right now it seems culture is in an "unstable state." It like we want to try new things, but just can't seem to let go of the cultural items of the past. So we rework those things that are "safe" and "comfortable." Just give it a couple years for the influence of Baby Boomers to fade from entertainment, media, etc. and then we should have another influx of new ideas.
Translated, yes; but can you show any tangible proof that it's been changed?
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...
"A conclusion is the place where you got tired thinking" --Martin H. Fischer
HAN SHOT FIRST!
But there is definitely no such thing as a "Final" Fantasy.
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.
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
Of course.
That would help explain why we can go to Bible.com search for 24 different English versions, and 91 International versions with links to 140 different language editions. Be sure to read #7 and #8 here:
Why My Religion is Right and Yours is Wrong
- or -
The Flawed Logic of "The One True Path"
[Full Disclosure: I wrote the linked article]
- Brian
Back in the day (about 200 years ago) a composer like Beethoven revised his symphonies between performances. The idea of having a "final cut" probably grew out of the use of mass production to make copies. Given the Internet, we will probably see far fewer "final cuts" in the future.
Hmm .. I think you only say that because you may be blind to the changes that have gone on in the past, and the changes that are currently going on.
.. to modern day English to ebonics (and I am sure there is one out there). Each translation will change the sense of the text depending on who it was who translated it. As a comparison ... run something twice through babel fish and see what comes out.
In the begining (well maybe not that long ago) there were some pretty big arguments over what things went into the bible. For example one of these things were the Apocrypha, which were out then in then out again. (Do I see a directors cut/special edition cut that includes the sections that were dropped?)
Let alone the translation from whatever to Greek to Latin to English
I just found this interesting link The Pre-Reformation History of the Bible From 1,400 BC to 1,400 AD
So to say that the Bible is permanent and forever is misleading and ignorrant of the history of that document.
I am Slashdot. Are you Slashdot as well?
Let's not forget Gillian's Brazil; completed edited ending which changed the whole tone of the story. The DVD box set is very illuminating just to see the 'original' vs the studio forced 'happy ending' version. As the old saying goes, the marriage of art and commerence is a an awkward one. Of course there will always be purests on the other side raising the red flag. For me it's the CD 'reissues' where they tack on 'bonus songs' after the original album, it's so frustrating! Think if they did a perfect reproduction print of a Picasso for sale; and then tacked on some sketches that he worked on around the same time on top of the print! It ruins the whole artistic design and mars the original. The only exception to this is when the 'artist' reissues stuff, with the freedom to produce the art as they originally wanted, as with my Brazil example above, there have been a few of those in music, but not enough.
fak3r.com
Parent was intended as a quick troll, I know, but those with more interest might want to google "Council of Carthage".
Ph-nglui mglw'nafh Gates M'dna wgah'nagl fhtagn.
Of course Han shot first. This whole "Greedo shot first" is nothing more than the opinion of George Lucas.
So what if he wrote the story? After he tells the story to me, it exists in my brain. The version in my brain is under my control. It ends however I want it to end.
Any well-told work transcends its author. To limit your interpretations of it to those in the mind of the author is to accept an outright blasphemous form of mental slavery.
A free mind has many voices, both inner and outer, and the author of a work of art is just one more outer voice.
Do not surrender your power.
I think, just like software, other forms of media should have numeric version numbers. This way, when the "developer" ruins future releases, we can easily refer back to earlier, superior versions. /missing Journalism version 1.0
I don't mind when extra footage is available. I liked seeing the extra footage in "Lord of the Rings" extended version, for example. One of my favorite things to do is to watch the outtakes in the bonus material on a DVD. Some extra clips are good, some you can see why it was left out of the finished movie. A lot of times, I wish that I could play the movie with the option of adding back in those outtakes.
I feel they should leave it to the viewer as to whether or not they want to see the original version or the revised version. With digital technology, couldn't they have two versions on a DVD: one version with all the chapters, including the revisions, and one version that leaves out the extra chapters? It seems like that would be fairly simple to do (though I don't really know the technology behind that). That way, the consumer gets what they want, and the studios could sell to both camps, possibly increasing their sales in the process.
Unfortunately, I know that is a naive wish, because Directors are Artists (with a capital A), and they want to have the final say on their Grand Vision.
Sig cancelled due to lack of interest
Not just because I was thinking the same thing, though - but because you have to think of culture in monetary terms, because that's how the producers treat it. There's not much call these days for soap operas done on cuneiform, but it's not because it's an outmoded communicative medium - it's because people wouldn't buy it. However, there's huge bank to be had in reworking already-filmed-&-paid-for pieces that maybe a few more collectors will buy. (Not sure about the drug company analogy though honestly.)
Intelligent Design: because MATH is HARD.
Let's see if i can remember a few things from the history class on the old testament i took in college. The mistranslation of "Reed Sea" into "Red Sea." There's a decent amount of evidence that Yahweh had a wife at one point but she got edited out later. There was at least one point where stuff was codified and a lot of stories, which were just as "valid" as the ones where were kept, were dropped for political or cultural reasons. It's been about six years since i took the class, but i can tell you for sure that anyone who thinks the bible hasn't ever changed is either a fundamentalist (and therefore willing to completly ignore historical evidence) or delusional.
This Space Intentionally Left Blank
Yes .. you can .. see my post further down .. there have been arguments throughout the ages as to what should be included in the Bible.
I am Slashdot. Are you Slashdot as well?
The ultimate revisionist history: Wikipedia.
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
I understand The Sopranos film two versions of every scene, one for HBO and one for future syndication to broadcast televison. And we're all familiar with audio dubbing and pan-and-scan to create broadcast-ready versions of movies.
Changes for DVD and theatrical re-issue are natural extensions of these alternations, made possible by the evolution of both the market for and technology of filmed entertainment.
org.slashdot.post.SignatureNotFoundException: ewg
Hey mods, the parent appears to be accurate and the story's submitter's info a little off.
As the parent says, IMDB shows no mention of removal of this song. And a few minutes of googling, including a check of Snopes, shows no evidence of this removal.
Lucas, as the creator of "Star Wars", is allowed to do whatever his little billionaire heart desires, as far as "Star Wars" and his other films, including "THX 1138" and "American Graffiti", are concerned.
If he chose to show, in a future episode (or a new TV series), that Han Solo and Princess Leia did "have a thing" and produce a child, who grows up to become another Jedi master, he could.
The creator of original fictional characters has the license to do whatever he darn well pleases.
Sun and Fun
Oh come on, this is hardly new. Movies have been being colorized for years. How is that different from what is being done now? Well some of the directors sure claimed that color changed and ruined their artistic works, so I must consider it was a significant change.
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
how about the Apocrypha?
Some of Chopin's piano preludes were published posthumously, despite his wishes that any of his unpublished works be burned.
Somebody finished Gustav Mahler's 10th symphony after he died.
Dickens wrote several of his novels a chapter at a time and published them in magazines. He wasn't above making changes later when they were re-published as books. He messed around with the ending of Great Expectations for example.
Anything wrong with this? I suppose not. It's one thing to distort historical facts. But I think there is an "artistic license" when it comes to cultural works, even after the original creator has passed on.
