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July 16, 2006
Our Lady of Mount Carmel
The Patronal feast of the Order.
I'm at a loss for words, fortunately. Contemplation is difficult when yammering is a priority.
May you all be blessed this day with some sense of the peace and joy that comes with imitating the most Blessed Virgin Mary.
Posted by Steven Riddle at 7:50 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
July 17, 2006
Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress
by Dai Sijie--
Let the beauty of the prose speak for itself:
The tailor lived like a king. Wherever he went there would be scenes of excitement to rival a country festival. The home of his client, filled with the whirr of his sewing machine, would become the hub of village life, giving the host family the opportunity to display their wealth. He would be served the choicest food, and sometimes, if the year was drawing to a close and preparations for the New Year celebration were under way, a pig might even be slaughtered. He would often spend a week or two in a village, lodging with each of his diverse clients in succession.
Luo and I first met the tailor when we went to visit Four-Eyes, a friend from the old days who had been sent to another village. It was raining, and we had to walk carefully along the steep, slippery path shrouded in milky fog. Despite our caution we found ourselves on all fours in the mud several times. Suddenly, as we rounded a corner, we saw coming towards us a procession in single file, accompanying a sedan chair in which a middle-aged man was enthroned. Following behind this regal conveyance was a porter with a sewing machine strapped to his back. The man bent to address his bearers and seemed to be enquiring about us.
Imperial China? Not quite. The China of the Cultural Revolution of the 1970s. The book tells the story of two young men sent away for reeducation in a small mountain village. Their parents had committed a crime against the state--they were intellectuals. And the father of Luo had been the Chairman's dentist and let slip some indiscreet remarks about repairing his teeth and the teeth of his wife/consort.
What a blessing to live in the United States. When I'm given to fretting about he shortcomings, I need only spend a moment anywhere else in the world to be humbled and reminded to be ever-mindful of the blessings that have come to me just by accident of birth.
Posted by Steven Riddle at 12:32 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
A Moment
At my desk the sounds
at nine-twelve--double thunder--
promise they've come home
Not a great haiku, but a small way to remember the sound that says "We're back."
Posted by Steven Riddle at 10:28 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
July 18, 2006
The Rights of an Artist
Elsewhere much brouhaha about the Cleanflicks lawsuit and its entirely expected and unexceptionable result.
Several questions and ideas regarding this:
(1) An artist's work is the work of the artist. If the artist should consent to change in order to alter marketing, increase audience share, or meet a distributors requirements, it is the choice of that artist. Some, like Kubrick, refused to do so. They were pariah's in the field; however, I'll take a pariah like Kubrick over the director of a film like Frat Boy Hooter Dreams any day.
(2) Who says children have a right or even should be exposed to the films that are being changed to make them suitable. You don't like the language--don't let your children watch. If you object to the language, there are probably equally unsavory messages elsewhere. Why would you want to show a bowdlerized subversive film? Does cleaning up the language of something unsuitable ultimately make it acceptable?
(3) The changes the artist makes are the choice of the artist. The changes the artist allows to be made, are the choice of the artist. Smart Hollywood studios would simply license this service and make money from it. However, it is not for a group outside of the studio to alter a copyrighted work and not return the profit from sale to the studio that produced it.
(4) I find the question of Church support of such unilateral alteration vexing. I hardly think they would approve of someone going through the NAB or Jerusalem Bible and plucking out anything that might be offensive--says verses contra homosexuality and then presenting the thing as the work of the Author. Nor, do I think, would they support a wholesale alteration of psalm 51 which talks about how I'm Okay, You're Okay before God, using the translation they have prepared of the work.
If the Church is not ready or willing to recognize a certain responsibility to the author or artist of a work, perhaps their thought on this matter needs serious reconsideration. Altering the words of a work amount to "bearing false witness." When the Church has chosen to do so the result has been a travesty (Sistine Chapel being a primary example.)
So, while I can prepare no moral argument that suggests that such alteration cannot be allowed, neither do I approve of it, nor would I support anyone who would choose to profit from the works of others in such a way.
