Identity Politics

Today, in my Culture of Dissent class (taught by the inimitable Jan Urban, a Czech dissident from the Velvet Revolution and an excellent journalist in Bosnia, and Kosovo), we discussed the rather difficult question of why Communism proved to be popular.

The answer, from my point of view, is one having to do with the nature of identity in the 20th Century. There are many people who don't believe themselves to be very philosophical in their everyday life (philosophy being a very 'elite' passtime), but in point of fact, everyone has philosophical ideas and worldviews. And one of the big philosophical questions is, "Who am I? What is my identity?"

People base a surprising amount of their political convictions and idealisms based on who they think they are. For instance, one of the reasons that Americans have consistently voted for tax cuts for the wealthy is an array of polls which show that Americans consistently think that they are wealthier than they actually are (which corresponds to the way that they think they're thinner than they actually are).

We talked about the appeal of communism in the Industrial Revolution era. In order to understand it, you need to take a village-eye view of the change. The poor serfs, living in small rural communities, lived in an era with very little mobility. They were engaged in occupations passed down to them from generations, among a small community of people they knew. As the industrial revolution came to pass, serfdom was abolished: they were not necessary anymore. A vacuum formed, which sucked these serfs into the city. Suddenly they were in a huge community, much larger than themselves. Whatever they had previously been known for, through their family, was no longer a mark of identity. They passed by nameless and faceless masses everyday; they worked alongside nameless and faceless masses that did exactly what they did. There was no honor in their new work: they were (proverbially) just another cog in the machine; just another brick in the wall. They had been robbed of their identity, their purpose, and their security.

It was rather like going to a large college after being in a small high school.

At any rate, they needed a new identity. Communism provided that. It gave them a name for themselves: proletariat. It gave them a cause for their misery: bourgoisie. It told them that not only were the proletariat powerful, they were the single most powerful force of history: and that it was historically determined that they must succeed.

So, to turn to contemporary politics: during the Cold War, these identity politics broke apart into large dualisms: Communists and Capitalists on the world stage, and Democrats and Republicans on the American stage (note that third parties were still a noticeable force until World War Two). Ideology became, for one of the few times in American history, a primary source of identification: Democrats, Reds, Anti-Communists, Republicans, Socialists, Peaceniks, Hippies. All of these tags were ideological in nature. They gave people a sense of identity.

Today, these two grand coalitions seem more fractured. At least, the Republican camp seems to have split decisively into moderates, libertarians, neoconservatives, and social conservatives. A messy primary season filled with candidates who did not fully appeal to any of these groups (with the exception of Mike Huckabee for social conservatives and the Ron Paul movement for Libertarians) left people on the right with a lack of a sense of direction. Many of these people identified themselves as Republican strongly, without being on board with many of the actions or beliefs of other Republicans.

A big tip-off to me that this identity politics is coming apart? Obama has a large following of so-called Obamicans (Republicans for Obama). Notice, of course, that they are still calling themselves Republicans despite voting for Obama. I'm not necessarily saying that they aren't actually Republicans, but I'm noticing that their insistence is on defining themselves by a party affiliation which, in this election, may not be entirely accurate.

One of my favorite sayings to hear is "I've been a life-long Republican, but I'm considering voting Democrat." Notice the phrase "life-long." This is put forward as a positive, even though being a life-long Republican might imply that you've supported characters like George W. Bush, Nixon, or Reagan (in the same way that a life-long Democrat must have supported Carter, Dukakis, McGovern).

But this is the way people have previously identified themselves.

But with a hyper-specification of polls, there is a new level of identification going on. We hear it today on the news all the time. Demographics. Very small clusters of identity. How are middle-aged women going to vote? What about older men? Young black men in rural towns? These statistics can all be coallated. And apparently, they matter. And although women's groups have been condemning Palin since she was first put on the ticket, the latest poll shows that McCain has indeed spiked among women.

The question, I suppose, is whether we can move past identity politics. Barack Obama (in my opinion) has a way of addressing that. He appeals to people to vote not as Democrats, or Republicans, or as black and whites, but as Americans. This isn't just a trite slogan of identification: he's asking us to identify ourselves as America, and vote in such a way that doesn't just benefit my group or your group or any group, but benefits all of America.

And the question is: will it work.

Words, Words, Words, Words, Words II

If confusion is the sign of the times, I see at the root of this confusion a rupture between things and words, between things and the ideas and signs that are their representation.

