It’s Time to Play the Music, Light the Lights, Flag The Muppet Show Content
(Featured image is “Chevron & Muppet Sam the Eagle ‘We Agree’ Ad” by jonathan mcintosh and is licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0)
Okay. Let’s start with a content warning: The comments are going to include mentions of violence, sexual violence, domestic abuse, racism, and worse. By now I’m sure you’ve heard that The Muppet Show is now available for streaming on the Disney+ Channel.
Hurray! It’s the Muppet Show!
You have probably also heard that a handful of the episodes have been given a disclaimer at the beginning of the show. This disclaimer is unskippable. It follows:
For those who want a transcript that they can copy/paste (or have their text-to-speech program translate for them), it reads:
This program includes negative depictions and/or mistreatment of people or cultures. These stereotypes were wrong then and are wrong now. Rather than remove this content, we want to acknowledge its harmful impact, learn from it and spark conversation to create a more inclusive future together.
Disney is committed to creating stories with inspirational and aspirational themes that reflect the rich diversity of the human experience around the globe.
To learn more about how stories have impacted society visit: www.Disney.com/StoriesMatter
YOUR VIDEO WILL START IN 12
There are two episodes that aren’t part of the streaming service. The first is the Brooke Shields episode where they do The Wizard of Oz. Warner Brothers currently owns the rights to The Wizard of Oz and an agreement was not able to be reached regarding the episode before it came time to pull the trigger.
Now, copyright problems plague modern re-issues of old shows that involve music all the time. There are a number of musical numbers in the shows that have been cut and another number that have been re-recorded and dubbed over the original song (so you’re not hearing the version that people heard in 1979). As irritating as it is, I’m pretty sure that everybody understands why they can’t watch the episode with the Muppets dressed up as Scarecrow, Tin Woodsman, and Cowardly Lion and singing “We’re off to see the Wizard”.
I mean, I know that *I* think “It’s a historical document! We should see it as it happened!” But, you know. Copyright, right?
As for the other episode, it involves a last-minute guest star that replaced Richard Pryor after Mr. Pryor was unable to do the show. The last-minute guest star was arrested as part of Britain’s investigation “Operation Ore” and I’m pretty sure that everybody is more than happy enough to exhale deeply and say “yeah, I understand why that one didn’t make the cut”.
But that disclaimer. Man! That disclaimer.
It’s causing much consternation among those who get consternated about such things as warning labels prior to being shown something that wasn’t that controversial back when they were kids.
I suppose it should be pointed out that Lady and the Tramp, The Jungle Book, The Aristocats, Dumbo, Peter Pan, and Swiss Family Robinson all have the same disclaimer as well.
Which brings us to the question “what the heck?”
I mean, I know that I immediately pursed my lips in irritation the first time that I read the disclaimer… but, you know. There might be something to it. What is in Lady and the Tramp? The “We Are Siamese” song with the cats. I don’t remember that being particularly offensive… and now I watch it in my late 40’s and think “Holy cow. I don’t remember them leaning into it quite *THAT* much. Yeah, that needs a disclaimer right there.”
Dumbo? Oh, yeah. The crows. (Then I go and look up the song on the Youtubes and think… Oh. Yeah. That needs a disclaimer right there.)
What was in Peter Pan? OH YEAH THE NATIVE AMERICANS. I go back and google that scene and remember that I did not remember that scene *AT ALL*.
Okay. I don’t need to look up the other stuff. I’ll take them at their word.
But the Muppets? What did the Muppets do? The main thing that I remember was their version of “There Ain’t Nobody Here But Us Chickens” and my hackles immediately get raised because, sure, the song charted as a “Race Record” back in 1946 but that doesn’t require a *WARNING*.
I mean, look:
Huh. They used guns. I forgot that part. But other than the guns, it’s not insensitive or anything. It’s just a song that was halfway between Jump Jazz and Novelty.
From there, I got to googling (because I do *NOT* come close to remembering anything else that might be offensive) and I see that the Johnny Cash episode had a Confederate Flag in the background of a scene or two. Joan Baez had a line where she did a stereotypical Native American accent in her episode. Kenny Rogers had an episode where Muppets in traditional Arab garb were digging for oil. Peter Sellers did a song called “A Gypsy’s Violin”.
Oh. Yeah. I guess I can see why those episodes might warrant a warning.
I mean, we’re now in a world where the previous choices centered on “yanking the episode”. That one episode of Community? Yanked. Those episodes of 30 Rock? Yanked. Those episodes of Scrubs? Gone. That episode of It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia? Wait, they got rid of that episode? Huh. Well, it’s gone too.
It’s better to still have it, right? I mean, I’ve never even seen a full episode Community or 30 Rock or Always Sunny and I’d prefer there to be a 12 second unskippable disclaimer in front of the offensive episodes than those episodes to be gone entirely.