However, let's not re-write Hamlet so everyone lives at the end.
If it weren't for deadlines, nothing would be late.
Well, I can see you're doing a good job of filling that in with stuff like GTA and gangster rap.
http://www.rootstrikers.org/
they removed ding dong the witch is dead? why?
this sig has been discontinued.
err, underrated postS
------
[insert funny
either a fundamentalist...or delusional
This post brought to you by the Department of Redundancy Department.
Reality has a conservative bias: it conserves mass, energy, momentum...
The "editing" of media due to what is called political correctness, is pushed by both ends of the political spectrum. Some don't like the "degradation" of women, some don't like the "degradation" of religion, especially christianity, some don't like smoking, some don't like the portrayal of "racial sterotypes", etc; etc;.
You correct. It is getting out of hand. Personally, I'm sick of people being offended by one thing or another. Get the f^#k over it.
We play the game with the bravery of being out of range
Are you serious?? A Troll?? The trouble is that I know people who say things like that seriously. And in the good ol' USA there is a large number of them (not picking on them delibrately - but I keep being reminded that /. is purely an American website ;-) You can never tell when it comes to religeon if someone is being Trollish.
I am Slashdot. Are you Slashdot as well?
"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.....
The problem is that revisions tend to generally favor one side of the political/moral devide. Someone above said they'd edit star wars because you can't have a gay captain (loosely paraphrased), that's never going to happen. Every time anyone tries to edit out anything that is considered protected by "TOLERANCE", they get trounced in the media.
:). It all seems over the top, but that's where we are going.
However, do think of what is edited. Han shooting first...wouldn't want to look aggressive or pre-emptive. Can't put the Anola Gay up in the Smithsonian...after all they nuked Japan...even if they did hit Pearl Harbor, slaughter the chinese in death camps, et al. Yes, yes...this all seems very inflamatory, I know, but thats the point, that's the WHOLE POINT.
Whom are we protecting? I don't want to be "PROTECTED" from liberal-morons like Bill Maher. I don't want to be saved the agony of hearing someone call GWB a fascist nazi so I won't have nightmares. And honestly, does anyone on the other side want to be protected from hearing that Clinton was a commie-pinko
Life has more than one perspective, and it IS POSSIBLE, that that perspective isn't mine (crazy I know). It's also possible that that perspective is RIGHT! (omg). Are we not better served being shown every side, irrelevant of how we think it might affect us?
Pluralitas non est ponenda sine neccesitate
If George Lucas wants to fix something, how about fixing THX-1138? It's the only SciFi movie I've ever walked out on because, 45 minutes into the film I didn't have a clue on what was going on. And this is in a theater where I paid for my admission ticket!
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
...take any hundred-year-old "classic" book in a semi-scholarly edition (e.g. Library of America) and actually _read_ the "Notes On The Text." There are all sorts of minor and no-so-minor variations. Stephen Crane's "An Experiment in Misery" has a couple of paragraphs framing the story or not, depending on the history of the text in the particular edition you're reading.
The first line of John Masefield's "Sea-Fever" can either read
"I must down to the sea again" or
"I must go down to the sea again"
depending on the edition. NOT a typo.
The most famous stanza from the Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam can begin "Here with a loaf of bread beneath the bough/A flask of wine, a book of verse, and Thou" or "A book of verses underneath the bough, a jug of wine, a loaf of bread, and Thou". The differences between the first, second, and fifth editions are a lot more significant than the differences between any two editions of any Lucas epic.
And check your copy of Alice's Adventures in Wonderland to see whether it preserves Lewis Carroll's "director's cut" literal-minded use of apostrophes. He put them in whereever letters had been omitted, thus: "ca'n't," "wo'n't", but "don't." And he cared deeply about that.
"How to Do Nothing," kids activities, back in print!
TFA seems to make a big deal out of unreleased material coming out.
This is totally different than editing material at a later time. Whats the big deal if musicians realease old tracks that never saw the light of day. You can't compare that to going back and changing a released film, which completely changes it's impact. Spielberg changing guns to walkie talkies!?!? WTF is that?!?!
We play the game with the bravery of being out of range
Not all delusional people are fundamentalists.
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
Zonk mentions his/her having read a "new" Camus.
Can anyone explain what that's about, please? I read the (or A) English translation of "The Stranger" about 15 years ago. Is that all that the "new" thing is? A different translation of one of Camus' works? And if so, can anyone make a comparison between versions? Or is this something completely different?
Every play, every symphony, every religious document from human history has been available in multiple versions -- whether through the artist's changes, transcription errors, or later, purposeful editing by those with their own agenda.
I was thinking...what is to stop Lucas from re-doing all the special effects in the first three films with computer graphics? He could theoretically re-do ALL of the space scenes to make it mesh up with the latter films effects. Would it sell? I'm certain it would. AND he could do it without chaning anything with the story.
There ARE some hokey special effects in the Original Star Wars. The most fake looking is the crash of the super star destroyer into the death star at the end of the movie. The flames that shoot up make it look and FEEL like taking crashing two models together and using gunpowder for the effects. All that could be fixed.
As computing power increases, I bet you one trend will be for fans, wherever they can work without patent laws, to do re-touches of popular films, playing Lucas to the films we have about today which people often point at and say, "Almost perfect, but..."
For example, imagine the Lord of the Rings trilogy in which Treebeard had his resolve like in the book, or Saruman wasn't just a bad guy just because. It'll be just like the fan subs made today of popular anime.
Not that the MPAA will like it, but it's bound to happen anyway.
This is unfortunate, but I don't know that it's anything particularly new--I just read Waugh's Brideshead Revisited, which was written in 1945 and heavily revised fifteen years later. And Stravinsky regularly revised his works, partly so that he could maintain copyright on the latest version (back when copyrights actually expired). So artists have been tinkering with their works for both artistic and commercial reasons for at least the past century.
What has changed are the copyright laws governing the old versions of the works: I don't care if George Lucas wants to digitally add a burqa over Princess Leia's metallic lingerie, but he shouldn't be able to indefinitely suppress the original version.
More like Roger Waters first solo album. Oh, and actually quite kicks ass.
We play the game with the bravery of being out of range
And with that circumcision you can enlarge your testicles with Neuticles and save 50%.
Patient: "I'll still be able to father children, won't I?"
Dr. Vas Deferens: "As far as you know."
"You'll get nothing, and you'll like it!"
Actually, you can. Grant Jeffrey has been putting out NON-DOGMATIC books for years PACKED with proof - archeological, documentary, fulfilled prophecy. (No, I'm not a stooge for Jeffrey; I'm just an avid reader of his, but haven't been able to read any of his recent books due to a lack of time...) The information in his books is STAGGERING for anyone who has an open mind.
:)
If you read Armageddon, Apocalypse, or Messiah (some books of his I have read), or Michael Behe's "Darwin's Black Box", you'll begin to wonder if there's something to this Christianity stuff after all...
