Reframing the Copyright Debate

One of the most fascinating dilemmas of being both simultaneously young in this time period and studying emerging media discourse is being in a constant state of digital moral conflict. My personal interactions with film, music, and art sometimes go against my more academic understanding of issues of copyright and fair use.  As Larry Lessig has mentioned, it’s often easier (though more dangerous) to be on the extremes of these conflicts. Either we pirate all media without consideration, or hoard it and go after even the slightest misuse of a work. Neither perspective seems conducive to promoting collaboration or fostering creativity.

I argue that judgments on what is or is not copyright infringement have been made so hastily largely because most of our debates center on works of entertainment where the original version is actually very obviously used in the remediations.  So, our focus stops being about what the remediated version does to our understanding of the original piece, but about whether the artist should have the right to do this and if so, at what cost.  This is primarily the case when we look at sampling in music:

The Isley Brothers, “Between the Sheets” – 1983

Notorius B.I.G, “Big Poppa” – 1995

Gwen Stefani, “Luxurious” – 2005

We see the original Isley Brothers piece and it is undeniably present in both Notorious BIG and Gwen Stefani. But what if we spent less of our energy harping on this point and instead examined the ways in which each artist appropriates the latter’s.  How is sexuality expressed in each of these songs? Gender? What does cross genre use of the original song due to foster dialogue between once separate groups?  Perhaps we’re looking at this debate all wrong. Actually, what if it isn’t a binary debate at all, but more a discussion, of how we can recycle, reuse, and remix previous works to create new thought provoking pieces.

This concept has been thriving in the works of many African American appropriation artists.  There are icons such as Romare Bearden who began using pop culture images in collages in the 1930s as social commentary.  This form of artistic re-creation was used more recently in the late 1980s by Carrie Mae Weems in her collection Ain’t Jokin’ where she mixed original photography with common racist jokes to create a very startling juxtaposition of what these jokes mean and who they’re actually representing. Hebru Brantley is currently mixing pop culture logos and references with classic Black paintings and drawings to create something uniquely his own.

Hebru Brantley "Sponsored by Kool-Aid"

Taking a more controversial approach to the act of appropriation art was Michael Ray Charles in the 1990s with his series of works depicting notable racially stylized images of African Americans and remediating them with his own new text.

Michael Ray Charles, "(Forever Free)" Buy Black!

Michael Ray Charles, "(Forever Free) Art n American"

Michael Ray Charles, "(Forever Free) Hello I’m Your New Neighbor"

His pieces of course spark debate, but with them, we’re able to move from a surface copyright discussion on whether or not the original creators of the images should get some kind of recognition, but instead what Charles’s new versions say about the works and say about society, and politics, and economics, and community.

I think there’s a fine line between perpetuating something and questioning something. I like to get as close to it as possible in order, I guess, to create that tension, to evoke thought and to have people question how they deal with these images. –Michael Ray Charles