So, I’m trying to look at it that the other option for the questionable The Muppet Show episodes were “not having a disclaimer before the show” but “those episodes being gone”. Perhaps maybe they’d only do something like “cut the song/bit that has the bad part”. Perhaps, in the future, we’ll have well enough trained machine algorithms to replace a Confederate Flag with an American one. Change a mock accent on the fly to a less offensive one. Change the traditional Arab garb to something more Texan. Change the reference of the Gypsies to the Irish Travellers. Sure, maybe that’ll happen someday, and we can make statements about morality-washing the past when that day comes.
And, in the meantime, we can watch The Muppet Show episodes. We can go back and enjoy Johnny Cash singing Dirty Old Egg-Sucking Dog. Huh. Rowlf was playing the piano for that. Huh. And they made jokes about Johnny Cash singing the song in front of him.
Huh. There’s a lot going on there.
Okay. Maybe it’s okay that they have a disclaimer. I mean, the other option is not having The Muppet Show at all, right?
I bought my kids a Tom and Jerry DVD when they were little and it had a disclaimer. It wasn’t a wall of text, though. It was a Whoopi Goldberg monologue about the “mammy two shoes” character. I thought it was worthwhile for my kids to see that before they saw the show.Report
I’m largely in agreement here. I’d much rather have a brief disclaimer before a movie than to have something like ‘Gone With the Wind’ simply removed. Same thing with books. I’d much rather that there be a Note to Parents at the beginning of a story than to lose Kipling, Lofting, etc.Report
Agreed, part of how you combat racism, etc. is to understand how pervasive it was, and you can’t do that if every example is memory-holed.Report
GWTW was never gone. It has always been readily available with and without historical context.Report
I agree with pretty much everything here.
The question I’m now wondering about is…
How long before THIS is labeled “Cancel Culture” or otherwise attacked for being an infringement on someone’s right to do… something…Report
This isn’t cancelling, it’s snowflaking, or something.Report
Less cancel culture and more milkshake duck.Report
Would you see someone labeling this as “Cancel Culture” to be a problem?
Like, would you immediately assume that there is some nefarious purpose behind them using that label? “I’ve seen this movie. I know what happens next.”Report
Labeling this “Cancel Culture” would be inaccurate. Nothing is being cancelled. As you point out, if anything, this allows content that might otherwise be cancelled to remain. This is a scalpel in place of a machete.
So if someone wants to label this CC, I’d call that problematic. It strikes me we are in a weird place where labeling things CC is itself a form of cancelling. “CC IS BAD! YOU’RE DOING CC!!! STOP DOING BAD!!!” I imagine an attempt to label this CC would be an attempt to remove these warnings which I would interpret as little more than saying, “I don’t want people to offer an opinion on this work that is other than my own.”
So, yes, labeling this CC would be problematic because it would stretch the definition of CC even further.Report
Eventually, I imagine, people will just tune out the people yelling “THIS IS CANCEL CULTURE” and ignore them. “Jeez. Those people are yelling again. Again? I mean *STILL*.”
Because can you remember a time when they weren’t yelling?Report
Well, I’d probably ask them “Why?” and proceed based on their answer.Report
Well, for this, I remember Christopher Hitchens talking about “offense”.
Here’s the first quote that came to mind:
That’s kind of harsh and kind of anti-social… but he’s right that “I’m offended” is not an argument in and of itself, it does not imply that you have an obligation, and it does not imply that you have failed to meet an obligation.
I mean, my take on the disclaimer itself was that… okay, yeah. There is some content that deserves a warning or two and it’s appropriate to put it there. But part of me wonders if it’s prelude to Bowdlerization or Sanitization and I’m vaguely against that sort of thing.
To the extent that the Content Warning is the end of it, I support it 100%.
To the extent that the Content Warning is just the beginning of it, I immediately see the “THIS IS CANCEL CULTURE!” people as having a point, even if I would phrase their point exceptionally differently.
Which brings me to the second Christopher Hitchens quotation:
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“Mocking the left, Donald Trump Jr. said, “This month alone, they’ve banned The Muppets. And then if there’s things you thought were sort of above cancellation, you would be wrong. There is nothing the radical left won’t cancel.””
You heard it here first: The Muppets have been banned.Report
Only one episode, and it starred a sex criminal.Report
Banned.
In fact, we should take this post down. Don’t want liberals getting upset we violated the Muppet Ban.Report
I didn’t know you took Don Jr. so seriously!
I don’t take him particularly seriously. Should I give him a second look?Report
I thought I wasn’t supposed to dismiss people simply because they were wrong about Cancel Culture?
My point above was that, for a certain segment of folks, anything short of glorifying their specific feelings gets immediately labeled as some form of liberal oppression.
We now have Disney, property rights holder of the Muppets, voluntarily putting in a brief disclaimer and removing a few episodes from their service. This has been labeled as the Muppets being banned. So, serious or not, it seems I was right.
So I ask you, now that my prediction has come true, what do you think the best response would be?Report
I thought I wasn’t supposed to dismiss people simply because they were wrong about Cancel Culture?
