Barbie, Closet Activist?

[kpete]

“Escape from Tomorrow” is, essentially, a commentary on a shared social phenomenon, namely the supposed bliss of an American family’s day at Disney World. In Moore’s version, the day is a frightening and surreal mess that destroys the family forever. The film isn’t so much a criticism of Disney World itself but of the unattainable family perfection promised by a day spent at the park.

New York Times, Los Angeles Times, and other news organizations have speculated that “Escape from Tomorrow” must violate Disney’s rights and that its lawyers will seek to have the film enjoined. At the Sundance Film Festival, where the film premièred this week, Moore was onstage answering questions when someone in the audience asked, roughly, “Why did you put so much work into a film that violates so many laws?”
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/01/21/movies/escape-from-tomorrow-at-sundance-scrutinizes-disney.html?_r=1&

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A famous case over the artist Thomas Forsythe’s “Food Chain Barbie” series is similar to this one. In the late nineteen-nineties, Forsythe created a line of artistic photographs of Barbie under attack by various vintage appliances. According to Forsythe, he wanted to “critique the objectification of women associated with [Barbie], and to lambast the conventional beauty myth and the societal acceptance of women as objects because this is what Barbie embodies.” His work made just thirty-seven hundred dollars, but Mattel sued for both copyright and trademark infringements. The courts threw out the complaints under a fair use and First Amendment rationale. The judges were so annoyed by the lawsuits that they awarded attorney’s fees of nearly two million dollars to the artist.

The similarities with “Food Chain Barbie” are obvious. Both make use of an American icon with associated social ideals (perfect womanhood, in Barbie’s case). Both use art to comment on or criticize that social meaning. In neither case is the commentary the only purpose of the art work, but it doesn’t need to be. Ultimately, both “Food Chain Barbie” and “Escape from the Future” are legitimate art projects, and it is a serious thing for judges to place prior restraints on cultural output. This is not a case about counterfeit Mickey Mouse watches or bootlegged “Toy Story” DVDs. Disney is free to stop that sort of thing all it likes. But a judge has to think about the First Amendment when asked to ban art work.
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Read more: http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/culture/2013/01/escape-from-tomorrow-disney-world-and-the-law-of-fair-use.html#ixzz2J0rRM4e7