(ok, my poetry can be not very popular with you, but...) ... even if I would do a "derivative" after, that version to me is "perfect" in the sense I have passion of it, even for its possible flaws.
every lyrics/poetry I write, in the moment I put the "dot" on it, it's "perfect"
And I imagine that a book author or a movie director could/should feel exactly like this for the movie that premiered. Except in cases (like Blade Runner) where they think the "other guys" ruined their work.
It's better to be the foot on the boot than the face on the pavement. ~~ tkx Kadin2048
Something Lucas should have read. Roughly, "the work is not the work I would write today, but it must stand as it is". But he puts it far more equolently.
I am trolling
Wasn't real sure what the OP meant about the "Ding dong, the witch is dead" song was edited out (had visions of some ultra-PC schmoe saying the song was too graphic and encouraged violence), so I googled up this from imdb.com. Lots of interesting archeological findings there on how the movie was edited (the bit about removing a scene and flipping the image in the scene following to keep the original character positions seems the wildest claim there).
Anyhow, here's the bit on the Witch's dead. Song's still there; apparently an additional performance isn't:
A scene where the four main characters return to the Emerald City with the witch of the west's broomstick (including a reprise of "Ding Dong, The Witch is dead!") was cut. Only the song survived; the footage no longer exists (except a shot or two that can be found in the theatrical trailer).
Interesting case for how even recorded history can be easily lost. I doubt there's a single movie where this isn't the case -- heck, over on the Stella List (discusses Atari 2600 programming), we're trying to relocate an old Java port of the popular Stella ("no relation to the list") Atari 2600 emulator. There's hardly a medium around that keeps a perfect history, even when it's theorhetically possible, even arguably easy to do so.
I'm also reminded of my studies of Mark Twain's composition of The Mysterious Stranger, where scholars try to piece together versions by, among other things, what color pen the MSs use, or Walt Whitman's [famously] continual edits to Leaves of Grass . I'd argue our concept of 'final cuts' is a concept born solely via legacy conventional mediums of expression. Without books editions, film releases, etc, we'd have an even more difficult time discussing what's authoritative.
I'll try to stop now. I'd only initially wanted to show the Oz info, and now I'm about to launch into a diatribe about Edward Albee's desire to open up the arts from the clutches of big business (particularly in NYC's Broadway and off-Broadway theaters) so that the masses can get what he feels is a 'real' education, but at the same time uses that same power of copyright (back into another poster's deal about this all stemming from ramifications from the way IP works) closes down a local-yokel presentation of Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf because he felt one of the actors wasn't believable in the role, not b/c of acting ability but b/c he was too tall for Albee to believe his stage-parents were his actual parents, and b/c the role as written was for a 16 year-old and this guy was 24. Performative art by definition can never, no matter how sessile the script, achieve anything resembling a final cut, intrusions like this one by a living author nonwithstanding.
But I won't mention that, and will simply say the age-old song has not been cut from Wizard of Oz. Now go watch a real movie like Zardoz.
It's all 0s and 1s. Or it's not.
Speaking of final draft, I hear Zonk is working on the edit^H^H^H^H dupe of this article for tomorrow.
I am what I am and thats what I am -Popeye
Yes.
Well maybe...
No.
I dunno...
Yes.
Support the FairTax
James Earl Jones was the voice of Darth Vader.
David Prowse was the actor in the suit
Sebastian Shaw was the face of Darth Vader before the re-edit.
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
Isn't it possible to be fundamentally deluted???
Live forever, or die trying.
Fixed?!?
WTF is that?!?
Episode IV is perfect the way it is(was). When will it stop? Probably when each person can devote themselves to entirely recreating each piece of art they have access to to suit their personal, ahem, "vision". Sure, Lucas probably will "fix" all those \lame\ 70's FX, but why stop there? Why not completely remove all human actors/voices and replace with digital recreations? Thats what you want, right?
I'm gonna go home and completely fu*$ing rewrite ALL of Mozarts Sonatas, then move onto ALL of Hitchcocks film catalog, then I'm moving onto ALL of the Seinfeld episodes (I always hated Kramers hair, I think I'll "fix" it)
We play the game with the bravery of being out of range
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.
Hey, well written article there. Thanks for the links...
That said, I think you could do well to delve deeper into some of the things you said. Incidentally, you pointed out how most people misuse many of the "standard" excuses for believing something. But what about rationally sensible reasons? For instance, what about "There is this holy book, and I believe it because things written in the book agree with what I observe about the world and the people around me"? That's subtly different than "because my religion told me to".
Also, #1 in that article touches on the fundamental question of if there is something in the universe called "Truth" or not; discounting the case you illustrated where beliefs differ because observations differ, if there are two confliting interpretations about a common observation that means that at most one of them can be fundamentally true (and by 'conflicting' I mean something like "The temperature of that object is 10 degrees" versus "The temperature of that object is 15 degrees" at the same point in time, not things like "it is hot today"). That's the one tricky point about most religions; generally there is something in one or several of them that fundamentally conflicts. For instance, the view that the universe was created by a god or gods is fundamentally incompatible with the view that the universe was not created but simply always "was" or the view that the universe spontaneously came into existence. In this example, only one of those three views can be true given that there is a universe, and no two of them can be true simultaneously. You cannot hold that all the views are equally valid (you can, perhaps, hold that they are all equally invalid), but the point you concluded with, that the choice to hold any view should be respected, is important to recognize. I think the bigger issue is how to manage what actions people are allowed to take on their views, because that's quite a different matter than "mere" belief.
Anyway, I could easily go on discussing the rational aspects of relgion, but I think I've quite used up my 'offtopic' disclaimer as it is ;)
"There are a dozen opinions on a matter until you know the truth. Then there is only one." - CS Lewis (paraprhase)
Just yesterday I heard Carlos Fuentes give a speech, with the central theme being Don Quixote. His main points were that literature is what lets us use our imaginations and is essential for us to live. He mentioned how many times political regimes have attempted to remove from our collective memories various parts of history. I am not saying that the USA is a regime, but that it is indeed important that we remember the past. It is through literature that knowledge becomes transferred and that we shape the future. I do a poor job summarizing his point, but it is truly an important one.
You can lead a horse to water, but you can't make it dissolve.
case in point.. see this episode snip..
http://www.snpp.com/episodes/3F03.html
You don't win friends with
salad.
-- Homer coins a catch phrase., "Lisa the Vegetarian"
Bart dances in.
Bart: [Musically.] You don't win friends with salad!
You don't win friends with salad!
You don't win friends with salad!
[Homer, {and then Marge, join in.}]
Lisa: {Mom!}
Marge: {I don't mean to take sides, I just got caught up in the rhythm.}
-- The island rhythm, "Lisa the Vegetarian"
I saw the original aired episode, as it is above..
never since *including the dvd's* have I seen marge as part of the 'don't make friends with salad' conga line... the scene on every viewing since cuts before marge joins in. it's gone forever
every day http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Random
It started with a book that begins "In the Beginning..." and ends with all sorts of funky stuff involving beasts with 7 heads...
There exists no way of exchanging information without making judgments. --Bene Gesserit Axiom
but I generally find they don't survive very long past the one to the throat...