Well, I’m not aware that Don Jr. was worth taking seriously prior to the last couple of days but…
Sure.
There are people who are not only calling this instance of Content Warnings “Cancel Culture” but an example of the Muppets being “cancelled”.
While I do not think that posting the content warning is an example of the Muppets being “cancelled”, I do think that the warnings are a hedge against “cancellation”.
Not the “OH EMM GEE, JIM HENSON WAS RACIST!” kind of cancellation but the “Do you think that the fact that he had no problem with plastering Confederate flags all over his show whenever people wanted them to be put up indicates any sympathy to White Supremacy on his part? I mean, Fraggle Rock was pretty White!” kind of “Cancel Culture”.
The clout-chasing part. Like, we got into this when, right before the superbowl, there was an article asking if lionizing pirates isn’t problematic.
The Voxish appeal to problematicity as found in these examples:
Here’s an example of the “problematicity” thing. (Hrm. I should probably sidebar this…)
Here’s an interesting excerpt from the middle:
I urge you to read the whole thing but, if you don’t want to read the whole thing, I’ll just jump back to that first sentence again:
The blog started, as so many anonymous online projects do, as vengeful public shaming masquerading as social criticism.
If I were to explore the whole “Cancel Culture” thing, after we got past the whole “CANCEL CULTURE DOESN’T EXIST!” part of the argument and over the “accountability culture” hump, I’d focus on that sentence there.
Vengeful public shaming masquerading as social criticism.
The writer of “Your Fave Is Problematic” admits that what she was doing was vengeful public shaming masquerading as social criticism.
So… let’s say that you’re out in the wild and you see some particularly cutting social criticism. If there is a part of you that notices that the particularly cutting social criticism is indistinguishable from vengeful public shaming… well, you’re going to find yourself making comparisons to antibiotic resistance or similar.
Which leads us to a place where an idiot like Don Jr. sees the social criticism of the Muppets (something we’ve already agreed that has shows that merit a 12 second unskippable content warning) does not see social criticism, but vengeful public shaming masquerading as social criticism.
Don Jr. has not stopped being an idiot. I doubt he’ll stop any time soon.
But people mixing up social criticism and vengeful public shaming masquerading as social criticism?
Prepare to see more and more of that.
If you think that you’ve got enough fingers to be the little Dutch Boy holding back the waters by putting his finger in the dike, I wish you the best of luck.
I think that you’re going to need more fingers. I think that eventually someone who isn’t an idiot is going to encounter vengeful public shaming masquerading as social criticism and pull a Joe Welsh. And it’ll work.
I mean, if you don’t want to call Liat Kaplan’s essay an apology, that’s fine… but at the very least, it’s an apologia.
And even if you don’t think that this particular version of vengeful public shaming masquerading as social criticism needs a formal written defense, the creator of it does.
In part, she apologizes because of stuff like the social criticism that the Muppets was trying to address gets misinterpreted… and while Don Jr. is far from being a good faith actor in his criticisms of their criticisms, the social criticisms of the Muppets (and similarly appropriate criticisms) are getting swept together with criticisms of Animal Crackers, of droids in Star Wars, of people romanticizing pirates, and, yes, of the stuff done in Your Fave Is Problematic.Report
So… if I’m understanding you correctly…
The issue is not that Don Jr. is blatantly telling a big whopping lie about what happened to the Muppets. The issue is that liberals are acting so ridiculous that one day it may only take a small exaggeration to reach a similar point? I mean, Republicans are basically being FORCED to misrepresent what is actually happening.
Also, did you actually read that Vox article on the animal crackers? I know it wasn’t your Tweet but the article isn’t really anything close to what is being discussed here. But, hey, it’s a Tweet… it doesn’t have to be right.Report
I understand that the Dolly Parton article is similarly nuanced as well. She’s great. Everybody loves her! The problem is that everybody includes everybody, and everybody includes bad people, and she hasn’t done anything to make bad people *STOP* liking her.
Which is, of course, troubling.
As for Don Jr, I’m not sure what you want me to say.
He’s an idiot who lies all the time.
In this case, he’s lying about the Muppets having been cancelled.
What happened to the Muppets is, we all agree, much more nuanced. They were viewed and, let’s face it, there’s a bunch of stuff that hasn’t aged well into this: The Current Year. The disclaimer at the beginning of the show is an attempt to contextualize the shows for a modern audience and not attempt to morality-wash it!
And people saying it’s an example of Cancellation are lying.
But if we wanted to discuss the disclaimer within the current context of the current culture, we could.
Indeed, I tried to. And I tried to write my post in such a way that idiots like Don Jr, had they read it, would be forced to walk back their “MUPPETS ARE CANCELLED” statements to something closer to “everything’s a freakin’ problem these days… everything has to be appropriate to The New Gods, even stuff that was written when The Old Gods were in charge!”
And that last statement is much more worth engaging with than “MUPPETS ARE CANCELLED!”
Indeed, if I were arguing the anti-anti-cancel culture position, I would focus on the arguments that aren’t here to the exclusion of the ones that are.