The quotation above is from Theater and Its Double, by Antonin Artaud. To a devoted fan of The Daily Show, I sympathize with that statement. We watch the political cycle today, and it feels as though words have become meaningless. Take, for instance, "time line." The Bush Administration, unhappy with the concept of a "time line," branded it as "cutting and running," saying that an "arbitrary time lines" would shackle them from responding to conditions on the ground, and would embolden the terrorists.

Then Obama laid out his 16 month time line, and very shortly afterward, the Prime Minister of Iraq echoed it. And the Bush Administration said that they would begin drawing down troops, to end in about sixteen months.

Was this a time line? No, it was a "time horizon."

To anyone with an understanding of the accepted meaning of words, that's clearly some jiggery-pokery. Both of them imply the same thing. But the point is that the phrase "time line" has become an ideological symbol, rather than a linguistic symbol. The tags "pro-choice" and "pro-life" mean the same thing; certainly the ambiguous tag "change" has. "Torture," "message force multipliers," "patriotism", etc. are words which have their original meaning erased, and replaced with an ideological meaning.

Take Mitt Romney (and others') use of the word "liberal." He is not talking about a person whose viewpoints are slightly left of average, he is talking about a charicature: the ideological imprint of liberal in the conservative mind (namely, a tax-and-spend elitist plutocrat with little interest in family values or faith).

This is dangerous, because it corrodes something even more fundamental than our politics: it corrodes our language itself. And, in fact, it corrodes our thought.

Intelligence is often distinguishable from unintelligence by the proper use of symbolic logic. If the brain can assemble symbols in a correct fashion, it answers questions and creates solutions better. If we confused the internal logic of our brain, muddling facts and decaying the links between language and thought, we are corroding our thought-process. This is a fairly extreme case, but in point of fact, if you cannot clearly interpret facts, and if the landscape of your assumptions are ideological rather than reality based, then you cannot properly think. And if you cannot properly communicate, you cannot properly exchange ideas and thoughts. Corroding language corrodes the marketplace of ideas.

This phenomenon can be seen in totalitarian societies: a perfect example is the Communist world. Take from Havel:

From being a means of signifying reality, and of enabling us to come to an understanding of it, language seems to have become an end in itself.

And further:

When we lose touch with reality, we inevitably lose the capacity to influence reality effectively. And the weaker that capacity is, the greater our illusion that we have effectively influenced reality.

He illustrates these points (in the essay On Evasive Thinking) very clearly when he relates the story of a window-sill which breaks off, falls, and kills a person. This has happened many times, he writes, and a newspaper person writes an article which raises the question of whether better care must be taken of window sills, but then proceeds to pat the communist regime on the back for being the sort of free and open place where one can question to state's upkeep of window-sills. The newspaper is forced to contort and bend over backwards to match the ideology.

I say all of this as a prologue for an excellent Czech play I saw yesterday on this very subject. It was called Tika Tika Politika (translated as Ticks Ticks Politics). It was a four-part experimental vocal score made up of syllables and proto-language (in the first part, for instance, it is entirely repetitions of different syllables of Politika) in such a way as to render all of the vocal language meaningless.

This is, to a certain degree, the way the words in our political language have been treated. In an era of talking points, the constant repetition of ideologically charged phrases redefines those phrases permanently. The only way to reverse this is to remove the content of the language entirely, and to analyze the other communication provided.

In Tika Tika Politika, the analysis comes mostly through body-language and tonality; seeing how they say what they say is the important part. You learn to follow the narrative outside of the message. In real life, this takes a strong ironic mind, and you need all the help you can get.

Which is why, right now, I'm watching the Daily Show.

Words, Words, Words, Words, Words

Language is very important to me. I'm a deep believer in the idea that language itself is the way that our brain is tied together; its the rules and the logic which gives it form. Nietzche once said "I fear we still believe in God because we still believe in Grammar." It seems to me to be strangely apt, despite the fact that I can't unravel the relationship. If I were any sort of a religion, it would be the blind-watchmaker vision of God (perhaps--it's hard to talk about a hypothetical version of me). The formulae and the logic that exists is existence, is the reason and the end, and therefore, would havve to be God.

There's a Czech saying:"Kolik řečí znáš, tolikrát jsi člověkem" which translates into "You are as many times a human as languages you know." I agree. Today, I was walking to my apartment through Prague, and I heard a German, an Englishman, and an American outside of a bar, talking in English. And I heard a Frenchman and a Czech person also debating in English. How much more they must learn about each other and the world, being able to communicate like that?

I've had a very positive experience with language in Prague. People have told me that they find Czechs rude. I've heard the same about the French. I found neither to be the case, either here or in Provence. The reason is because I always try very gamely and very positively to speak their language. My French is passable if fairly vocabulary-dry, but my Czech is only marginally better than a phrase book.

