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"Here's my favorite example, here: 1928, my hero, Walt Disney, created this extraordinary work, the birth of Mickey Mouse in the form of Steamboat Willie. But w
by fermigier 3y ago
"Here's my favorite example, here: 1928, my hero, Walt Disney, created this extraordinary work, the birth of Mickey Mouse in the form of Steamboat Willie. But what you probably don't recognize about Steamboat Willie and his emergence into Mickey Mouse is that in 1928, Walt Disney, to use the language of the Disney Corporation today, "stole" Willie from Buster Keaton's "Steamboat Bill."
It was a parody, a take-off; it was built upon Steamboat Bill. Steamboat Bill was produced in 1928, no [waiting] 14 years--just take it, rip, mix, and burn, as he did [laughter] to produce the Disney empire. This was his character. Walt always parroted feature-length mainstream films to produce the Disney empire, and we see the product of this. This is the Disney Corporation: taking works in the public domain, and not even in the public domain, and turning them into vastly greater, new creativity. They took the works of this guy, these guys, the Brothers Grimm, who you think are probably great authors on their own. They produce these horrible stories, these fairy tales, which anybody should keep their children far from because they're utterly bloody and moralistic stories, and are not the sort of thing that children should see, but they were retold for us by the Disney Corporation. Now the Disney Corporation could do this because that culture lived in a commons, an intellectual commons, a cultural commons, where people could freely take and build. It was a lawyer-free zone."
-- Lawrence Lessig, "Free Culture", OSCON 2002 (https://youtu.be/uH4RskpUFiA?si=IHVC72F4oXpLHJVV&t=253 https://youtu.be/uH4RskpUFiA?si=IHVC72F4oXpLHJVV&t=253)
- skummetmaelk 3y agoTake what you can, give nothing back. Apparently.
- troupo 3y agoThat has been Disney's motto since forever. The "golden age if Disney" is all public domain works and fairy tales.
- HlessClaudesman 3y agoPublic domain for thee, but not for me.
- willcipriano 3y agoHey come on they have original ideas, talking African animals, talking cars, talking fish, talking toys. Without intellectual property protection they wouldn't of made all these super original ideas.
- alephnerd 3y agoAll that IP and the talent behind it became Disney's after the acquired Pixar from Steve Jobs.
- willcipriano 3y agoOh OK, I was wondering how they came up with so many original ideas but it makes sense now that they had to buy them.
- jMyles 3y agoBahaha... oh man... I'm imagining this comment being read in the voice and cadence of standup comedy.
- dryuppi 3y agoI understand you are ’reworking’ a reductive history of Pixar’s canon meme except for one thing you added: “talking African animals”. Which is a reference to the Lion King, one of the mouse’s 2d classics, which is also one of their most egregious derivative works. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kimba_the_White_Lion https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kimba_the_White_Lion
- ben_w 3y agoThe Lion King is more Hamlet than Kimba, I think. Royal family, brother of king kills king to get throne, queen not happy about this turn of events, the kid is elsewhere, ghost of king tells kid to sort it out, kid returns to royal court and after a fight ends up offing the usurper. But in Hamlet Shakespeare kills everyone; while in The Lion King, Walt disnae.
- Log_out_ 3y agoVery piracy, but okay for the big guy.
- xhkkffbf 3y agoYou realize that the folks at Disney put in thousands of hours to create their own version of the story. Yeah, they borrowed a bit, but they put in plenty of their own work. But go ahead and pretend that this is the same as the cheap-ass behavior of some stoned pirate who can't bring himself to pay for content and uses Lessig as a justification for his thievery.
- atlas_hugged 3y agoKeep huffing that corporate propaganda.
- johnnyanmac 3y ago>Yeah, they borrowed a bit, but they put in plenty of their own work. And "Steamboat Bill" didn't? I fail to see the difference outside of the fact that Grimm et. Al didn't have a small army OF lawyers to say otherwise.