Don Jr? He’d be a gift from heaven!Report
I don’t think it’s cancel culture but it is reflective of a certain culture of learned helplessness.Report
I disagree with that. I don’t think this is intended to say, “Poor snowflakes… you probably don’t want to watch this vile thing.” I think the core intent is to avoid people saying, “Yo… why did Disney put that up? Didn’t they know it had that terrible thing in it?” Because now no one will say that. They’ll say, “Oh… Disney told me it had a terrible thing in it. There it is.”
People may agree or disagree with whether Disney should still broadcast things with terrible things in them… but no one will be surprised when they stumble upon a terrible thing.
I wouldn’t reflexively turn off something that had such a warning. I would probably watch it alone before offering it to my young children (ages 5 and 7). Then again, we’ve been wandering our way into some 90’s kids films, many of which have some eyebrow raising moments (e.g., the fake drowning scene in “The Sandlot”; discussion of a “stacked” 12-year-old in “Rookie of the Year”). The latter went over their head and the former we simply addressed by saying it’s never okay to trick people into kissing you when they asked why the young woman was so upset.
So… do I think these things are necessary? No. Do I think they might prove helpful to some? Yes. Do I see any real cost? No.Report
Well I don’t want to overstate the issue. As I said in my below comment of the plausible options I don’t particularly see this one as worth losing sleep over. But it does involve a certain outsourcing of judgment, even in a very small way, and I think we need to be clear-eyed about that as we embark.Report
Bringing this subthread and the one below with Jaybird together, I’d agree that this particular warning feels a bit overwrought. I’d probably prefer something more like the old* HBO warnings, where they simply let you know that the upcoming showing has Nudity or Adult Content or Profane Language and let the viewer decide.
To me, that removes the potential for outsourcing judgement that you mention here, which I do agree is a risk with a warning like the one offered by Disney. Don’t tell folks how they ought to feel about the content… simply let them know that the content is there and let THEM decide.
If you want to include a link to your corporate stance, so be it. That may prove helpful for those who are interested in that.
So, yea, I have no objection to content warnings as described by Jaybird and would probably support them being used more frequently. I don’t have a strong feeling about disclaimers like this one but think they’re slightly less preferable to more straightforward CWs. However, I think they are much, much better than simply disappearing anything that might be offensive to anyone.Report
Concur. And about those alternatives… just ugh. I keep thinking about one of my favorite dumb blockbusters, Enemy of the State. You know there are probably people who would love nothing more than to digitally alter it so that Will Smith turns out to be a foreign spy or the NSA director is an imposter or something instead of just a paranoid, venal bureaucrat.
I love that pre-9/11 such a cynical thing could be made as a big budget A list movie. I’d hate to see our ability to criticize and laugh at ourselves lost in the ongoing efforts to problematize everything.Report
“…ongoing efforts to problematize everything…”
If you were trying to summarize the last 5-10ish years of popular political and social discourse, you’d be hardpressed to do such a good job in so few words.Report
I kinda like Content Warnings.
Saying “hey, there’s some stuff in here that you might want to know about beforehand” is a good service.
There’s a lot of stuff out there and you don’t want to blindside people.
Now, when it comes to the so-called “Trigger Warnings”, I find myself vaguely in a different headspace. Like, this particular framing seems to set it up as a moral obligation and something that authors/hosts are failing if they don’t do. Like, failing *MORALLY*.
It took a serious reframing on my part to understand what was going on.
The first was an essay that I can’t find but it discussed what “triggering” was. The author of the essay was explaining that, back in high school, she was experiencing some serious abuse at home and this was happening around the same time that she was studying intensely for Calculus. She went on to talk about how, to this day, Calculus is intensely triggering for her.
As I was reading this essay, I found myself getting angry. WHAT THE HELL, I found myself asking. YOU WANT ME TO PUT “TRIGGER WARNING: CALCULUS” ON MY ESSAYS THAT MENTION NEWTON AND LEIBNITZ NOW.
And, no. That’s not what the person writing the essay wanted. They were explaining how “triggering” works. There are people out there who encounter a particular thing and are immediately dragged back into a very negative headspace. People should understand that, hey, this negative headspace is a thing that happens to people and it isn’t necessarily something that would get a movie an R rating that would do it. Sometimes it’s something like Calculus that does that.
The essay was probably trying to do multiple things at once. The first was letting the author say something that had been on her chest for years and years and years. The second was explain to people (like me!) what triggering was and how triggering worked. The third (which I didn’t realize at the time) was gently chide people who used the term “triggered” as being co-extensive with “my moral disgust response has been activated”. (There was a period there when “OH MY GOSH I AM LITERALLY TRIGGERED” was used by a subset of the online discoursers to communicate that someone else had a bad position on a particular topic. I think that this essay was also trying to gently say “quit it”.)