The responsibility of protecting a child from potentially harmful works rests squarely with the parent. I see films before Samuel does in order to determine whether they would be all right for Samuel. I do not want the works changed before hand.
The prime example I can think of is Planes, Trains, and Automobiles which, until recently I had only ever seen in the "prepared for television" version. I watched the DVD and saw a significantly different and more substantial film than the one that had been altered. If the work is a work of art, even bad art, choices have been made in the presentation of the work that should be respected. Unilateral alteration of artistic work is not to be left in the hands of people who did not have the original vision. Or, if done so, those people should take responsibility, even while paying royalties to those whose work they had altered.
After all, with sufficient work, one could produce a version of A Clockwork Orange that could be viewed by everyone. The question becomes, would it be worth viewing by anyone?
Posted by Steven Riddle at 2:02 PM | Comments (8) | TrackBack
Some Thought Experiments
With regard to PUBLIC alteration of the work of an artist (the whole point of the CleanFlicks suit), perhaps a series of thought experiments may help elucidate:
You run across the works of G. Protestant Catholicbasher, who is a renowned Protestant theology and who has the very best explanation of grace you have ever read in your life. Included is this passage: "As a result, Catholics will not see heaven. They will not know the fruits of grace. They do not know God as God. They do not give Him sovereignty."
You decide that the work is really very good--the very best. But, it has a little problem on the Catholic side, so, to make it acceptable to your children (and to other children) you publish a version of the work, with the author's name attached that presents his arguments so:
"As a result, Catholics will see heaven. They will know the fruits of grace. They know God as God. They give Him sovereignty."
After all, in a work of two hundred pages you've excised six words for a total of sixteen letters. Surely not much of a change, and it does make the argument a lot more palatable for your audience than it was originally.
Case 2: A publisher of considerably less integrity than the OPC decides to publish the lyrics of the hymn Amazing Grace changing the line "that saved a wretch like me," to the more life-affirming and up-beat "saved and set me free." They attribute this change to the original author. (OCP had not done this in any older hymnals--so I do think they are a publisher with integrity, it something lacking in taste.)
Case 3: You've written a thousand line poem in praise of God, Country, Motherhood, Apple Pie and all things American. Within your poem are the following lines:
"It is not right to hate and fear
It is not right to judge by color
It is not right to despise another."
Your local hate-group reads the poem and decides it is absolutely perfect for their "Patriotism" issue, but to reach your audience and boost sales, it's necessary to remove nine letters, three "gratuitous" words leaving:
"It is right to hate and fear
It is right to judge by color
It is right to despise another."
But they leave your name on the poem and publish it in their blockbuster seller issue.
Case 4: A publisher, favoring the NAB for its clunky language and tin ear, decides that he would do everyone a favor and remove the famous Catholic bias against having fun and against sex by more closely attending to what the original author's intended for us to derive from their writings. Thus, every time the NAB descretely uses the biblical "know" or some other euphemism, our helpful publisher decides to use the vulgar Anglo-saxon fricative. He then publishes the book without noting this "minor" editorial adjustment to the text.
I think these illustrations get the point across. When anyone other than the author assumes the authorial role and changes the authorial intention and publishes that work as though representative of the thought of the author, then they are "bearing false witness." They are constructing a lie for one purpose or another. And usually they are profiting from that lie at the expense of another. For example G. Protestant Catholicbasher is drummed out of the Church of Anywhere but Rome. You are branded a racist. And the hymnist is accused of a lack of spine.
The CleanFlicks case is not about innocuous change. It is about a company usurping the role of the studio and deciding what should air and what should not without consultation with the film studio. These things are done on their own. People ask, "Well what about edits for television." The Licenser may grant permission for alterations to be made, they may demand a list of such alterations for approval before the work can be released. In short, they maintain ownership and control over how their work is represented.
Say I decided I liked the movie Chocolat (I didn't). But I sure didn't want Samuel to get a negative impression of the Church and I altered the film so he could see it. Within my own home, that is a question of my own integrity and for me to talk to God about. But say I let news of this slip and then started peddling the film to all my friends who really wanted a cleaned-up version. Part of the purpose, intent, and integrity of the film is the anti-Catholicism. To alter that and sell the work as the original does a number of injustices. (1) It misrepresents the film maker. (2) It steals another's work and profits from it. (3) It misinforms its recipients about the agenda of the artist from whom it came.
