Category: Art

Black Panther & the American Creative Continuum

When Black Panther opened last month and proceeded to set records at the box office, it just so happened to be 200 years, almost to the day, after Frederick Douglass was born into slavery in Tuckahoe, Maryland. The significance of this particular symmetry might be observed through any number of lenses, including those distorted by presentist emotions, which tend to warp historic narrative. But one truth that unquestionably sits between these parenthetical milestones is a reminder that the progress of American democracy—namely the effort to define and shape its grand promises—has always been literary.

In his Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave, Douglass describes his introduction to literacy by Mistress Auld, and the consequent lesson inherent in Master Auld’s rebuke, as follows:

“From that moment, I understood the pathway from slavery to freedom. It was just what I wanted, and I got it at a time when I the least expected it. Whilst I was saddened by the thought of losing the aid of my kind mistress, I was gladdened by the invaluable instruction which, by the merest accident, I had gained from my master. Though conscious of the difficulty of learning without a teacher, I set out with high hope, and a fixed purpose, at whatever cost of trouble, to learn how to read.”

While still a fugitive, Douglass registered this book for copyright in 1845, and it was more than a year later that his friends purchased his freedom from Thomas Auld. This overlap in time, when Douglass owned intellectual property while he was still technically the property of another man, says a lot about the painfully bipolar identity of America, but it also reflects the fact that the evolution of the nation’s literary voice has always been intertwined with broadening the initially too-narrow meaning of American liberty.

As the last of the witnesses to the Revolution were dying off, the first generation of Americans born under the Constitution—most of the population was under 30 circa 1840—inherited the exciting, and often harrowing, task of defining what it actually meant to be American. For some, this entailed reconciling the declarative chutzpah of independence with the many social and political hypocrisies that manifestly betrayed all the beautifully-written hubris of the Framers. And one answer to this dichotomy was the advancement of a national literature.

By the time Douglass published Narrative, a literary revolution was already reshaping the fledgling nation. In an 1837 address at Harvard, Ralph Waldo Emerson called upon America’s next generation to produce literature that shed reliance on the conventions of England. “Our day of dependence, our long apprenticeship to the learning of other lands, draws to a close. The millions, that around us are rushing into life, cannot always be fed on the sere remains of foreign harvests. Events, actions arise, that must be sung, that will sing themselves,” he said in his opening remarks.

Any reader of Walt Whitman’s poetry will note Emerson’s use of the verb sing, and indeed “Leaves of Grass,” first published in 1855, was one of the most famously overt responses to this summoning of national identity through creative expression. Whitman was among the authors—others included Hawthorne, Melville, and Whittier—who coalesced around the newspaper The Democratic Review, founded in 1837 by John O’Sullivan. The mission of the Review was to advance a younger, more diverse, and more expansive vision of democracy through a literature of “original works treating commonplace themes with forcefulness, directness, and dignity,” writes historian Edward L. Widmer in his book Young America: The Flowering of Democracy in New York City.

This was America’s first generational culture clash, in which the Young Americans, as Widmer describes, stood in opposition to an older and more conservative population of Whiggish elites. It was this literary-political agenda that shifted the cultural center of gravity from Puritan Boston and Philadelphia to riotous, diverse, petulant, exuberant, and unabashedly commercial New York.

While a proper schematic of the social and political views among these forces is too complex to describe in a short post,* the emphasis on prodding the American creative voice into its own was intertwined with the general aim of expanding the promise of civil rights and dignity to a plurality of American citizens. “I speak the password primeval … I give the sign of democracy;/By God! I will accept nothing which all cannot have their counterpart of on the same terms,” wrote Whitman, who, interestingly enough, was an advocate of copyright as an engine of democratic principles more than one of economic necessity.

In the narrative of the ever-evolving American voice, we can draw a line from Douglass literally stealing literacy to transcend his captivity to the moment when Mark Twain in a single sentence in Huckleberry Finn simultaneously obliterates moral ambiguity about slavery and asserts the power of vernacular in American literature. “All right then, I’ll go to hell,” says Huck upon his decision not to turn in Jim as a runaway slave. From there, we can draw a long but clear arc to the video review by Danielle Radford for Screen Junkies in which she explains why Black Panther is “black as fu©#.” Because its cinematic language employs a vernacular that is uncommon among Hollywood blockbuster movies.

Yes, Black Panther is just a Marvel action film full of chases and fight scenes and magic, as expected. But that’s why it’s significant. As Radford describes, its subtle choices—the million tiny decisions where film artists are truly at work—broaden the cinematic language in a way that actually reverses her opening declaration. The relevance is perhaps not that the film is “black as fu©#” but that it’s American as fu©#. And it has always been the role of creative artists to write and revise exactly what that means.

*In particular, the subject of abolition among the various factions would require a whole post just to set the stage.