More recently, there was a thread on twitter about “Bean Dad”. Basically, a guy’s 9ish daughter came up to him and asked him to make lunch or something and he did the Dad thing and told her, no, you need to learn how to do it. So she got a can of beans from the pantry and it was an old-fashioned can from the 90’s. You know, it didn’t have a pull-top. So he told her to get a can opener and spent the next several hours telling her to figure out how to use the can opener. No, not giving her a tutorial on how to use it. Telling her “figure it out” and high-level stuff like “if your eyes don’t get it, close them and just use your hands… feel how the can opener fits the can” and stuff. Well, as I said, this took hours. Eventually, she opened the can with the can opener and experienced the joy of having figured it out for herself.
Twitter, of course, piled on Bean Dad like nobody’s business. Everything from “control freak” to “child abuse” and whatnot was thrown at him and he eventually dropped off of Twitter entirely.
The thing that I found interesting was one of my follows on the twitters said something to the effect of “huh… I read the Bean Dad thing and I think I’m triggered.” She then gave a very short summary of her childhood and… yeah. I can see why that story would have dredged up a lot of stuff.
Giving a content warning (as opposed to a “trigger warning”) can allow people to avoid some of the worst triggers out there. But you can’t avoid triggers like “Calculus” and you can’t avoid triggers like “Father With OPINIONS”.
And here’s the point, you shouldn’t.
But you can put stuff like “warning: there are intense dinnertable conversation scenes in this film” or “warning: this film has a handful of stereotypes in it”.
And, sure, in the 80’s, smart kids knew that the PMRC Warning Sticker meant that the album was for Discerning Tastes Only and someone might look at Game of Thrones and say “HOLY CRAP! NUDITY! SEX! VIOLENCE! THANK YOU PRESTIGE TELEVISION!” instead of “maybe we should watch this after the kids have gone to bed”.
But, for the most part, forewarned is forearmed and going into a movie knowing that the parental figure is going to yell at the child over something dumb is something that is probably good to know beforehand. Heck, it might even help you say “you know what? Let’s watch something else instead.”
And that’s fine.
It’s a hell of a lot better than some board of Mrs. Grundys telling artists/writers/singers/poets to go back, do it again, but this time take out the bad stuff.Report
I think I agree with this but I’m not sure… are you drawing a distinction between “Content Warnings” and “Trigger Warnings” and say the former are good and the latter are bad?
Or do you see them as more-or-less the same thing, though perhaps how they are perceived in the Zeitgeist is currently different?
To me, I always understood trigger warnings as saying, “Hey… we’re not saying this is bad or that you shouldn’t consume it but we are letting you know that this thing contains this other thing, which may be triggering for some folks, so we wanted to give a heads up. Maybe you won’t read it, maybe you’ll just prepare yourself for the potentially triggering content. Okay… we offered our warning. Here ya go…”
I recognize that not everyone interpreted it that way or even used TWs that way, but the initial intent to be always seemed pretty obvious and non-controversial.
I mean… hasn’t HBO been offering Content/Trigger Warnings forever? Like, that’s how we knew which ones we wanted to watch!Report
A “Content Warning” just lets people know that this piece of art contains some depictions of content that some (or even many) might find objectionable.
When it comes to “Trigger”, well, here’s an essay from Rona Fischman. The gist is that “trauma” is different from “being offended” and you shouldn’t say “I’m triggered!” synonymously with “I’m angry!”
So “Trigger Warning” might be appropriate for some kinds of content… child abuse, mental/emotional abuse in a relationship, worse stuff… and if it were only used in the circumstances that said “this contains some trauma content and it will likely remind you of similar trauma content in your past (if you have similar trauma)”, then I’d see it as a particularly useful subset of the set of Content Warnings.
But it’s been misused that I’m not sure that it’s useful anymore. Maybe it’s useful for some… I don’t know, though. Rona wrote her essay explaining that people who were trying to be good allies were not, in fact, being good allies.
Content Warnings? I think that Content Warnings are great.Report
That makes sense to me. I’m not active enough in enough places that I’ve seen TWs abused really.Report
Well, here’s another way to look at it.
Did you watch the Johnny Cash segment? It’s short, it’s funny, it’s dark, it’s Johnny Cash.
Do you see how that segment might require a content warning? Do you see how a content warning beforehand was appropriate?
Were you triggered?
If you can see how the first two questions are neutral as heck and the last question got a “wait, is he seriously asking this? Is he mocking the concept of being triggered? Is he mocking me? How is he asking that? He might be serious but he might be being a supreme jerk! How is he asking that?” then I’d say that you understand exactly why I like Content Warnings and think that “Trigger Warning” should only be used in fairly specialized circumstances.
I mean… I suppose we could say “Trigger Warning: Racism”.
But now we’re having an argument about the Confederate Flag? No! We’re arguing about singing “Egg Sucking Dog” in front of a sentient dog. And I’m just going to stop writing this paragraph now.