Don't ask them, "Do you speak English?" Ask them, "Parlez-vous francais" or "hablas ingles?" or "mluvim anglicky." It puts it on their turf, and it allows them choice. Several times now, I've had conversations with Czech people who don't know English. I barely know Czech. But using the few words I know, and the few words they know, and tracking intonation and gestures, I've managed to get by. And just the effort of communication has been greeted with smiles and indulgence for me.

Perhaps this is not everyone's experience. I tend to smile a lot and say "prosim" and "dekuju" a lot, just to make sure I'm in people's good graces.

Also: translation is an exceptionally fun way of learning meaning. I'm right now translating Artaud's journals when he was in a mental asylum in 1948. It's very, very simple French (which is good because I'm fairly lame at it), but it's fascinating. The tiniest of adjustments creates a totally different sense of what's going on. George Carlin once said that thoughts are airy and undefined, and then it gets attached to a word, and then you're stuck with that word for that thought. Translation defies that. You really have to know the person's mind to know what they were saying, and you have to know what they were saying to know their mind. It's rather like sculpting away at rock until you see the statue that was hidden beneath.

This is why I have a great respect for Eric Bentley, who most theater people in America do not pay proper homage to. Bertold Brecht is considered one of the top ten theater aestheticians of all time. He is often put in opposition to Aristotle in the very most basic theater classes, as a way of framing all of theater. Alienation, and empathy. But Brecht wouldn't have that privileged place in society if it wasn't for the tireless translation and promotion of Eric Bentley. Brecht would still be a small event in German history (and a freak Broadway success) if Bentley hadn't really placed Brecht on the map.

Words. They're the most important thing we have. I get very distressed when we damage words' meanings. The Bush administration has signalled the most vicious attack on the concept of language since Ernest Hemingway made the American dialect so word-impovershed. I can't list it all now, but concepts like "torture" or "time table" or "victory" have been so damaged, so needlessly... it signals terrible times for us. When your language unlinks from reality, you have lost your way: Vaclav Havel has written impressive things on that score.

This thought is short, because I'm still pretty chill from the Jazz Club I went to (music being the language we all speak and most of us can't read), and I have a less defined point than usual.

Guns, And The People Who Own Them

A group of friends and I sat in an Afghan restaurant today, and a rather awkward and usually upsetting thing happened: we started talking about politics. Not the usual sort of college talking-about-politics, where everyone has the same opinion and basically makes jokes at the other side's expense. I mean the kind of discussion where two people express opposing sides, and express them.

It was not an argument. As a matter of fact, when I said "rather awkward," I only mean to say that it was rather tricky to negotiate: because a polite, informed discussion is difficult to maintain, and it requires everyone involved be very careful about their words. But everyone was, and Thank God I learned a great amount about guns and gunowners.

There were six of us--five "liberals" (whatever that means in this context; we're not liberal when it comes to gun laws) and one "conservative" (see previous). And when the tides were so imbalanced, we wanted to proceed carefully so as not to trample him with the collective might of our passions.

A note about why the conversation worked before I get into the subject: everyone was actually very careful to stay within their own experience. Most people would love to throw out statistics or news articles or declarations about how the other half should live.

Instead, I got to hear the story of a young man who lives in an affluent neighborhood outside of Boston who has a gun license, and carries with him at all times (when he's in Massachusetts, where it's legal) a concealed weapon. He is my age, and in a lot of other ways not that different from me.

I'll try and introduce the issues that came up.

• Why guns: The first, obvious question is, why carry a gun at all? There are, in general, two arguments as to why you would want a gun. One is hunting, the other is self-defense. Now, those are two very different kind of weapons (most people don't shoot elk or ducks with a handgun, nor do they defend themselves with a shotgun or a scoped rifle). We focused, in this discussion, on the latter, because that's the reason our case study focused on.
• Legality: We agreed, immediately, that the two extreme positions are not plausible. There is nothing wrong with the occasional duck-hunt, so guns should not be completely banned. Nor should assault weapons or anti-tank weapons be free to any bloke off the street.
• Regulation: The young gentleman bristled a little at the amount of regulation that he had to go through. He had to apply, separately, with the local police, the state office, and the Federal government. Each one had the capacity to say no. This is in addition to a safety exam and a background check, neither of which he objects to. But even then, that license that he is granted only applies to about seven states: in others (New York for instance) this is not legal. And what he suggested, and we immediately agreed, is that a single weapons regulatory body would be more effective: it would create less unnecessary hurdles, but strengthen the government's ability to track those who have weapons. Ironically, we could agree on this regulation, because it seemed to make gun ownership easier for those that should have weapons while making it easier to track those who don't have weapons.
• Enforcement: He noted, quite rightly, that the people who do the worst things with guns typically get them illegally, and that many of those issues are not addressed by banning guns. How to address that issue is a completely different matter, but banning does not increase safety. Nor does relaxing regulation. Ironically, in our bipolar universe, the idea that neither increasing nor decreasing regulation makes the country safer is a little bit surprising.