This last is one of the more insidious consequences of altering the film. Suddenly you've made an unacceptable director palatable. So now we'll go and see the next film. (What a shock that might turn out to be.)
What is at issue is the artist's control of his own work and the artist's right not to be misrepresented in any way--even in a way that we might think enhances the work.
I've been asked, "Well what's wrong with eliding a gratuitous sex scene?" My answer is, "You know the artist's mind and the work at hand well enough to know whether or not the scene is gratuitous." The whole point of Tristam Shandy is made by a "gratuitous sex scene" at the beginning of the book. No one, apart from the artist, has the standing to determine whether or not something is gratuitous to the point of altering the work in public. If, for your own enjoyment, you determine that it would be better not to view such a scene--that's a matter of personal choice. You probably aren't watching an art film any way. But to take that out and peddle it as the original without the artist's consent. . . I'm sorry, I know you'll disagree, but it just isn't right, and it may, depending upon extent and intent, be a sin.
Posted by Steven Riddle at 7:35 PM | Comments (13) | TrackBack
Altering Artists-Bringing It Much Closer to Home
Let's consider a final, very real, very plausible case of what we are talking about.
This time, let's look at the works of Flannery O'Connor--most particularly The Violent Bear It Away. The novel ends when young Tarwater has a rather unsavory, well. . . how shall we put it on a family blog? Let's say Deliverance encounter with a character we can take to be Satan himself. While it is all very veiled and euphemistic, there can be absolutely no doubt about what has transpired and, in fact, in makes much of the point of the book.
However, because our sensibilities are assaulted by this "gratuitous scene," we deem that it might be better to prepare our children with versions of it that excise the "naughty bits" but don't really hamper the end of the novel.
Now, I ask, wouldn't the better practice be to leave the novel intact and allow our children to encounter that novel at an age appropriate to their understanding. But, I'm countered with, no, that would be ghettoizing our children, so we need to alter the work so that in the course of their conversations they will not even realize that they are talking with their peers about the same novel. They're out of the ghetto, but they're fully in the dark.
Once again, because I feel passionately about it, it is always and everywhere inappropriate to make available to the public at large works that have been altered against the will of or without the consent of their authors. It is most especially bad to do this while retaining the author's name and crediting the now antithetical work to the artist.
I really don't understand why this point is so difficult to understand. Public misrepresentation of an artist's work is simply wrong. Changing a work without the artist's consent constitutes a grave misrepresentation of the work.
I even object to doing this in private--but then, it is absolutely none of my business because presumably one has right and proper access to the work for one's own enjoyment, and if one's enjoyment is enhanced by deleting or eliding certain parts, I have no right to say anything about it; however, I'd prefer those who feel the need for this kind of alteration to keep their hands off of any of my "controversial" works. (I've a sum total of exactly 1 bad word in all of my published work; however, there may be a lot of implications people don't particularly care for.) (By the way, I make the final point about privacy not to chastise or berate any one who chooses to make these changes, but to state that my opposition is categorical--if a person, child or adult, is not prepared to consume the work in as unaltered a state as it can be delivered, they would do well not to bother with it at all. If their enjoyment is enhanced by deleting a "gratuitous sex scene," I feel compelled to ask, why would one be watching a movie in which any moment is "gratuitous?" Doesn't that counter the definition of a work of art? And more especially, why would one choose to watch a movie in which the gratuitous is morally objectionable? Doesn't such a moment render the entire work morally objectionable--especially if such a moment is put in only for the thrills and for the higher rating (hence, higher earnings)? )
Posted by Steven Riddle at 8:43 PM | Comments (2) | TrackBack
Probably Not Much of a Surprise
I suppose it goes without saying that I feel pretty passionate about the subject of artistic control of a work (to the extent that is possible).
Perhaps a future review of The Kite Runner will help me to detail why.