“Content Warning”? Hey. This program includes negative depictions and/or mistreatment of people or cultures. These stereotypes were wrong then and are wrong now. Rather than remove this content, we want to acknowledge its harmful impact, learn from it and spark conversation to create a more inclusive future together.Report
At 1:38, Rowlf sounds just like Bill Clinton. It’s the accent, the sing-song intonation, the unconditional denial…it’s perfect.Report
One of the under-remarked upon aspects of this is how much technology plays a part. We’re living in a to-date unique period in human history where we can access more and more of what was created in the popular culture over the last ~100 years. Yes, we have surviving texts and libraries where you can find the obscure but you can’t pull up an actual performance of a play that was put on in the 19th century and the further you go back the less there is. Even now try finding episodes of a sitcom that was popular more than 30 years ago and odds are you can’t.
I think in a perfect world we would not have these kinds of disclaimers and would just let things speak for themselves. However if it’s between this and some combination of memory hole-ing or retroactive editing I prefer the disclaimer approach. At some point we need to trust ourselves to be able to view these things in context, rather than outsourcing the responsibility to spineless corporate entertainment conglomerates. Better a path that at least in theory allows for it.Report
Well, one of the funny things is the response to two very different “YOU CAN’T WATCH THIS” situations.
“You can’t watch this! Warner Brothers owns the rights to the song!”
“Yes, well, you have to understand…”
“You can’t watch this! Joni Mitchell affects a stereotypical Native American accent as a punchline in one of the segments!”
“GOD DAMMIT DON’T TELL ME WHAT I CAN AND CANNOT WATCH”Report
Hey if you want to do a post on the capture of copyright I’m right there with you. It’s gone from necessary evil to protect creators to de facto permanent, unjustifiable monopoly.Report
This offers me a helpful framing device…
1. Where, when, and how do we want to tell people, “YOU CAN’T WATCH THIS!”
2. Where, when, and how do we want to tell people, “YOU SHOULDN’T WATCH THIS!”
3. Where, when, and how do we want to tell people, “Make sure you want to watch there. Here is a bit more info to help you decide.”
To me, we want to live in #3, occasionally visit #2, and do our best to avoid #1.Report
“You can’t watch this, it’s mine!”
vs.
“You can’t watch this unless you give me a dollar first.”
And we’re also in a weird place where there is a segment of the population that seems to definite its identity through its consumption choices.
By saying “this product is not available to you”, a consumption choice is being denied. And if identity is defined through consumption, you’re denying someone their identity.
Which gets us to weird places pretty quickly.Report
I went to the grocery store the other day. I wanted some olives. They wouldn’t let me have them unless I gave them money. I didn’t agree with the amount of money they wanted and left with my desire to consume olives thwarted.Report
Periodically, some cheerful parent out there puts a youtube up of little Maddissonn reciting “Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening” standing in front of a door.
You get the joys of a 7-year old soprano doing a sing-song of “WHOSE WOODS THESE ARE I THINK I KNOW” and then, a few days later, the youtube gets yanked by the Frost people.
I think that that’s a better comparison than olives.Report
Either way, it’s something someone owns, and the owner gets to set the terms of use. Property rights are a b***h. By the way, that poem has been in the public domain since January 1, 2019.Report
What’s the position?
“Power is power and the law is the law”?
Well, I certainly do not disagree with that assertion.
That said, I think that the Frost people yanking that poem off of youtube through the final moments of 2018 makes a better comparison than olives.Report
You’re asking me what my position is? I’m still trying to figure out what yours is –or if you have one.Report
I wrote the OP. My position is up there.
If you want to know what my position is on copyright, I think that the ratchet has turned too tightly and we should return, at least!, to what we had the year prior to the Sonny Bono Act passing. (That’s not my ideal, but I think that it’s acceptable and it’s a damn sight better than what we have now.)
And, yes. I’m asking you what your position is.
Do you have one?Report
On what?Report
Property rights.
They are a bitch, I take it?Report
Someone, I think John Mackie, said that there is no natural law of property, but it is natural that there be some law of property. Given that there will, inevitably, be some law of property, whining about property owners enforcing whatever rights they happen to have is like whining about gravity. But the rights they happen to have are not written in stone, and serious proposals to change them can be productive.
As far as copyright is concerned, when I learned copyright law, the term was 28 years and an option to renew for another 28 years, for a total of 56 years. Very few copyrightable works have commercial value after 28 years, and still fewer after 56 years, so I was fine with this. I was not thrilled when this changed, but, like most lawyers who don’t have a client with a dog in the fight, my principal objection was “dammit, now I have to learn new stuff” rather than the merits. That is the default reaction of lawyers to legal change generally when they don’t have specific client interests to protect. Inertia is a b***h.Report
Intellectual property always seems unique to me in that it is relatively recent, and openly done as a mere utilitarian device, rather than some cosmic law of nature.
Like, traditional property rights were always framed as quasi-divine where there was an unquestionable moral foundation that could never be breached.
Whereas patents and copyright were invented for the naked reason of dangling the promise of riches in front of content creators.
I recall reading that in Rerum Novarum the logic of Catholic social teaching wat that property rights were more like patent rights, where they were a utilitarian device to accomplish some larger societal goal.