He discussed with us, candidly, about how freely he moves around with a gun, and then he finally reached the sticking point: the point at which people on one side of the issue are distinguished from people on the other.

Sticking points are present in our most controversial issues. They're the points which are so important they cannot be compromised and very difficult to resolve. Unfortunately, sometimes the sticking point becomes the entire issue. For instance, if you make "pro-gun" or "anti-gun" the sticking point, it has much worse consequences (in terms of ruining bipartisanship) than if you make a more specific issue a sticking point. Those who cling to the 2nd Amendment in whole, allowing no regulation of gun ownership at all, are taking that sticking point to an extreme. These people should be reminded that the 2nd Amendment was provided to allow the people of the United States the right to overthrow their government by force.

The sticking point here was: should a human being be trusted to judge the situation in which a life must be taken?

This is a major issue.

Interestingly, you'll notice this framing is more wide-ranging than just this gun issue. This is because sticking points are philosophical-emotional, not political.

Issues that this sticking point intersects:

• War: When we go to War, we judge ourselves right in taking lives, and in ordering people to die.
• The Death Penalty: The death penalty states that we have the right to condemn people to death.
• Abortion: if you consider an unborn child to be alive, then the right to abortion means you judge yourself worthy of killing that unborn child.
• Gun Ownership: people who carry weapons in self-defense are preparing themselves, if need be, to kill.

Obviously, this doesn't mean that people who are in favor of any of the above are necessarily murderers. Almost everyone will concede that these issues are never actually black and white.

Some will look at those and say man cannot decide whether or not to take a life. But the truth is, man does have to decide. On the other hand, saying that man does have to decide does not mean that individuals have to decide. Society (or culture), may have to make that choice. Sometimes we decide it is necessary to take the right to choose death out of the hands of the individual. On the right, it is removing the right to choose abortion: on the left it is removing the right to choose war.

And people may rightly say that in such-and-such a case it is better to take a life (it never is right, but it might be better). But the question is, do you know.

The reason that I opposed the Iraq War was not necessarily because I was against war (World War II was a war that, on the whole, made things better in the world; Vietnam made things worse; Korea was merely a huge waste of life... etc.). But when the President embarked on a campaign of misinformation, he took away our right to make an informed choice.

That right is crucial. One of my favorite quotations about morality, which I use as my own moral compass when everything else fails, is Albert Camus' The Plague.

The narrator is inclined to think that by attributing overimportance to the praiseworthy actions one may, by implication, be paying indirect but potent homage to the worse side of human nature. For this attitude implies that such actions shine out as rare exceptions, while callousness and apathy and the general rule. The narrator does not share this view. The evil that is in the world always comes of ignorance, and good intentions may do as much harm as malevolence, if they lack understanding. On the whole, men are more good than bad; that, however, isn't the real point. But they are more or less ignorant, and it is this that we call vice or virtue; the most incorrigible vice being that of an ignorance that fancies it knows everything and therefore claims for itself the right to kill. The soul of the murderer is blind; and there can be no true goodness nor true love without the utmost clearsightedness.

What Camus is saying is that in order to judge the morality of an action, you need to have an accurate understanding of its effects. We tend to judge actions based on their impact. For instance, it is common knowledge that if this Iraq War ends in a stable, democratic Iraq, George Bush's legacy will be rehabilitated in the same way that Abraham Lincoln and Franklin Delano Roosevelt are forgiven their various crimes because of their successes. One quality of leadership is having to make those difficult decisions, based not on the here-and-now but on the long-term impact.

This is very difficult. Many people who mean well will make bad decisions because they are missing facts. And people will be unable to see their transgressions for the same reasons that they make them in the first place: a lack of understanding of the situation.

Now, the Commander-in-Chief of the Army (read: the President) will have to make that decision, whether he likes it or not. Both Barack Obama and John McCain have proven that. The question will remain: who will be able to see the picture more accurately?