Posted by Steven Riddle at 9:09 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack
July 20, 2006
Laying My Cards on the Table
This is extremely difficult, so please forgive the following for whatever it lacks in cohesion, it is excerpted from my part of a private correspondence:
But let me tell you about my experience. Someone took one of the poems I wrote, altered a few words akin to the example I published regarding racism and published it in their own magazine. The magazine was a marginal one anyway and I didn't have the money to go after these people, but they took my poem about the glory of diversity and changed it into a hymn to conformity and supremacy and left my name on it. The poem may not have been high art--in fact, it may not have been particularly good--so Art doesn't enter into it. But someone took my words, edited them for their own sense of suitability and then proclaimed the work to be my own. I only found out when I started to get angry looks/comments and letters about the poem.
Now, naturally, I have to repudiate the entire poem, and I don't even mention the incident lest it bring up the whole subject.
In other words, I know what it feels like when one takes it upon oneself to alter the work of another without proper acknowledgment of what has been done. And it hurts--tremendously.
This isn't mere wounded pride or vanity. This is stomach-churning horror and sickness. This is nauseating to the extreme because I have been saddled and labeled to with the name of racist for something I never even did. This hurts--a lot. It hurts because I have a child who may find this out in the future. amd if he does, what is he to think--that his own life with me has been a lie, or merely a means of atonement for past sins? It hurts because there is always the remote possibility my friends or acquaintances may discover it and make me a pariah. Sure, I can explain it--I can show copies of the original that even have comments on them from the professor who originally read it--so they can see its authenticity. But I can never escape from the shadow of it.
So none of this is theoretical to me. It is all factual--harsh reality. I know, as you do in a different way, whereof I speak. This is what impels me to the limits of politeness when I talk about the subject.
And it impels me to judge that the practice is immoral, unethical, and completely unallowable. This is what we are discussing here--the unilaterally transformation of a work and the republication of that work as the work of the original author. If what has been done to me is not immoral or unethical, what description might it travel under?
Later--I see that I did not make clear one essential ingredient of this stew. The poem that was published was not merely edited. It was taken from a previous publication and altered beyond recognition without my consent and republished with my name on it. This makes it the equivalent of the case I have been mistakenly referring to. We're not talking editorial changes in the act of creation, but rather usurpation with misrepresentation. Neither the orginal magazine nor I had any capability of fighting this legally--and fortunately (I hope) the incident was local and the publication that reprinted it hopefully remanded to the compost heap of time. But I lived with the consequences of it for several years.
Posted by Steven Riddle at 8:32 AM | Comments (6) | TrackBack
CleanFlicks again
Hollywood is amazingly persuaded by money and had they been approached by this company to license works and "clean them up" I have little doubt that they would have allowed the work to progress with some sort of disclaimer at the beginning of the film such as one sees every day on Televsion--"This work has been altered from the original--" with a list of how the alterations had occurred. In this case one might complete the list with some like "to remove elements offensive to the alterers and produce a film with a lower rating." I could see Hollywood demanding to see the film before release or to at least detail exactly what was removed--3 minutes of sex and nudity, 5 expletives--on the packaging.
But this company, working under the notion of moral superiority took it upon themselves to do this. (Well, perhaps not, but one must assume that the lawsuit occurred for SOME cause.) That seems to me to be the bone of contention.
While there is a legal aspect to all of this, I will contend that not all alteration is morally neutral, and my argument stands--to make an anti-Catholic sound pro-Catholic, to make a normal person into a racist/supremicist both are fundamental injuries to the dignity of the person. One might think one acceptable and the other not--but lying about a person, it would seem to me, is always morally questionable.
Posted by Steven Riddle at 8:52 AM | Comments (6) | TrackBack
Request for Prayers
Last night I was involved in a traffic accident a little more serious than a fender-bender. Let's call it a fender crusher. But as the little push I was given could have resulted in me being pushed into a moving stream where much more serious damage could have occurred, I am somewhat shaken, hence the tone of the earlier posts this morning. Hope they were somewhat coherent. Just keep me in mind today please for serentiy and coherence. Thanks.
Posted by Steven Riddle at 8:56 AM | Comments (7) | TrackBack
A Retraction
My apologies to all. By my arguments I have apparently misrepresented facts in the case. Read the comments to the posts below.