But in that same encyclical, the word “socialize” was used instead of “socialism” where they framed the public control of the factors of production in the same utilitarian terms.
I think the implications of this are striking.Report
Well, that isn’t what I’m talking about.
A good CW doesn’t tell you what you should or shouldn’t consume but does provide information to help you decide. Think of it like a nutritional label on a box of cereal. It won’t tell you every thing you need to know about what’s inside, but does give some helpful information that may help you decide if you want the Fruity Smacks or the Bran Pops.
Another type of CW doesn’t just tell you what’s inside, but tries to instruct you on what choice you should make about consumption. Maybe these are warranted in certain situations, but they’re probably used too often. Think of it like the Surgeon General’s warning on a pack of cigarettes or a soda tax.
Yet another type isn’t really a CW at all but an attempt to control who can consume what. Think Prohibition.
Now, there may be other reasons to say, “You can’t consume this” that are more or less legitimate. That isn’t really relevant here.
There is some potential intersection though. Does Disney have an obligation to air those Muppet episodes? What if Mr. Disney decides, completely of his own volition, that he doesn’t want to show those episodes. He thinks they are harmful to the view. Or he is embarrassed they were made. Or he is simply sufficiently work. Does he have some moral obligation to make them available to others?
What if there is no other way to consume them? Does that change things?
What if his reason is different… what if he just thinks the jokes are hacky and beneath the quality of the Muppet brand?Report
Yes, a good CW is like nutritional info. And while I like the whole issue of me being able to write an essay about why you shouldn’t enjoy this or that entertainment, that’s different from me saying that I should be able to prevent you from watching it.
Like… should I have that power over you? I’m pretty sure that you shouldn’t have that power over me.
If you want to argue that I should have that power over you, I’d like to hear why.
As for Disney’s obligations… well, at this point we’re getting into Copyright Theory and all that.
I’m sure that everyone on the board is a supporter of Reasonable Copyright Legislation Enforced Appropriately.
I’m also pretty sure that linking to the Johnny Cash song above exists in a weird grey zone. I can understand why someone would argue that it is, 100%, fair use on my part.
I can also understand that, when I come back to this post in a year, that the videos will have been taken down by youtube in the time since because my including them might be fair use, but youtube hosting them is another thing entirely.
As for Disney’s obligation to me… do they have an obligation to air anything? No, they don’t… but moving from “they don’t have an obligation to show it” to “youtube has an obligation to take it down” seems to miss a step. (Is it just the “power is power” thing?)
If Uncle Walt sends out an email saying… well, here. Have you ever seen Mickey’s Mellerdrammer?
If Uncle Walt doesn’t want you to see it, to what extent do I have to go along with him?
And the whole “identity wrapped up in consumption choices” thing adds a bunch of strongly felt emotions tied into this.
To what extent are we obligated to care about another’s strongly felt emotions?
At the end of the day, is it just that power is power and you should know that you are *NEVER* going to see Song of the South in HD?
To what extent should we be able to go into a storefront and say “nope, you have to sell me what I want to buy?”
(This pops up periodically. The rules seem to sift and waver.)Report
“Like… should I have that power over you? I’m pretty sure that you shouldn’t have that power over me.
If you want to argue that I should have that power over you, I’d like to hear why.”
Quite simply… no.Report
There’s a line attributed to Mark Twain that goes:
“Censorship is telling a man he can’t have a steak just because a baby can’t chew it.”
It seems that not letting you read this because it’s bad and an infohazard is different from not letting you read it because I own the rights and I don’t feel like letting anyone read it.
But… that seems like a way to say “sufficiently rich people can censor sufficiently poor people”.
I mean, on one level, it’s *TRUE*. I’m not arguing against the truth of the proposition.
But…Report
Perhaps I was unclear. I do not want either of us to have that power over the other.
The ability to censor due to property rights and the like is a different issue, as far as I see it.Report
A more interesting discussion is, “when do we agree that preventing people from reading something is a good idea?”
Because the answer is never, “Never”.Report
What would you like me to prevent you from reading, Chip?Report
Trump’s tax returns? HIYO!Report
Child pornography for starters.
State secrets like the names of foreign agents.
Or the addresses of safe houses for victims of abuse, or whistleblowers and informants.
Slander and libel, and incitement.Report
Well, there’s only so much I can do from here but…
We’ll start with the bottom three lines. I can tell you to delete any and all links to Wikileaks and the sites that talk about the stuff that Wikileaks talks about. You probably want to get rid of links to major newspapers too.
That totally goes for slander, libel, and incitement as well. NO MORE NEWS LINKS. Block those channels on your television as well.
As for the addresses of safe houses for victims of abuse, whistleblowers, and informants, I’d say that news sites are the only places where I’ve come across them so the news sites are probably the best thing for you to get rid of all around.