The role of the writer is not to say what we can all say, but what we are unable to say. -Anais Nin
Dave Prowse was on a local radio station here a few years back when EP-II had just been released. He had said that he was never told about James Earl Jones until he saw the first screening. The whole time during New Hope he was voicing all the lines in the suit. He kept asking how are they going to deal with the muffling and they said they could fix it in post. So imagine his suprise hearing a new voice during the first screening. I had hoped that the station would have asked him to do HIS vader voice but they didn't.
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.
Just look at Wiki and call up 500 of your closest friends. You can turn day into night.
In Brunner's Shockwave Rider 'TV' commercials are edited on the fly by the bored. In our real world music has started radically deconstructing its/our past - from the sample happy top 40 hip hop of the 90s to the 4 turntables going at one time style of some DJs. We've now moved beyond the mass production model of art to a more fluid cut and paste style.
Better? Worse? Inevitable, like filesharing, with digital technology. An older horn player I know is deeply uncomfortable with sampling. I asked if making 50 copies of the Mona Lisa and shreding them for a new piece of art damaged or enhanced the Mona Lisa. My opinion: Only enhances if the art is really good, definately doesn't damage.
So art becomes something everyone does, as opposed to specialists while the rest 'don't quit their day jobs'. My guess is programming goes this way followed slowly by all labor.
Despecialization. It's a higher quality of lifetm
Physics is like sex: sure, it may give some practical results, but that's not why we do it.
Oh I forgot to mention in case anyone didn't know. Dave Prowse was Hotblack Desiato's body guard in the HitchHikers Guide TV series.... Just a bit of trivia.
All that said I would like to relate a story about one of the great icons of Geekdom, Tolkien. In Fellowship of the Ring Gandalf is speaking to Frodo about Bilbo and the Ring and he makes some mention of Bilbo first telling him an untrue story about how he had received it. Later, when pressed, he broke down and told Gandalf the true story about what happened between him and Gollum.
The reason for this short exchange is because, apparently, Tolkien himself re-wrote the scene in between his initial publishing of the Hobbit and writing Lord of the Rings. Originally, when writing the Hobbit, the ring that Bilbo acquires was simply a rare and magical ring that allows him to turn invisible. It was not the great Ring with the power to consume the soul of its possessor over time and the heart of Sauron's power. As a result Gollum was not the wicked creature we all know. When he loses the riddle game to Bilbo he is quite willing to give up the ring and lead Bilbo out.
It was only later when Tolkien was writing Lord of the Rings that he decided to turn the ring into the Ring. He felt it would make the story more interesting to have the innocuous trinket turn out to be such a deadly item. Unfortunately this made the scene with Gollum no longer work. He couldn't give up the Ring of power so willingly, so Tolkien re-wrote the scene in the Hobbit (which had already been published for a number of years, mind you) and changed the character of Gollum, rather dramatically. He passed off the changes between editions as Bilbo recording a false version of his encounter with Gollum at first, changing it to the true version once the Ring was destroyed and its power over him broken.
I think most of use will agree that the changed version of the Hobbit fits the entire storyline much better and I doubt anyone feels it should be changed back to the original publishing, though I'm certain many of use would be interested to read it simply out of curiosity, so I guess sometimes revisions to the original can be a good thing. The problem with Lucas' changes aren't really that he made any changes. Rather it is that they are ham-handed, self serving, and unnecessary.
That art becomes universal.
Take Shakespeare, Joseph Conrad, Charles Dickens, James Joyce, and so on and so forth and what have you and what not.
Inside those literary works that these artists have created are ideas that humanity can relate to. And I'm not referring to copyright or anything, but when an artist shares his or her work and it becomes a part of our culture (like Star Wars, Lord of the Rings etc), then it should be the artists duty to step back and symbolicly "give it to the public" by not fucking with it anymore.
Art is like wine, it gets better with age, but when you open up the bottle and add something else...well you're not aging it anymore are you?
Star Wars: A New Hope isn't close to 30 years old anymore, because "apparently" it was never finished! It has had its "classic" pass revoked.
-Dave
401 - Attention span not found
and here i thought the canonical books were the fan-fiction version, you know, the ones people liked enough, or the ones that king james thought were supportive of his positions, to be included in that version.
you know, sort of like the way the NSRV practically makes the ten commandments the ten suggestions.
The Wizard of Oz had the 'ding dong the witch is dead' song edited out.
Um, which 'ding dong the witch is dead' song? The only ones I've ever heard are:
I think this needs a few more revisions.
Related link
please read this text by artist and media theorist Tom Sherman. "The Finished Work of Art is a Thing of the Past" http://www.stanford.edu/class/history34q/readings/ MediaArchaeology/sherman.htm
I can't really understand that people who choose to ignore what we're about 99% certain is fact in the name of faith, but i'm going to attempt to steer clear of the issue (for this topic at least) and just consider their view of the universe to be orthoganal to my own.
This Space Intentionally Left Blank
In the 90's his son or daughter came out and published an autobiographical piece he was working on around the time of his death, called "The First Man." It is basically unfinished, and though I haven't read it, I think the idea is that it is still worth reading.
There is an older SF book by Connie Willis titled "Remake". There's a plot synopsis here. The plot itself didn't do much for me, but the main character's job was to re-edit movies to take out the non-PC parts. (IIRC, he had a hard time taking the smoking and drinking out of Casbalancaa, for example). Of course, he'd have to re-edit to take out, or put back in, various bits as the thought police changed their minds about what was good and what was evil.
No, he got worse - he ceased to be a newt.
www.eFax.com are spammers
In general, works older than a few hundred years, but still known are good and the full editions can be obtained "intact".
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
Sebastian Shaw was the face of Darth Vader before the re-edit.
They edited him out as his ghost, but the removal of the mask wasn't changed.
Oh, say does that Star-Spangled Banner entwine / The myrtle of Venus with Bacchus's vine?
Is this really such a modern phenomena? I mean how much has, for instance, the Bible changed from the original text? After translations and interpretations.. or the original Red Riding Hood story...
-- Senior Software Engineer, Attorney appearance services, locallawyerapp.com.
Let's say the Bible says PersonX built an altar in CityY during the reign of RulerZ. Until modern times, no proof exists, so critics say, "See! The Bible is a fraud!". Then, in 1960 (again, hypothetically), a cave is found with scrolls that document the building of this altar by PersonX. The scrolls are radio carbon dated to the reign of RulerZ and otherwise are thought to be genuine.
Not to be condescending, but this is, by any reasonable scientific standard, proof. (And non-dogmatic proof at that.) No amount of name-calling, mocking or derision can overcome that. Grant Jeffrey's books (and others) document THOUSANDS of such proofs, and there are NO books that have been able to effectively eviscerate the authenticity of the Bible. Year after year, science has been proving, not disproving, the Bible; a phenomenon that is likely unique when applied to all historical "myths". Men have been put to death in courts of law for MUCH LESS evidence that that which exists to prove the authenticity of the Bible.
I suggest you get your head out of your leering ass and open your eyes. When properly interpreted by a true scholar of Biblical times and languages, the Bible can be shown to be divinely inspired (or at least, oddly astonishing!)