There are two arguments here, each of which presents different merits, one of which is more important than the other in terms of consequences. In cases that I have described, where the changes made by an outside party are unilateral and unacknowledged I DO believe, whether the changes are made for reasons we might consider good or for reasons we might describe as evil, such changing (with a certain leeway for alteration in the creation of a work under contract or work-for-hire clauses) can result in misrepresentation of an artist and thus amount to an evil. Editing without consultation (except under conditions mentioned and carefully defined above) is a substantive evil. It may do more harm to argument and integrity than to person. They may not rise to calumny and scandal, but they should be avoided and the person so treated has been treated unjustly. There is a recognizable wrong done--whether that amounts to moral evil or not might be questionable--I honestly don't know. I know in most cases it seems clear to me that such misrepresentation is evil.
The other argument is aesthetic. When we ask whether or not an editorial change in the course of the creation of a work is aesthetically allowable and whether it constitutes and improvement or a reduction of the work, I think the case depends on where the art is in the first place. If you're trying to improve, even from a moral point of view, "Frat Boy Vacation," just give it up. There are small changes that can make the work more palatable, but may not "improve" the work. But this area is much more grey than that described above.
My bottom line, the argument I've inappropriately used CleanFlicks to make, is the unacknowledged usurpation and alteration of another's work subsequently attributed to them is a moral evil, regardless of the purpose for which it was done. Taking the sex and violence out of the Marquis de Sade without saying you have done so wrongs the Marquis by telling a substantive lie about him. (Now, why you'd even attempt to do this is another matter entirely.) That is an evil. You may have "improved" the work morally, but the end does not justify the means. And one is protected from this by a simple acknowledgment of "abridgement" and a forward that sets for the aesthetic theory under which this attempt at a miracle is conducted.
By issuing the original along with the altered version, CleanFlicks passes this test of morality--a question I confused in reading the arguments.
Once again, my sincere apologies for any confusion I may have created in making my arguments.
I still stand with those who hold that the works of artists should not be altered for our convenience--but this is an aesthetic not a moral issue. And the aesthetic argument is necessarily more nuanced and perhaps more subjective. I leave that to better minds than my own. For the time being, until convinced otherwise I will quietly hold my aesthetic theory even as I trumpet forth the moral argument. Editing is not necessarily a morally neutral activity. And this is still contra what I have understood Zippy and others to say on the matter.
Posted by Steven Riddle at 1:00 PM | Comments (5) | TrackBack
July 21, 2006
Morality and Ethicality
It has been stated by many that the arbitrary changing of a published work (erroneously termed editing) is not an immoral activity. I have demonstrated that it can be. I believe that it often is because it involves theft and deception.
But let's assume for the moment that the given instance is not immoral. I have taken the works of William Shakespeare and I have updated the language, deleted scenes I don't care for, changed around characters, added language to smooth transitions, and given the entire oeuvre a feminist/homosexualist agenda. I then publish the book as The Complete Works of William Shakespeare without any acknowledgment of the changes I have made, my name appears no where on the work, neither as editor nor as interpreter.
The work is in the public domain--there cannot be a question of theft because you cannot steal what belongs to all. One cannot libel the dead, and Shakespeare's reputation is well enough established that this will more likely result in outrage from the literary community than in damage to Shakespeare's reputation.
Still, what is lacking here is ethicality. When one chooses to make changes to a work and publish that work not as one's own--Steven R. redoes David Gopperfield or even David Goldmeadow: A Glancing Blow at Dickens--one has not adhered to the ethics even of the artistic world.
Ethics may be a lesser hurdle than morals. Ethical conduct demands something less of one than truly moral conduct. But the ethics of a situation are such that when one alters the work of another artist (not uses it for a jumping off place) it is meet and just that one puts one's name on it as "Editor." (Again, the more appropriate term here is "redactor" but I bow to the popular ignorance of the difference between the two and to the common usage that tends to conflate them.)
The ethics of the artistic world are simple--if you change a work, acknowledge that you have changed it. And for the most part the egos of the artistic world are such that there's usually a scrambling for credit rather a sly hiding behind anonymity in the production of a change.