As for the first example, I understand that a conviction will do a good job of preventing you from reading the news sites that you want me to keep you from reading so… win-win. I urge you to turn yourself in now.Report
I think there’s a bit of absurdum going on here.Report
I’m limiting my attempts to prevent you from accessing these things to text.
Do you need more than that?Report
I don’t understand what you’re trying to say.Report
I’m doing what I can to prevent you from reading those things and I’m limiting myself to this comment box.Report
And yet, despite his horror, Rowlf keeps on playing. That dog is a professional.Report
Yes, a doggone professional.Report
Meh. I’ll roll my eyes and do an air wank in honor of the people who would throw a Twit fit if the disclaimers—which any reasonable person would realize go without saying—weren’t there, but it’s not much of an imposition, and as you say, it’s much, much better than just memory-holing the episodes.
Honestly, I don’t even think they should have dropped the sex offender episodes.Report
Jeebus, you can’t skip the disclaimer? That sucks. That’s worse than the actual disclaimer. Frankly, I’d prefer to see the original episodes unaltered. I’m an adult. I think I can read the disclaimer once and be good, not every frickin time I pull up another episode.Report
Agreed. While obviously I approve of some kind of disclaimer on older content like this, the viewer should be able to skip past them.
It’s important to acknowledge past bigotry, but to make that acknowledgement annoying doesn’t really help anyone.Report
“It’s important to acknowledge past bigotry, but to make that acknowledgement annoying doesn’t really help anyone.”
Indeed. The most surefire way to make enemies is to annoy the shit out of them for misc. crap that doesn’t really matter much. I could even argue, the disclaimer should be skippable after the first watching, but no, make everyone watch it every single time. Oh what fun.Report
Ahem.
“It’s only 12 seconds.”Report
It’s important to teach kids to ignore warning messages.Report
Dude, I’m PAYING to watch a disclaimer for 12 seconds! I’m going to say that again.
PAYING
Unless this is a free service, then I’m not that annoyed. There are trade offs for “free” like commercials, etc. I’ll accept that, but not for stuff I’m coming out of pocket on.Report
Trigger warning:
This video contains trigger warnings. Sensitive viewers who are disturbed by trigger warnings may wish to view with caution and consult with professional counseling if needed. Signs of emotional triggering may include irritability, lack of focus, and tweeting in all caps.Report
Kazzy! Down here!Report
Every fourth of July, I visit my in-laws. And one of the things that ends up on the TV (I believe on the Turner Classic Movies network) is 1776, which is always followed by Yankee Doodle Dandy.
It’s from 1942, and has a lengthy blackface scene . An outright minstrel show scene, in fact.
Now, i can’t say when this started — but I know for the last several years at least, there’s been a 30 minute “intro” that is basically a little documentary on the history of blackface, minstrel shows, etc.
Which is a pretty good way of handling it, I think. “Look, this is a thing that existed. It was pretty godawful, but nobody thought much of it at the time. This is why it’s in this old musical, this is how it came about, and this is why it was finally ended. We didn’t really want to cut out a whole scene, but we wanted to give you some context. And also to warn you, because it’s pretty jarring to modern audiences.”Report
The 1970s and 1980s were a weird time when it came to a certain kind of humor. Mainstream society was in agreement that we should at least pay lipservice to the idea that racism and sexism were bad things, homophobia still needed to wait until the 1990s at least, but there was a certain sort of raw humor allowed that wouldn’t fly in 2020 because of even more increased awarness, changing demographics since we are much more diverse now, and the culture war.
Airplane’s opening “we all know what this is about, you want me to have an abortion” was only funny because not only was Roe v. Wade relatively recent but the anti-abortion fight barely begun at that point. Since the pro-choice movement seemed very secure in permanent victory, you could make a rather funny sequence about abortion. Not so much in 2021 when Roe v. Wade looks on the cusp of reversal and culture war is in full force.
So the creators of the Muppet Show were liberals. They were involved with creating Sesame Street and Jim Henson would later come up with Fragile Rock because he wanted to get rid of war. Nearly all of them would be horrified if you called them racist or reactiory. The problem is that because of their time, a certain sort of comedy based on stereotypes was more acceptable than it is now.Report
Its also become apparent that the “liberalism” of the post Sexual Revolution, post 60’s cultural upheaval was very much limited to men, and very much centered around the college educated middle class mores.Report
That’s an aspect of this sure. I still think this is a minority aspect becuase the new Social Justice mores are also college educated middle class mores based on how much academic theory they rest on. The culture war is still being waged mainly between the professional middle class vs. the business middle class.Report
Another way that I saw the 1970s/80s was that a sort of truce was reached regarding race and sex in the United States. The grossest form of racism and sexism would be barred but in return systematic racism would not really be sought to be corrected. Then things started to fall apart in this truce during GWB presidency because Culture War became really big on the Right after 9/11. This wasn’t even GWB’s fault. For all his immense mistakes as President, trying to wage a troll culture war for political dominace was not one of them.Report
I was going to say “Well, Airplane was an R” but I googled it and HOLY CRAP IT WAS PG.Report