That's not the question I set out to answer. The opinion I wished to express was merely that I don't carry a gun for self-defense because I have significant doubts in my own ability to judge a life-or-death instantaneous situation. I have doubts that I will, in the less than half a minute I will have to respond, make the right choice concerning the person whose life is my responsibility, if I take a gun into my life, whether that be the people who might come to be hurt in an accident or the person I might have to decide whether or not to kill.

This was a very fruitful discussion. The Afghan food was also very good. I recommend both to you heartily.

Theater and Interactivity Pt. 1

I'm trying to lower my word-count for posts here, so as not to kill anyone foolish enough to try and read my ideas.

I was talking with a friend of mine here in Prague (I'm here studying temporarily) about theater, and he told me that the kind of theater he wants to create isn't so much him creating theater as it is him creating a pretext for theater to be created in the community.

What with my whole "culture is conversation" and "art should be responsive to the community" stances, I was very pleased, and enjoyed the idea. It has inspired me to look at that aspect more. I don't know if that's all I want to do, and I don't know how to do it entirely, but it's a lead that I'm really interesting, and that's that.

But it got me thinking about responsiveness in theater, which has come up for me at various times. Responsiveness in this case means responsiveness in the moment, not a general sort of metaphorical responsiveness.

We've always had this kind of responsiveness. After all, improv is an art form built around audience response. Whose Line Is It Anyway could be seen as the biggest success of theater on television. It takes what we love about theater: watching the actor think and feel in real time, and simply puts them in front of a camera. Whose Line Is It Anyway is for improv what SNL was for sketch comedy.

In the brick-and-mortar theater world, improv also continues to be a successful and lively part of action. Most comedians on television have come from a strong background in this--and the brick-and-mortar pedigree is still a mark of talent. The fact that Stephen Colbert comes from Second City Improv counts for a long way with people, in the way that other people's brick-and-mortar theater experience doesn't in the film/TV world.

And I am starting to think that this success is only going to get bigger.

We talk about theater's losing share in public culture often in terms of its competition. People have ruminated on the ease, comfort, and privacy of watching television. When I talked to my dad about theater, he (a software engineer) looked at theater and came to one conclusion: theater is struggling because it doesn't scale.

But what was he comparing it to? He didn't look to the world of television or film. And he was right not to. After all, statistics seem to show that movie-watching is stagnating. Television, on the other hand, is a little harder to assess. Why? Because television is moving to the internet. Internet is the growing source of entertainment and culture (I say culture as well) so Internet is the biggest competition to theater.

Talk about the 'competition' is not new: George Bernard Shaw was talking about what a theater needs to do to compete for the attention of viewers (one solution: comfy seats). Bertold Brecht argued along similar lines (one solution: let them smoke cigars).

At any rate, if there's one clear defining change between the Internet and what has gone before, it is the internet is interactive. This parallels the growing love of video games. We enjoy engaging our mind into what we're doing, and interaction lets us influence what we're doing. But theater is interactive too. So the theater has an opportunity: to stand as an interactive, communal entertainment.

Now, the internet will always win points over us in convenience. But then again, don't DVDs and films win over movie theaters in convenience as well? What we win over the internet is a sense of life and community.

But at the moment, our habits of theater aren't interactive. A playwright creates a play (usually alone), he takes it to a theater company, which decides everything in advance, and this is presented to a silent audience in the dark part of the theater. So the challenge of theater is how to combine the ingenuity of the artist with the contributions of the audience.

I'll leave it there for now, and think about where I've seen it applied and such, and discuss more tomorrow.