Why Women Should Also Lead the Anti-Piracy Effort

In past articles I’ve suggested that anti-piracy should be a form of activism practiced by anyone who stands up for women’s rights. And perhaps now that empowerment of women is the social tidal wave of the season, this proposal will get some traction. There is the ugly truth that some pirate sites serve as verticals for broader organized crime activity, including human trafficking; and there’s also the problem that pirate-site deployment of malware like RATs fosters harassment and exploitation of women and girls. So, it seems logical to me that if one’s environmental consciousness would avoid adding one more plastic bottle to the ocean, then one’s feminist consciousness would likewise avoid enriching pirate sites, which may support these forms of exploitation.

But there’s another point I’d make, and one that may be more obvious than the links between piracy and exploitation. It occurred to me the other day when I read in Variety that Rachel Morrison is the first woman Director of Photography to be nominated for an Academy Award for her work on the indie film Mudbound. Coincidentally, this was just a few hours after I read an editorial by that film’s producer Cassian Elewes titled How Google is Killing the Independent Movie Industry. Elwes focuses on the renegotiation of NAFTA and how the safe harbor provisions in the 1998 DMCA have had the unintended consequence of expanding piracy, which most acutely harms independent filmmakers.

The feminist groundswell generally referred to as the #MeToo movement not only began in the epicenter of the motion picture industry with revelations about Harvey Weinstein, but the industry as a whole was long overdue for correcting its “boys club” problem separate from issues of harassment and assault. In the days before sound was added to motion pictures, women were among the most innovative artists of the budding industry—as writers, directors, editors, cinematographers, studio heads, and even operators of big 35mm, hand-cranked cameras. Sound made production more expensive, leading to more substantial capital investment, which transformed movie-making into a “real job” that men wanted. Thus, the substantial contributions of Alice Guy Blaché and her contemporaries to the new language of cinema are little known by anyone other than students of film history.

Now that the male/female pendulum is finally swinging back toward a more balanced position, one of the best choices fans can make to keep that momentum, to support a craftsperson like Rachel Morrison—and the 1,000 young women who want to follow in her footsteps—is to stop pirating movies. As many have tried to explain, that whole “screw the fat-cat movie moguls” narrative people still cite to justify piracy is a complete myth. The so-called “fat cats” will be fine much longer than the independents, where the margins are lower and the effect of piracy can easily make or break the financial success of a film and prospective investment in the next one. Elwes writes …

“…just during its theatrical run, Dallas Buyers Club suffered roughly 22 million piracy transactions – more than three times the number of legitimate transactions. If just 5 percent of those pirated transactions had been paid tickets, downloads, or rentals, the film would have earned at least an additional $4.4 million (at a low rental fee of $3.99). That kind of money is life or death for an independent film and the filmmakers who sacrificed everything to get their vision onscreen.”

I’ll add that anyone who justifies piracy based on their idea that filmmakers are just those tux-and-gown folks swarmed by paparazzi on the red carpet, should spend a week with a cinematographer and her crew of camera assistants. It’ll be a string of 15-hour days, mostly on your feet, moving very quickly, communicating in a technological patois you won’t understand, and all in the service of key creative decisions worked out weeks or months earlier between the director and the production designer.

It’s fairly common when a film is nominated for a Cinematography Oscar that fans will say, “Yeah, that film is beautiful.” But beauty isn’t necessarily the DP’s objective; it’s actually something much more difficult and subtle than that. It’s making a thousand technical and creative choices, sometimes on the fly, that serve the story in ways the viewer doesn’t consciously observe. Great cinematography is hard, both mentally and physically; and anyone who thinks digital has made the process easier or cheaper only believes this because he doesn’t know how the job actually gets done.

Likewise, anyone who thinks that “pirating the studios into oblivion” is somehow helpful to independents and careers like Morrison’s, don’t know what they’re talking about. The worlds of studio and indie are codependent in numerous ways I won’t repeat here; but just a glance at Morrison’s IMDB page reveals a fairly typical narrative—over 30 credits in the Camera or Electric Department (i.e. learning her craft) beginning in 1999; then cinematographer credits on 43 independent films, TV shows, and documentaries; then her first big, Hollywood movie, Black Panther, releasing this year. But her future career will continue to include many independent films because most films made are indies while the “evil” studios function primarily as distributors.

So, anyone who’s glad to finally see a woman nominated for a Cinematography Oscar—because it really is a long time coming—and would like to see more women in that line-up in the future, can best support this trend by supporting the films themselves with tickets, streaming rentals, paid downloads, etc. Or you can keep supporting some anonymous guys running pirate sites and are at this moment criminally exploiting Morrison’s work on Mudbound for their own profit. See the problem?

 

Photo:  Photoplay magazine (1916). Camera operator, or “crank,” Margery Ordway.  See more information at Library of Congress.

Dragon Box Sued by New and Traditional Film Studios

Picking up on the piracy-doublespeak theme of my last post, let’s highlight a favorite talking point among piracy advocates and apologists, the one that goes like this: If the major producers were just smart enough to make works available conveniently and affordably, people would stop pirating. That was always a lie. And it’s been proven a lie by the filmed-entertainment industry because a huge volume of content—more than any normal person has time to watch—has been made conveniently and affordably available, and yet piracy continues to increase. More than that, piracy has become so sophisticated that potential new users of pirate sites don’t have to be sophisticated at all.

