Rip! A Remix Manifesto
The other night I had friends over to watch Rip! A Remix Manifesto, which I'd gotten from Netflix.
I was unimpressed. There were some arguments I appreciated, a few points I hadn't seen yet, but on the whole it wasn't a very comprehensive piece.
I am, of course, on board with the central premise of the film--that copyright laws are restrictive and are damaging to free expression and serving to quash creativity, not foster and promote it. I don't think it's ideal to do away with copyright altogether, but I do think the laws as they stand are excessive, and there should be more protections for fair use and transformative work, and some attention to the right of the public to engage with collective culture and entertainment in an active way.
My biggest problem with the movie was how limited it was in scope, especially with regard to race and gender. It seemed to assume from the outset that we-the-viewer already agree with him (which, as it happens, I mostly do), I don't see it doing much to sway someone who didn't already agree (think Michael Moore). It also focused way too much on one (white) performer, Girltalk (I hate that name on a straight boy) who was a pal of the filmmaker's. It was a documentary that focused primarily on remixing music (with nod to film remix basically inasmuch as it applied to the making of this documentary itself, and almost nothing about print remix). He didn't talk about modern hip hop or rap at all, and the only mentions of musical communities of people of color were the old blues guys (Muddy Waters etc.) and modern Brazil. There were almost no women in the movie--there was the copyright office lady who was basically set up to be laughed down, and there was Girltalk's girlfriend whose only comments in the film were about when Girltalk doesn't wear pants. We also saw one woman later on in the film who'd been sued for downloading music, so at least her story was relevant even if it was all about her as a victim of the system, rather than an active participant in remix culture. Because obviously women and people of color aren't creative enough to be included in this movie as artists. /sarcasm
It just wasn't a very nuanced argument, and ignored issues of race and gender--and we all know how I feel about that.
I'm also reading Siva Vaidhyanathan's Copyrights and Copywrongs, and I think I'm going to use that as my book for this class, and remix Rip! to a) bring attention to the people of color and women who ARE artists worthy of celebration (the book does mention several hip hop and rap artists that I'll mix in), and b) bring in the more sophisticated arguments Vaidhyanathan is making. So, that will be my class vid.