One final note: Christianity is the only "religion" in history to include prophecy (in fact, approximately 1/3 of it is prophecy). Were Christianity false, prophecy would truly be a dangerous thing to include because it wouldn't take much time to prove false, thus allowing your critics to flush you down the toilet. But the Bible's prophecy has been shown to be inerrant (keeping in mind that not all of it has come to pass yet, re: the Rapture).
This is an urban legend, and I'm surprised it was included in the CNN story. You can find more information on this on DVDTalk.
There are deleted scenes from OZ, but all the released versions of the movie, including on television, since its release are said to be identical.
"May I have ten thousand marbles, please?"
either a fundamentalist [...] or delusional.
That is somewhat redundant : )
You can't take the sky from me...
I can't really understand that people who choose to ignore what we're about 99% certain is fact in the name of faith,
Luke, you're going to find that many of the truths we cling to are only true from our own point of view
- Mike
Once you've lost your temper, you've lost the argument - Me
Even Tolkien did this -- though in a much more creative way -- blaming the changes in The Hobbit (first published in 1937) on the fact that Bilbo was lying about how he got the Ring and Gandalf had finally gotten the truth out of the fellow. Why? Because it was meant as a history (albeit fictional) and the history changed.
Pink Floyd Classic, The Final Cut.
dB Masters
Chill..
I said "could" NOT "should"
The point of the post was to start a theoretical discussion about where the line should be drawn. Star wars is a good example of one where that's been done already.
You really should'nt hyperventilate like that. You'll have a heart attack and that's bad mkay....
It's incredibly telling that *anyone* should consider that they are defined by their entertainment.
Just how passive have the passive observers become.
Be defined by your actions, not by your inaction.
There are places where the networks are not touching,and there are places where they are-Boeing's Lori Gunter
Shakespeare continually rewrote his plays. He adapted them for different actors and different venues, and abridged them in various different ways depending on the tastes of the times. He sometimes had to censor his texts when the rules demanded changes.
I'm not sure what legend's source for "He didn't even bother to cross out anything as he wrote" is, but it's unfounded. No original Shakespeare manuscripts exist in his own hand.
Most of his plays have several different versions, and when you go to perform one you have to pick which one you want to take as your base text. This is made harder by the fact that many of these these folios and quartos are reconstructions by the actors themselves, some of which are mistaken, but others changes represent times when Shakespeare himself edited the text.
Hamlet, for example, is very different between the First Folio and Second Quarto editions. When Kenneth Branagh combined the two to make his movie, he was doing a Hamlet which Shakespeare himself probably never saw. He'd rewritten the play, and Branagh had combined two rewrites. Which one Shakespeare would have preferred is up for debate, but it certainly shows that Shakespeare did revisit his plays.
I suspect legend's source is the fact that Shakespare was one prolific son of a bitch; he was cranking out works of genius almost faster than you could copy the things. He'd put out several plays a year at times. There are internal contradictions in the text that suggest that Shakespeare didn't revise quite as many times as he should have.
And yes, IAASS (I Am A Shakespeare Scholar). I'm directing Merry Wives of Windsor right now, a play which certainly could have used a few more editing passes.
Yup. Especially the track "Southampton Dock". The remaster also has the masterpiece "When the Tigers Broke Free" on it. That song alone makes purchasing the album worth it, unless you already have it. WtTBF stabs into you when you hear it, you can really tell that every word is straight from Waters' heart.
The problem with hebrew is that even if the characters are identical to what they were 2000 years ago, the meanings can easily change. Just because we see the same word in hebrew doesn't mean it still translates the same, or even means the same in modern hebrew.....
Its kinda like reading Beowulf in the original Middle English and then wondering if Beowulf was human or a monster.
Ira
since 1984
Yahweh does have a "wife": Israel. And via his "wife" he had a single child: Yehoshua (Jesus). The theme of Israel being the bride/wife of Yahweh is a consistent one throughout the Jewish holy writings, with the theme of "adultery" meaning the people chasing after other gods.
I think your prof may have been confused by the various jaunts into polytheism that the ancient Hebrews so frequently took (He probably thought "Asherah" was supposed to be Yahweh's wife, eh?).
Modern copyright is theft of culture from everyone and it retards the progress of the useful arts and sciences.
The time I set foot into a church, they were just introducing a "new" version of the gospel. It was "revised" to include non-gender-specific referrences and "updated" to remove unusually harsh wording...And people wonder why I don't go there anymore.
<gir voice> I love this sig... </gir voice>
Also the bodyguard of the old bloke terrorised by Alex in A Clockwork Orange. You get to see more of him in that film than you do in Hitch Hiker's.
That's a big bloke.
Aide-toi, le Ciel t'aidera - Jeanne D'Arc.
Specific to movie theater releases and the eventual DVD releases, I am continually pissed by the editing that the studies do. This comes up over and over again, yet the studios refuse to listen to those who are paying them good money.
Changing and editing the theatrical release to something different for the DVD release, and refusing to release the theatrical release version on DVD is just bad business. How many would pay for the original version of the Star Wars Trilogy? Or Close Encounters of the Third Kind? Or an originally scored version of Animal House? Or the non-PC version of E.T.? The answer is easily more than enough to justify the production costs.
Because of some holier-than-thou attitiudes at the studios, we will NEVER AGAIN see these movies as we saw them originally. Maybe they weren't "as the director envisioned them", but it's how we saw tham, how we enjoyed them, and how many of us want to see them again. DVD's are so cheap to produce, that studios are really missing tons of potential revenue by limiting to horrible "special editions" that do nothing more than create a false demand for an inferior product.
And these revisions are nothing short of historical revisionism, and it sets a precident that could be very dangerous. Where does it end?
My mom always said, "Jim, you're 1 in a million." Given the current population, there are 7000 of me. God help us all!
Where I come from if your mind has many voices they lock you up in the loony pen.
Remember folks, slashdot doesn't have a -1 "disagree" moderation!
Whoah! Careful there, DV. You start saying things like the the Bible contains metaphors and thematic exercises and you're gonna get a nasty-gram from Pat Robertson. ;-)
I'm not tense. I'm just terribly, terribly, alert.
"It also should NOT, in and of itself, convince you of the existence of supernatural powers or beings or life after death,"
Actually, if the claims made by the apostles can be proven, it would (at least, in the case of Christ), prove that he was who he said he was. As has been documented in many books, all but one of the apostles died defending his pro-Christ stance; who do you know who would die defending a lie? Further, the Roman historian Josephus (who was known as a secular, stand-up guy) documented what witnesses told him at the time, that Christ was not only performing miracles, but that he appeared to over 500 after his death. (Before you postulate the "Jesus didn't really die" hypothesis, remember that a Roman guard would be put to death if he failed to carry out an order; I can assure you that the guard who put a spear in Christ made doubly sure he was dead...:) Whole books have been written on this topic, clearly putting it to rest...)
"the historical accuracy of the Bible is hardly extraordinary."