However, I like the modern policy in cinema of noting when and how a film has been altered. (The standard disclaimer that "This film has been altered to fit your television screen.) This tells me I'm seeing something less that what the original artist conceived. So, if I'm dissatisfied with it in some way, I have recourse to the original to see if my dissatisfaction is with the revision or with the original. This is ethical conduct--it informs the person who is interested in the art of the production that what he or she is viewing is not the work as it was originally conceived. That is a valuable piece of information. And the placement of these sometimes annoying announcements is an ethical practice. It tells us that there is something awry in what we're viewing. And if we're watching for mere entertainment, then we acknowledge or ignore that and move on. If, however, I am a film student, I now know that this is not how the original was framed and I need to see something other than what is showing on my screen. (That should go without saying, but it is none-the-less good practice and ethical practice to acknowledge the truth of it.)
So, while the alteration of a work of art is not necessarily immoral, I would tend to say the unacknowledged alteration of a work in public domain or even for a licensed work is probably unethical.
This stands apart from the creation of a new work based on an older work. I always think of the classical pairing of Samuel Richardson's barely readable Pamela with the sparkling delight of Henry Fielding's Shamela. I have not yet read it, but The Wind Done Gone might be an amusing or interesting play on Gone with the Wind. And in younger days, I remember howling over Bored of the Rings--I don't know if I would do so now, one is eventually released from the follies of youth because one enters the follies of middle age--but at least they differ in kind if not in number.
Posted by Steven Riddle at 9:38 AM | Comments (4) | TrackBack
Artistic Integrity
In in this post, Zippy states that if one does not believe that artistic integrity is not finally decided by the artist one is an anti-essentialist.
Well, I disagree with Zippy, not because I am an anti-essentialist, but because I believe we're using one term to mean two different things. I'm not certain I fully understand what Zippy means when he uses the term "artistic integrity," but I'm fairly certain that it is not the same thing I mean. So, in fairness, let me say that when I use the term artistic integrity, I use it to include both the aesthetic dimension of the art (over which the artist is not the final word) and the integral dimension of the art: that is that the final message, meaning, or communication (intention) that the artist intended to convey in the production of the work is, in fact conveyed. And it is over this dimension of the art that the artist is, in fact, the only arbiter. That is not to say that one's understanding or interpretation might not differ from the artist's intent, but that what the artist meant to say in the piece is said in the piece as it stands--the final work is integral to the understanding of the intent. In short, the final version of the work conveys the artist's vision.
It is in this dimension of things that we can enter into a discussion of what it means to change a work in some way. While we might improve it aesthetically, we might completely undermine its integrity because we contravene the artist's intention.
Does undermining the integrity of the art constitute an offense against art? It MAY not, but it always is an offense to the artist and it often becomes an expression of pride (I know better how to say what you intended than you do.). If, indeed, you do know better how to say what the artist is getting at, it would be better to produce a new work of art that does so rather than altering the artists. Thus the difference between artist and ethical editor.
When we claim to know the artist's vision better than the artist (a portion of the claim we make when we say that any given change "improves the work," we arrogantly proclaim that we understand the vision better than the artist.) The other half of the claim of "improvement"--we've improved the aesthetics carries no such onus.
Let's examine a specific case. Let's say I'm watching Saving Private Ryan or Full Metal Jacket and I've decided to eliminate all vulgar language and replace it with "shucks," "darn" or simply to leave silence. We may have made the work more acceptable to some audiences, but we have changed the reality the film reflects. Suddenly we're out of the realm of (perhapd unnecessarily) gritty realism and into the realm of the fairy tale. This clearly violates artistic integrity.
On the other hand, let's say that we change the first Harry Potter movie to have Malfoy refer to someone's "butt" rather than their "ass." Has any irreparable harm been done to the movie or the character? Some would say yes, some no. Personally, I wouldn't make the change, but assuming that it were properly licensed and noted, (some of the language has been changed to make it appropriate for children), I wouldn't get in a huge huff over it either. But I could understand those who might.
Posted by Steven Riddle at 1:13 PM | Comments (7) | TrackBack