Feelings About Copyright

I was sitting in the car today, listening to Johnny Cash's performance of Nine Inch Nails' song “Hurt,” and I got to thinking about how they felt about the development. Clearly, they were not too unhappy, because they made some sort of agreement with Johnny Cash that allowed him to proceed legally. But suppose they weren't Johnny Cash fans? What if they didn't like the way they did it? I tried to imagine if I had written a song, only to have some musician I didn't like perform it—Barbara Streisand, for instance.
Of course, I know what that feels. Because I've had a short play of mine performed, and absolutely butchered. I won't say who did it, although you'd be surprised to know they were the performers because they'd won some sort of a youth theater award, and I won't talk about the stupid script cuts and lurching tempos that turned me off of their version. I watched on the video, and within ten seconds my excitement had drained away like pus siphoning out of a cut wound. Within moments I was empty, and then just mildly sick. I stopped the video there. Within moments I was feeling better, because I told myself that they had so altered the script that they were not in fact performing my play—they were performing a play that happened to have some words I'd written in it.
I'm recording these feelings not because I want to rag on a group of rather earnest young actors who I'm sure have gone on to become very accomplished in their field, be it medicine or law or astrophysics. Instead, I want to reflect on how my feelings intersect law and the economics. Although it is strange to think of 'feelings' as intersecting law and economics, it is in fact the case that both are realms which are almost as emotional as they are rational. And both are connected to these feelings because of how I own my words: they are my property.
Going back to Johnny Cash and Nine Inch Nails: if Nine Inch Nails had truly protested to Johnny Cash's version, they could have said, “We're not going to give you the rights.” And then Johnny Cash's version would be illegal, like Danger Mouse's Grey Album which mixed elements of The Beatles' White Album with Jay Z's Black Album. The Beatles insisted that their property had been 'stolen.' That, of course, was motivated by a different emotion: a desire for compensation. In some contexts we would call that greed, in other contexts we would call that justice—mostly based on the reasonableness of the claim. So in other words, if the Nine Inch Nails wanted to stop Johnny Cash from covering their song, the power was in their hands.
Samuel Beckett, though long dead and buried, has a remarkable talent for controlling his play. He wouldn't tolerate the sort of cuts and bumbling the way the young amateurs did to my play. Part of me warms to the idea of a cadre of lawyers with a very specific and accurate understanding of my artistic whim, patrolling the country and ensuring that if you see one of my plays you see it the way I intended. Amateurs, of course, would not be allowed to sully my work, no matter how much enthusiasm or interesting thought they had. Enthusiasm or new interpretation is not important: what is important is the proper representation of my work.
But of course, the law and economics is not solely dictated by emotions. Certainly, if they were, than a small group of dedicated amateurs who wanted to butcher my work (they, of course, wouldn't see it as butchering—they are proud of the mangled, misdirected work they have produced) would have a certain amount of legal-economic force, based on their sense of enthusiasm. And I, as well as they, know how it feels to want to put on a piece of work and find yourself frustrated.
Recently, I put up a play, in which music was a necessary component—it was a dance theater piece whose details I won't bore you with except to say that music was a necessary component. But where to get music? My attempts to have music composed for the production fell apart, much to our chagrin, and in haste we set forward to replace the music. Of course, the music I had truly wanted to use was by a popular band whose name I won't utter, except to say that my inquiries as to the possibility of using it were met by stony silence. I could have pressed forward, illegally, but of course I am one of those few people under the age of 25 in the United States who seems to think that it is important to follow copyright law, despite being one of the few people under the age of 25 in the United States who actually understands what copyright is. (It seems rather arrogant to be saying something as expansive as that while also emphasizing my relative youth, so let me follow it up by saying that I'm afraid of heights, and thus am not as fantastic as I make myself out to be).
Having felt the frustration of not wanting to violate the law without having communicated my intentions, I managed to secure the rights to certain music from a source which I had good reason to believe would not object to my playing of their song. I won't say who, but I will change the subject in a way which may hint as to their identity.
Covers are subject to the same regulation as any other derivative use of music. But sometimes artists perform unauthorized covers at concerts. Usually, it is not artists who object to this. I recall reading recently that Thom Yorke was shown by Radiohead's guitarist a video of Prince performing a song they had written. The video had been posted by YouTube, and Thom Yorke watched with approval. His first thought was, “That stealing bastard!” Why? Because he enjoyed the homage Prince was paying him.
His approval turned to disapproval when Prince issued a DMCA Takedown Notice to the YouTube poster, citing copyright infringement. Whose copyright? asked Thom Yorke. After all, the song did not belong to Prince. Had Prince licensed the cover, perhaps he could have had cause to issue a Takedown Notice—on the grounds that a licensed derivative work is to a certain degree an independent work. At any rate, he hadn't, so he was clearly overstepping his bounds.
Thom Yorke's feelings must have been odd, to see someone else asserting ownership over an idea that you had created. I suppose that's the feeling you get when someone creates a derivative work. Authors, upon watching the film adaptation of their work, likely feel the same thing. J.R.R. Tolkien might have been interested to see how Peter Jackson interpreted his work, but might he have squirmed if Peter Jackson got more attention as a result than Tolkien himself? I soon will get to experience that, as a play of mine (the one with the dance and the music, previously mentioned) is en route to being adapted to film.
Suppose I do get squeamish, and like Samuel Beckett wish to enforce an iron-clad control over my own work. I will, most likely, feel better. When I watch other people doing this, however, I don't feel as positively. I have seen the definitive Beckett. I want to see the nondefinitive Beckett. I want to see a Beckett that gets completely torn apart and ruined. I want to see all the things that Beckett put in the text but didn't mean to, I want to see all the ideas that are possible but not elucidated in his works. That, I suppose, is because I am not Beckett.
The law is supposed to, in theory, balance the feeling of the owner against the feelings of the prospective users. Currently, it does not. The reason is because the owners today have more money than the theoretical owners of the future. That is a different discussion, a legal-economic discussion, which is quite eloquently discussed by Lawrence Lessig in books such as Free Culture. The more philosophical discussion is best summed up by Jonathan Lethem's essay The Ecstacy of Influence (which is also an excellent example of derivative work being wholly unrelated to source material). And the practical discussion is best summed by a copyright comic book entitled “Bound By Law.” To a degree, I'm also looking at this philosophically, but based on this concept of “ownership” (philosophically; the legal definition is clear).