As I said, science has not been able to disprove (beyond a shadow of a doubt) any historical claim made by the Bible! In fact, if you choose to discard Christianity on the basis of a lack of documentary evidence, you'd have to discard the life of Julius Caesar and many others, because Christ's life (and David's life, etc.) is MUCH better documented than his!
"the prophecy of the Bible, like any good prophecy, is written in such a way that it is impossible to disprove."
Some of them *are* written this way, but DOZENS of prophecies in the Bible are very explicit, like where Jesus would be born. Consider the odds: if each prophecy in the Bible had a 1 in 100 chance of occuring (and the odds are actually much worst), the odds of a mere 5 prophecies coming true randomly are 1 in 10 billion. As I stated earlier, there are HUNDREDS of prophecies in the Bible. You're chance of winning the lottery is actually much higher than the chance of all of the fulfilled prophecies coming true randomly.
I don't have time to continue this today; I'll pick it up later...
I hear they are very popular at Star Wars conventions.
"Han shot first originally, dammit! You currently see Greedo shoot first on the new DVDs."
LOL! Damn, that is funny. Thanks for pointing out my horrible slip. Sadly, it appears I have bent to Lucas' will.
"What scene where Han shoots first?"
Bryan R.
The price of freedom is eternal vigilance, or $12.50 as seen on eBay.....
I can understand the work being under the author's control, and them wanting to go back and fix things. However, you can't make a bad movie good, and you really can't make a good movie better. The changes they made to Star Wars are really... unnecessary. I like the way it was done the first time. I don't watch movies for special effects, or to catch flaws, or anything but the story. If I like the story - good movie. That's why I watched episode one without complaining about Jar-Jar. Well... not too much anyway.
Stan: Oh my gosh they hurt Kenny!
Kyle: You meanies!
Edmund Morris wrote a biography about Ronald Reagan in which he (Morris) interjected himself into history, appearing as an active participant in Reagan's life at various "important" times in Reagan's career. He then tried to fob this fantabulous concoction off onto the public as legitimate history.
Despite his (apparently) eminent status as a historian,the people "spoke", the book flopped, and even the lit crit world and his publisher became shy about the whole thing.
Sadly he's not the only one to have gotten away with it. Where are those meddling kids when you need them? http://slate.msn.com/id/1007896/
Nothing is inexplicable; only unexplained -Tom Baker, Doctor Who
Two words: Gnostic Gospels.
heh I really recommend doing some reading before using Mother Theresa as the yardstick for all that is kind and good in the world. She certainly was good at doing things that had the appearance of kindness (washing the feet of the poor, etc.)
I for one would not want to be a patient with a terminal illness in one of her clinics - denied pain medication as "suffering brings you closer to God."
More info here
Fsck the millennium, we want it now.
Millennium Crisis Line: 0890 900 2000 [calls cost 50p/min]
Robert Heinlein's wife re-released "Stranger in a Strange Land", with 70,000 additional words that the original publication left out, and Heinlein was upset they made him leave out.
It's still an awesome read, but of course that was the original work, not the first publication.
(And IMHO, that is two books, the way Full Metal Jacket is two movies. Like that, the first half is vastly the better portion, before Michael goes all new-agey and hipster)
(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
I recently read the full set of James Bond stories from Ian Fleming.
Bond has a 'fondness for ni??ers', and 'all women secretly desire to be raped'
> There's a decent amount of evidence that Yahweh
> had a wife at one point but she got edited out later.
And even earlier, Yaweh was just part of a larger pantheon.
There are references to the great chaos dragon Leviathan that Yaweh slew in Psalms (also called Rahab), which harkens from earlier versions of that and similar religions, wherein god kills Leviathan, and uses the two halves of its body to create the earth by holding back the great sea of chaos, above and below. This is the great "combat" myth shared by many religions of the area. The later editors, in making Yaweh the one and only god who created reality ex nihilo thus got rid of the slaying of Leviathan in Genesis, but left it in in those pretty psalms.
Also, there are references to demigods (half men/half gods), the offspring of angels or gods coming down to mate with mortal women. "These are the mighty men of old, men of reknown." These are the remains of fuller stories that detail what said mighty men did, also prevalent in religions of the area hundreds of years earlier.
Also, Pharoah's Egyptian gods, via Pharoah's priest, turned a stick into two snakes. Moses, showing off how tough Yaweh is, has Yaweh turn a stick into one snake, that eats the other two. Yaweh is tougher than the Egyptian gods!
But...ooops! That acknowledges the existence of other gods. Fundamentalist apologists claim it was Satan who did this, but that is a completely unjustified interpretation of it. Or that Pharoah's priest used sleight-of-hand (but of course, honest Moses didn't.)
(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
But...ooops! That acknowledges the existence of other gods. Fundamentalist apologists claim it was Satan who did this, but that is a completely unjustified interpretation of it. Or that Pharoah's priest used sleight-of-hand (but of course, honest Moses didn't.)
My impression was that the priests were using sleight-of-hand to try to show the Pharaoh that they're just as powerful as Moses, and Moses countered by doing things that clearly couldn't be done with sleight-of-hand. It's been awhile since I read it, though.
$x='S24;r)>63/* h@<5+oZ)32"5cz';$me='phroggy'x$];
$x=~y+ -xz+\0-Tx+;print$_^chop$me for split'',$x;
And no, my prof wasn't confused about the polytheism issue. He specifically addressed it, and it wasn't really "jaunts" either. They started out as polythesitic, then after awhile they became, well, i forget the name for it, but Yahweh became the primary god and all the others became subserviant to him. Thus "Thou shalt have no other god before me" and the whole Belal(?) thing.
_Then_ they because monotheistic. Actually the central temple in jerusalem became monothesitic while the outlying temples were still in the halfway stage. There was a lot of political and cultural strife between the two groups at the time (i forget if there was actually any fighting or not) and i believe this was about the time that one of the codifications of the bible took place. Obviously the central authorities in jerusalem who actually did the codification choose the interpretations that favored their views.
And without any proof to the contrary you can't just argue that any earlier references to a wife of Yahweh are in fact refering to someone who didn't exist until hundreds of years later. Not unless you want to declare yourself to be taking the fundamentalist side and making a religious interpretation of the bible rather than a historical one. In effect your argument starts from the assumption that the bible hasn't changed, and therefore any evidence that things were different in the past clearly can't be true because the current version of the bible says otherwise.
This Space Intentionally Left Blank
Or a Speedy Gonzalez cartoon?
I seem to recall having seen a year or two back that WB had decided it was okay to show Speedy Gonzalez cartoons again. In any case, while they do contain silly stereotypes, it's ultimately about the Mexican mouse showing up the stupid "Gringo pussy-gato" every time. Speedy's the hero. He's not there to be mocked, but to do the mocking.
> In fact, if you choose to discard Christianity
> on the basis of a lack of documentary evidence,
> you'd have to discard the life of Julius Caesar
> and many others, because Christ's life (and David's
> life, etc.) is MUCH better documented than his!
Not true at all. We have coins with various Roman emperors on them. No such evidence exists for Jesus whatsoever. Also, written histories do not involve supernatural superpowers.