Until fairly recently, a user generally had to be aware that he was visiting an infringing site to illegally download or stream a motion picture or TV show. If he was committed enough to his piracy, he’d have to follow some of the trends, know which pirate sites are doing what, invest in a VPN to hide his tracks, and spend some time searching for specific titles. Now, the process is made much easier with device-based piracy, often referred to generically as “Kodi Boxes,” after the name of one of the first products to enter this market. Essentially, these devices work like an AppleTV or Roku, but because they’re built on open-source operating systems, third-party “add-on” software was made available almost immediately to turn these devices into piracy boxes.

With add-on software, the user gets a Neflix-like graphic interface offering nearly any title he can think of for free. What the device does in the background is locate the target material on a pirate site’s server somewhere in cyberspace and then stream it from that infringing location via the box to the user’s screen. It’s all very clean and prettied up just like a legit product, requiring no more savvy than the use of a TV remote. It’s so easy that a small child can steal cartoons in her pajamas on Saturday morning without waking Mom and Dad for help.

Enter Dragon Box

On January 10, a complaint was filed in California District Court against developer Paul Christoforo and reseller Jeff Williams of Dragon Box—a device pre-loaded with piracy software and which is overtly advertised to consumers as a substitute for paying for cable, Netflix, Hulu, or any legal supplier of filmed entertainment, including online gaming. Plaintiffs, which comprise Netflix, Amazon, and six major motion picture studios, allege that Dragon Media Inc. intentionally facilitates and induces mass infringement of their works via the function of Dragon Box and the manner in which it is marketed to the public. Here’s the sample ad cited in the complaint:

That ad alone is sufficient to imply that this case probably won’t last very long—meaning Dragon Media Inc. won’t last very long because they don’t seem to have a claw to stand on. Advertising a device that delivers on a promise to enable consumers to watch subscription-based content without said subscription is about as clear-cut as selling bootleg DVDs out of a warehouse. I’m frankly surprised the defendants imagined they’d get very far with this one, operating out of Carlsbad, CA and blatantly promoting illegal access to just about every kind of media content available. Beyond the eight plaintiffs in this litigation, Dragon Box’s advertising implicates the sports and news interests, the cable and satellite providers, and so much more! Their interface even offer a menu selection called “In Theaters,” thus facilitating and promoting access to pirate streams of movies weeks or months ahead of their release on digital platforms. Because freedom I guess.

I imagine this case will conclude rather quickly with a summary judgment for the plaintiffs. It’s very hard to imagine Dragon Media sustaining a reasonable defense, let alone a prolonged one against basically the entire film and TV-producing universe, both large and small. In fact, because these devices are sold as a for-profit venture, providing a product designed to enable mass copyright infringement, the defendants should be glad not to facing criminal charges, rather than a civil suit. Of course, this probably won’t stop the piracy advocates from concocting some theory as to why Dragon Box is perfectly legal.

Piracy Boxes Change the Landscape

One of the reasons, piracy advocates convince themselves and others that their actions are harmless is that the damage done thus far tends to be relatively obscure. When piracy causes an independent filmmaker to lose the margin between profit and loss, her story is dwarfed by reports that Hollywood’s millionaires are still making millions. Or when producer Martha de Laurentiis blames piracy as a major factor in the cancellation of a hit TV show, and it’s just one anecdote in a market that is clearly replete with content.

The big picture gives lie, the pirates will say, to the premise that piracy does much harm at all. And this conclusion then justifies the claim that copyright enforcement in the digital age is inherently draconian. These are the climate-change deniers among piracy advocates—the ones who cannot imagine how relatively small examples of harm imply that piracy, like all forms of harm, has a tipping point. Clearly, the millions of dollars invested in new production depend on a substantial majority of the market not pirating.

Meanwhile, we are currently witnessing an expansive and speculative period when companies like Netflix and Amazon are spending a lot of debt capital to produce new works and grow market-share, with only their subscription/rental platforms as revenue sources. I stands to reason that if a piracy-box market attained a certain volume, this would be an even greater threat to the digital-only producers than it is to the traditional studios releasing movies in theaters etc.

And, no I don’t care about Jeff Bezos either. In fact, I’m not a fan. But I do care about the creative professionals Amazon has to hire to make the recent Golden Globe winning The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel, or whatever else they produce next. And it’s patently absurd to assume that production will simply continue to grow and innovate if piracy continues to increase toward the tipping point, wherever it may be.

In this regard, devices like Dragon Box have tremendous potential to accelerate piracy toward the threshold of more demonstrative market harm because these boxes make access to pirate sites so easy, seamless, and invisible. Presumably, a plug-and-play device marketed in this way will draw consumers who would not otherwise engage in piracy. And if it were allowed to mature, this is a dragon that could easily burn up all the crops. Fortunately, I predict this case will conclude rather quickly and serve as a deterrent to the next “entrepreneur.”