Who owns Shakespeare's work? The answer is very clear. It is in the public domain. We all own it. A subtler question: why do we own it? The law tells us that it's because Shakespeare wrote so long ago, that it now belongs to anyone who wants it. Common sense tells us that Shakespeare is dead, so clearly he can't own it. But suppose I could produce the rightful heir of Shakespeare—why wouldn't he be entitled to the Shakespeare fortune? There is one societal argument that says that we all deserve a cut at Shakespeare because it's only fair that after a while we get a chance at looking at it. This answer is slightly unsatisfying: basically, it says that at a certain point (arbitrarily decided by Parliament or Congress), the emotions of the owner are overtaken by the emotions of the rest of society. I don't disagree with that argument (I actually endorse it heartily), but I'm looking for the artistic argument.
Actually, I'm not looking for it. I've actually found it. I'm arguing that every artistic work has its own implicit rights.
What?
Think about it like this: a corporation is treated as an individual entity. The person who starts it may have put himself in control, but past a certain point, once it reaches the public sphere, it is treated in all senses as being separate from him. The founder, may in fact, be eventually forced out, but the corporation will continue until it is formally folded up.
Suppose an artwork had its own rights. Suppose it had its own feelings. How would Waiting for Godot feel about Beckett's “ownership?” Rather like a wife jealously lorded over by a paranoid husband, I should think!
When the artwork is first born, like any child, it is utterly fitting that the parent have full control over who it may consort with, how it may dress and behave. Children, after all, do not have the full right of free expression that parents have. But once it reaches the age of majority (originally 14), it is old enough to be set free on its own. In the United States, this “age of majority” is currently set at 70 years past the author's life, or 95 years. 95! Imagine if your father could still dictate who you could play with at the age of 95! Even past his death!
Artists are frequently referring to their works of art as their “babies.” Like parents, we want to hold our children close, keep them from risk, and stop them from leaving our grasp. But as any responsible parent will tell you, this is not the way to go.
Derivation from an artwork is how the artwork matures. The different interpretations, explorations, revisions, and extensions which subsequent artists add may not enrich the artist (unless, in today's copyright scheme, they're making money on each), but they do enrich the artwork. It matures, becoming fuller and more independent as more people interact with it and give to it. An excellent example is George Lucas' Star Wars universe. As a child, I watched the Star Wars trilogy with awe and excitement. When the movies were done, I watched them over and over again. I was eager for more. Quickly, I discovered that there were books. Authors like Stackpole and Timothy Zahn had created more and more stories, all related to the mythology and characters and fundamental universe as Star Wars, but each as different as the authors which contributed. Some were more aimed at youth, some were more aimed at adults. One series, Rogue Squadron, was in the subgenre of fighter-pilots; another (Jedi Academy) was in the old youths-at-school genre. I spent many years enriching myself in this wild and detailed universe.
Let us suppose that no one had ever been authorized to add another book to the Star Wars universe. All I would have had was those three movies. George Lucas sensed that, and so he added three more. And in a stunning example of an artist not knowing what's best for their own artwork, those three movies completely missed the entire spirit and sense of the universe. Normally, I would feel ashamed to say that—how can I know the artwork better than the artist?--but in actuality, the work of art “speaks for itself”--because it is its own entity. What I, and many other authors have found in the expanded universe, didn't seem reflected in the flashy but awkward prequels.
But this is not a Star Wars fan critiquing the missteps of George Lucas. My point is that the universe grew far more quickly when any author who wanted to (within certain guidelines and paying certain royalties) could expand the universe, than merely the lifetime work of Mr. Lucas on his own. The world would be impoverished without their efforts. And the artwork has a right to that infringement. For instance, under fair use clauses, we have already protected the right of journalists and academicians to write essays about artworks; thus complicating our thinking of an artwork by providing new perspectives. How many authors or playwrights or musicians wish they could use copyright law to suppress bad reviews! When Chinua Achebe or Ralph Ellison want to lash out at works like Heart of Darkness or The Sound And The Fury for perceived racism, they should be relieved to know that their work (which is a derivative of those works) is protected, no matter how many passages they copy to illustrate their point. Joseph Conrad or William Faulkner may disagree, but it is up to the artwork and its observers to understand the legacy.
An artwork encapsulates more than its initial writing. Brian Reynolds, in a series of essays analyzing Shakespeare and other authors, creates a concept called “Shakespace” which applies fairly well. “Shakespace” encapsulates not only Shakespeare's work, but all of the works which touch onto that, are derived from that, are related to that, are sparked by that. Shakespeare is the byword in theater that he is today because Shakespace is so large—it encapsulates West Side Story, and that movie with Leonardo Di Caprio, and also Billy Crystal and Robin Williams as the gravediggers. To attempt to define how large Shakespace is would be very difficult; Ubu Roi, though largely unrelated and still a fairly fanciful invention of Jarry's, is still in Shakespace.
So when I create a work of art, it carves a space in the world. At first, it is very small. It would remain small, aside from the effort of the artist. When I write a play, if I do nothing, it stays on my desk. I am the literary agent of my plays. If I had a literary agent, he too would be entitled a slice of the pie, but only inasmuch as I get him to help me. In that way, I'm entitled to royalties the way that the first theater to produce a play deserves royalties. They found my play, and gave it its first production, which gave it the recognition and public legitimacy it needed to become however profitable it turned out to be, so they deserve a profit. The Public Theater still today earns royalty checks on Chorus Line. I don't know whether they should still be getting royalty checks, but basic philosophy is fair.
So from the artwork's perspective, it owes a debt (which it cannot control) to the artist who created it. In fact, it always owes a debt to every artist who contributes, and their profit is according to the size of their contribution (from a commercial standpoint; sometimes the best contributors are not paid accordingly). But at a certain point, it is unfair for the artwork to continue to pay rent to an artist who no longer is doing anything to get the word out. Because if after 14 years the artwork is still in demand, then it is on the merit of the artwork, or other artworks by the same artist, and not the merit of the artist themselves. I do not buy a George Bernard Shaw play because I like the cut of his jib, or because he has tried very hard to sell it to me; I buy it because everyone tells me Major Barbara is a classic of the English language, and by the way Man and Superman is important, and maybe I haven't heard of this other play of his but if I liked Major Barbara I'll probably like it.
So you see why, from an artwork-oriented point of view, an artist is entitled to a copyright of a limited term? This philosophical approach creates a right to copyright without ever invoking the concept of ownership. Ideas cannot be owned. But your contribution to their furthering can earn you money. That, I believe, is the way things should be, and a law consistent with this spirit would certainly look a lot different than the one we have today. And to return, for just one last second, to my feelings: this gives an impartial judge, separate from the rights of the original creator and the rights of the end user (“rights” being very much tied to feelings of entitlement). The standard by which to judge is, what will further the ideas. And if you look at the Constitution, you notice that it declares that the purpose is for the promotion of progress in the arts and sciences—not in the promotion of artists and scientists.