> Consider the odds: if each prophecy in the Bible had
> a 1 in 100 chance of occuring (and the odds are actually
> much worst), the odds of a mere 5 prophecies coming
> true randomly are 1 in 10 billion. As I stated earlier,
> there are HUNDREDS of prophecies in the Bible.
This statistical evidence evaporates when you consider that the prophesies were either written after the fact (ruination of the Temple in Jerusalem), or are Nostradamus-like things that can be reinterpreted, in a strained fashion, to fit modern events. And the prophesies "of Jesus" referred to in the New Testament, of the Old Testament, are deliberate misinterpretations of those prophesies, shoehorned to fit Jesus.
(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
Hey, why not? Ever notice that the Catholic and Protestant versions of the Bible differ? Or how about the Christian and Rabbinical scriptures?
I'll be happy to argue the point with you when you get the courage to put it under a real username.
Oh, and by the way, equating intellectual property to physical property is a nice way of showing you don't have the first clue as to what you're talking about. In your world, it would be OUR house, because without the ability to pass along intellectual property, no one else would ever have been able to build one.
All the intellectual property in the world today is built on all the intellectual property of the past. Anyone who tries to exert true ownership over it, for anything more than temporary profit, deserves to have it stripped from them.
Jackass.
ad logicam Claiming a proposition is false because it was presented as the conclusion of a fallacious argument.
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.
Bit redundant there, eh?
[badum-ching]
A Human Right
So says the _third_ person to say that :)
This Space Intentionally Left Blank
Well, I've got better things to do than be insulted. (I've been down this road a million times before. These arguments always go meandering into nothingness because my opponent always refuses to RRRRREEEEAAAADDD the stuff I ask him/her to read (hmmm, should I use "RTFM" in regard to Biblical treatises? - nah, it would be rude); instead, he/she just counters a proven argument by changing the subject or broad-brushing glaring deficiencies in their argument. Someone who doesn't WANT to believe will fight like a cornered wolf to dispute it...) My final word: read books by Grant Jeffrey, Josh McDowell (sp?), and Norm Geisler. Josh McDowell wrote a two volume treatise entitled, "Evidence That Demands a Verdict", a COLLEGE-LEVEL course! Also, go to www.equip.org and order up some materials. If you RRRREEEAAAADDD this material and you still don't want to believe - fine! I congratulate you on making an INFORMED decision! Seacrest, out...
What is this "Episode 4" shit? It's not "Episode 4", it's not "A New Hope". It's "Star Wars". Period. Damned revisoionist hippies!
Boobies never hurt anyone. - Sherry Glaser.
Never said it was an original thought... just a good one ;)
A Human Right
It staggers me I have even to write this down and spell it out, but...
Popular culture - indeed ALL culture - exists to be re-written, re-told, re-vamped or re-done. It's only in the last 100 years or so that the notion of completeness or "integrity" of stories or art has become important. Once the oral tradition gave way to writing the idea of recording began, and with it the idea of "ownership" of ideas.
Chaucer's stories weren't his own. Nobody expected them to be! People who acted out the mystery plays never considered whether they were being true to an "original" - that was simply the raw material they were expected to use, which was itself adapted from the Bible, which was adapted from tribal tales handed down from mother to daughter (men didn't really figure much in Europe culturally until the Romans got going). Shakespere re-told Hollinshed's histories; Milton embellished ancient themes; even Mark Twain was a "pirate" in our terms.
So what's changed to make people think differently? It is the idea of "intellectual property." It's crawled out of the sewer, down our throats and into our brains to control everything we see. We can't even recognise the corrosion of our own cultural assets by multinational media corporations who sue little children to protect the revenues off piss-poor ADAPTATIONS of what were once public domain artefacts! Instead, we wonder whether the engine of popular culture itself - COPYING - is a bad thing! How can adaptation be a bad thing??
LET IT HAPPEN! IT NEEDS TO HAPPEN! If anyone tells you to stop mashing up that Star Wars movie, or publishing fanfic versions of Buffy, or whatever, tell 'em you have to or none of our lives will be worth living when Disney, TimeWarner and Sony owns all our brains.
This has got to rank as the most depressing story on /. this year.
"And the meaning of words; when they cease to function; when will it start worrying you?"
Still anonymous I see. Frankly, I would be to, if I were you.
If you can't grasp the difference between an idea and a physical thing, or grasp the fact that all ideas are derivative from other ideas then I don't see any point in continuing.
ad logicam Claiming a proposition is false because it was presented as the conclusion of a fallacious argument.
Now, as to which Star Wars character shot first, I personally don't give a good goddamn. But some of this revisionism has political content and that is more disturbing.
For isntance, Disney's "Song of the South" was hard to find for quite a while. I guess the jolly racial stereotyping just didn't age well. No matter that such idiocy was endemic in the culture at the time.
As disturbing as the continual tinkering with film is the constant attempt in history texts to anachronistically push notions of diversity and equality that might make sense in a 21st-century person onto other times when such a viewpoint was scarce or nonexistent. All of this is a sign of a deep neurosis that we have to virtually go back in time to fix all the things we got wrong back then. Doing so hides some ugly truths that need to be known to understand where we've come from.
Get your teeth into a small slice: the cake of liberty
"Though yam in the phrase yam suph clearly means waters, but the reading of suph has given rise to great diversity of opinion as to the precise place where the crossing occurred."
So either the red/reed thing is just a coincidence, or the mistranslation happened in a language where the two are similar, if i was ever told i don't remember which.
This Space Intentionally Left Blank
The only changes that have taken place are the various revisions of the Christian "new testament", i.e. the KJV, NIV, and G-D only-knows-how-many-other-editions. The original Hebrew text of the Torah, as well as the Writings and Prohpets, are the same as they were the day they were finalized. Whether that happened in the 6th century CE or earlier is hard to say.
In the begining (well maybe not that long ago) there were some pretty big arguments over what things went into the bible. For example one of these things were the Apocrypha, which were out then in then out again. (Do I see a directors cut/special edition cut that includes the sections that were dropped?)
Why do you need a "director's cut" or even forsee that as a possibility? If you or anyone else wants to read from the books of the Apocrypha, go right ahead. They're not shunned or banned or anything, they're just not part of the official text of the Bible.
Let alone the translation from whatever to Greek to Latin to English .. to modern day English to ebonics (and I am sure there is one out there). Each translation will change the sense of the text depending on who it was who translated it. As a comparison ... run something twice through babel fish and see what comes out.
And this is the big mistake people make; assuming that a text is valid just because someone else thinks it is. Proper, valid translations of the Bible, or for that matter any other text, can only be had if you start from the original language and translate it yourself, or otherwise obtain a first-generation modern translation. This is exactly why the "Stone Edition" of the Tanach (Torah, Prophets, Writings) is considered one of the most definitive translations; it is a first-generation translation, in modern english, with commentary from Rashi and others at the bottom of most pages.
I just found this interesting link The Pre-Reformation History of the Bible From 1,400 BC to 1,400 AD
I'll assume you've read the entirety of this article, as I have. That being the case, I feel compelled to point out numerous errors in that article.
