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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."
The Louvre announced that it was lowering the bustline of the Mona Lisa to attract more visitors.
How prophetic Orwell was...
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.
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.
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This is the best that I could find. I can't vouch for its veracity but I've never heard of bits being cut out of the Wizard of Oz.
The bits that are left in the Wizard of Oz are bad enough! Am I the only one who thinks it is one of the most cynical films ever made? Examples include the 'good' witch saying "Only bad witches are ugly." When presenting the heart to the tin man, the Wizard says something like "The measure of our hearts isn't how much we love others, but how much others love us." I can't remember exactly what the formula is that the scarecrow recites when he gets his diploma, but I think it was the square of the hypoteneuse is equal to the sum of the other two sides. And that just isn't right.
And that's just the obvious stuff. If you start looking at what really happens in the film... this poor woman finds someone drops a HOUSE on her sister crushing her, and then this same person goes on to steal her sisters most prized possession and rightful inheritance. That film is seriously nasty but put enough sugar on it and people think that it's all nicey nicey.
Aide-toi, le Ciel t'aidera - Jeanne D'Arc.
Which, interestingly, was recently rereleased with an added song in the middle. So the final cut of The Final Cut was not actually the final cut.
Political correctness is the new McCarthyism. The prosecution of thought-crime under the banner of 'diversity'. No art is sacred.