The Conversation: Confrontation in Politics

• "You'll get a chance to answer [sic] your questions but you
• "All you gotta do is be courteous, that's all." Respect. Clearly.
• His return to speaking to the young man. It would have been shameful if he hadn't returned to ask the question, but it is important nonetheless.
• "I made a promise to you but also that means I want you to give your mic back after you ask your question or make your comment." ---- A statement of the responsibility of both sides. Obama will give legitimacy to the question if the heckler will give legitimacy to the answer.
• Audience response: Obama does not leverage the sympathetic audience against the heckler; rather, he attempts to restrain the audience, at one point saying "Hold on a second, everybody, I want everybody to be respectful, that's why we're having a townhall meeting. This is democracy at work. Now he asked a legitimate question, so I want to give him an answer." (Emphasis mine).
  
• The Kicker: "Now, I may not have spoken out the way you would have wanted me to speak out, which is fine, because ... that doesn't mean that I'm always going to satisfy the way you guys want these issues framed, which gives you the option of voting for somebody else, it gives you the option of running for office yourself. Those are all options, but the one thing that I think is important is that we're respectful towards each other, and...the only way we're going to solve our problems in our country, is if all of us come together..."

The conversation is sustained by new voices, provided those voices are respectful. The key, which Obama returns to and is rather the point of my discussions on conversation, is respect of opinions.