To the author of this page, what is your evidence? Prove it. Even if it is older, so what? There are hundreds of thousands of stories (Job is not historical, it is considered to be a work of fiction intended by it's author to make a point) which predate the Torah.
Modern Hebrew is essentially the same language as it was in Biblical times, extended over the years to add words so that it may be used in modern business and casual conversation. Originally, anchient Hebrew was only capable of handling what existed back then.
The pig may have been considered unclean (and still is), not because of any particular belief, but because it was directed in the Torah: "...and the pig, for its hoof is split and its hoof is completely separated, but it does not chew its cud -- it is unclean to you" (Leviticus 11:7)
Somehow the verse that follows that (that the carcass shall not be touched) has been either superceded or overlooked, as it is
Karma: I don't care too much, but it's 0.0% (mostly due to lack of interest)
Yes, we are losing our culture to IP vampires. But there IS a possible solution. It is easy to state: If you have a copyright, but don't publish the material you have copyrighted, then you lose it. Now. Sadly, probably never happen. I'm fretting right now about a huge collection of records, tape, and wire recordings of old stuff I'm not legally allowed to copy for the use of people who lived during that time and who collected it (bought it) in the first place. I cannot buy a new copy in any media from the copyright holders, for any price (and I HAVE asked). In some cases I have better copies or restorations than they do, as I care about history, rather than simply bucks/sales. This is highly stupid. We have the best laws money can buy. It's getting to be too obvious. It's not like it would cost the copyright owners anything to permit new copies of stuff they won't even sell anymore at all.
Look at what you quoted. "Historical documents relating to the _Old_Testament_ indicate that Yahweh was believed to have a wife at an earlier point, that wife also being a god." That doesn't seem like "nothing remains to prove the hypothesis."
I'll admit that this far after the fact i can't cite the exact references, but i do remember that they didn't just make this stuff up out of wholecloth. There were actual archeological finds indicating at the very least that it was likely. If you really wish i can try to go dig up the information on the text book we used.
I don't know about what "whole Jesus thing" you were talking about,
From the grandparent post, "Yahweh does have a "wife": Israel. And via his "wife" he had a single child: Yehoshua (Jesus)."
Without any other context to go on i have to presume that this is refering to the entity i've usually heard refered to as "Mary." That would be a wife that doesn't exist until the new testament. Therefore any "wife" refered to in the old testament is obviously not the same one. (Again, approaching it from the historical/scientific viewpoint.)
I really don't know what you're getting at with the rest of it. Yes there is no mention of goddesses in the bible that i know of. But again the whole arguement is over whether there the bible has been changed. You seem to be arguing "there are no goddesses in the presesnt version, so there were no goddesses in the older versions, so the older and newer versions are the same."
There are goddess or goddess like figures in other media from before the changeover to a monotheistic religion. One of those figures is presented in such a way so that many biblical scholars/archeologists believe that Yahweh was believed to have a wife at some point before she was removed from the official version.
This Space Intentionally Left Blank
Well, the biggest problem in translating any ancient language is probably the nouns - especially references to places that don't come up often.
Suppose I hand you a 5000 page history book from some ancient culture, whose language is long gone (or mutated beyond recognition). Suppose it mentions a major event that happened at the waters of niglopeth. That word occurs nowhere else in the book, or for that matter in other books, and no precise details are given from which its exact locations could be determined. So, you basically have to pick the most likely body of water in the region that doesn't have a name you know, and put in a footnote that you aren't sure where it is.
My guess is that the whole Red/Reed sea business is similar to this.
In any case, unless you're trying to mount an expedition to find sunken chariots does it really matter which one it was?
I remember being 5 or 6 years old and getting together will all my friends to watch the Wizard of Oz on Halloween night. Gotta love CBC. That's the best night of the year to watch it...
The link is interesting, if a bit excessively focused upon the Protestant history (especially the "real" church vs. the evil church). Something that the article also fails to mention is that there do not exist any New Testament sources in Aramaic, which is likely the original language. There are several places in the Gospels where the translator has put in a side note to explain some notion to the reader, a telltale sign that the copy was translated. These side notes exist in the original Greek versions. The article also fails to note the massive psychological instability of Luther (he was unable to forgive himself for his sins, an act required by Roman Catholicism in its interpretation of the Sacrament of Reconciliation, and if ignored, is simply another sin to add to the heap) and later, Calvin (took Luther's concepts of predestination to their logical conclusion in which the saved can do whatever the heck they want irrespective of God, a philosophy that Calvin exploited to his own ends), the two principal founders of Protestant theology (whose beliefs are no longer upheld in the majority of denominations in America). Be careful about reading about the Bible, whether the description comes from Roman Catholics, Protestants, or Atheists (another religious category).
Mod parent down, factually incorrect.
The mask removal scene was ALSO edited to add in Hayden Christiansen. Compare the old and new side by side and you'd see that straight away. No doubt someone will link to some screenshots soon enough to prove my point.
Visceral Psyche Films
Yes in all regions EXCEPT Region 4, that is Australia and New Zealand.
Which sucks, because I for one didn't realise until I'd bought my copy, having read overseas reviews (including Region 2 which I assumed would be simply altered for region code and shipped locally) which DID have both cuts of the film on DVD.
Buyer beware.
Visceral Psyche Films
Various creation and salvation myths are regularly rereleased with minor or major rewrites. Some of these are wildly successful, as they are accompanied by massively effective marketing (involving separating heads from bodies and all).
Of course, there are always connoisseurs that claim that the original work cannot be improved on, but that doesn't stop them from issuing various fan fiction around the original myth.
On another note, the DVD cover called it Britain's first feature-length cartoon. That would seem to make CIA involvement less likely, although not rule it out.
One problem I had with the production, aside from the invented ending, was all the time spent showing animals working, accompanied by music. This was from the early days of cartoon, when a lot of cartoons were showcases of animation. It seems that is the case here, although, by modern standards, the animation is fairly primitive, and thus not worthy of showcasing. It wouldn't matter, except the story doesn't progress while we watch the chickens move hay around for a full minute, or other animals similarly engaged.
My textual reference can be found here.
Language students: Don't try to learn English here. This ain't it.
I'm happy to see artists revisit & revise their works. Artists should use whatever method works to express what they need to express.
What I wouldn't want to see is an artist trying to suppress an earlier version of his work. The earlier version is just a valid expression of what he was trying to say then as the newer version is a valid expression of what he is trying to say now.
No, not Mary. Without any other context to go on? I specifically said who the "wife" is. You even quoted it!
BTW, what are all these "historical documents" you keep referring to but never actually quote or properly reference? It sounds like you're just pulling all of this stuff out of your arse.
Modern copyright is theft of culture from everyone and it retards the progress of the useful arts and sciences.
As i've said before, i took the class years ago and there's no way i can remember the specifics. In general it was the usual things you'd expect to find in archeological digs, pottery shards and walls and anything else they tended to put writing on back then. I asked someone who took the class with me and she happened to remember the name of the textbook we used, so if you're really that interested go check out The Bible and the Ancient Near East. There were also some additional references we used, but the textbook should hopefully have most of it.
This Space Intentionally Left Blank