- xhkkffbf 3y agoI'm not sure your point? I admitted that they borrowed a bit. And then your point is that "Steamboat Bill" borrowed? Okay. I guess. But I'm not denying that the filmmakers and artists grab ideas and plots from the collective idea well. I'm saying that they also put in thousands if not millions of hours of work creating the new version. It's just wrong for the pro piracy crowd to use this as an excuse to justify their theft.
- johnnyanmac 3y ago>It's just wrong for the pro piracy crowd to use this as an excuse to justify their theft. My main point wasn't really about modern pirates. The internet cabal will define however they want to fit their own notions. It was more about artists treated as "thieves" by companies like Disney that themselves have done "copyright infringement" to get themselves off the ground (by the definition they defined over the past century).
- nmz 3y agoEverybody should keep their children far from morals? What?
- zanellato19 3y agoMoralistic has a completely different connotation, as I'm sure you are aware.
- rsynnott 3y agoThe moral of the story for quite a lot of these stories is... a bit effed up. Like, try getting a coherent one out of The Little Mermaid.
- jMyles 3y ago> try getting a coherent one out of The Little Mermaid. It is possible to do just this, and to make a terrific and nurturing film out of it. See Ponyo.
- dryuppi 3y agoThe little mermaid is Hans Christian Andersen rather than brothers grimmm. The messaging is about curiosity and exploration. The moral is about accepting when things fail to go as you want, and choosing to avoid harm to others for your own benefit. There is an anime adaptation that is faithful to the original story. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Little_Mermaid https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Little_Mermaid https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hans_Christian_Andersen%27s_The_Little_Mermaid_(1975_film) https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hans_Christian_Andersen%27s_...
- well_actulily 3y agoLessig isn't saying we should keep children away from morals. He's criticizing how Disney adapted the Brothers Grimm's stories, which often preached heavy-handed and regressive moral lessons in a moralizing manner.
- mafuy 3y ago
- doublerabbit 3y agoNo one seems to mention that Walt didn't really animate, nor create Mickey Mouse. Walts friend of the time: Ub Iwerk did. Credit for Disney early successes should really go to him. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ub_Iwerks https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ub_Iwerks
- greggsy 3y agoIt’s right there in the first sentence of the Wikipedia article. Credits did go to him. The film was produced by Walt Disney Studios.
- merelysounds 3y agoBoth the Steamboat Bill[1] and the Steamboat Willie[2] wikipedia pages state that this was about parodying the title. Note that there was also a 1910 song "Steamboat Bill"[3]. > The film inspired the title of Walt Disney's Steamboat Willie (1928), which was released six months later and is considered the debut of Mickey Mouse. > The title of the film may be a parody of the Buster Keaton film Steamboat Bill, Jr. (1928), itself a reference to the song by Collins. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steamboat_Bill,_Jr https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steamboat_Bill,_Jr. [2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steamboat_Willie https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steamboat_Willie [3]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steamboat_Bill https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steamboat_Bill
- furyofantares 3y agoThis looks false, the Buster Keaton film was released the same year, not 14 years earlier, according to wikipedia. And both were inspired by an 18 year old song, Steamboat Bill, which Mickey whistles at the start.
- danaris 3y agoYou have misread the post: it explicitly says that Steamboat Bill was released the same year, "no waiting 14 years"—as in, they didn't wait for the copyright to expire.
- furyofantares 3y agoThanks for clarification. The Wikipedia entry implies they're both riffing on the song, not that the cartoon is riffing on the Keaton film. I guess I'm surprised if it wasn't coincident given only 6 months between releases! It's also a little confusing how the Lessig refers to the Keaton film as "Steamboat Bill" when it's "Steamboat Bill, Jr." - the song that appears in both is "Steamboat Bill." You're right that I read it wrong; I'm still not sure if it's correct though. edit: Having watched them both, they both of course are steamboat themed. Early on, Bill Jr is referred to once as "Willie", and Bill Jr appears to be a musician while Willie is almost entirely musical (using animals as instruments). Those do feel like references. The contents mostly feel unrelated though.