Is There Such A Thing As A Final Cut? 475
heidi writes "There's an insightful article over at CNN's entertainment section about the tinkering of recent cultural history. Apparently, there is no such thing as a final draft any more, and author Todd Leopold does a great job of showing how this is revisionist history at its, well, oddest. Aside from the many examples he cites, such as the 'new' Capote novel and the changing of Star Wars to show that Greedo shot first, i can think of the 'new' Camus novel that i read a few years ago and the way that The Wizard of Oz had the 'ding dong the witch is dead' song edited out. In an era where our entertainment has come to define us and to fill, however (un)completely, the spiritual void that we inherited from the Boomers, messing with our stories isn't necessarily a positive thing, creative genius aside."
Re:There's an old saying... (Score:3, Insightful)
I used to say the same thing about software.
An application is Beta until it's retired.
a tad unrelated, but in a similar vein.. (Score:3, Insightful)
To me, the final cut for music should be when they put it out on CD.. , with alterations allowed when I pay to see the performer live...
Not some 45 second edit of the song, playing the backdrop for a LandRover commercial.
I must have missed something (Score:5, Insightful)
Pink Floyd (Score:5, Insightful)
1984 (Score:5, Insightful)
Uncompletely? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Next into the editing room (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:1984 (Score:3, Insightful)
At the risk of a rantfest: IP's the problem (Score:5, Insightful)
Picture the broadcast flag, coupled with on-demand movies. Toss in changes of the medium du jour crippled with mostly effective DRM, and you're losing history left and right. There's a new release of, say, E.T. on Blu-Ray. Everyone (not literally everyone, of course, but you get the idea) replaces their old, worn-out VHS (or Beta, in the case of my parents) tapes. Now there's very little evidence that there were ever guns in the movie.
Or pay-per-view/on demand becomes the common way of watching movies. The broadcast flag prevents keeping a copy, of course. So all you'll ever be able to see is the latest version of the movie. Hell, look at Dumbo: can you even buy a copy of the movie that still has the crows singing? They certainly don't show it on television.
Or how about Aladdin? I can't be the only person who remembers the opening song's lyric containing a line about cutting off your hand for stealing a loaf of bread. But good luck proving that it ever even existed - to the best of my knowledge, that didn't even make into the first release of the movie to stores, much less subsequent ones.
The more consumers lose control of the media they consume - not being able to make/keep copies, being forced into a subscription model of media delivery - the more this is going to happen. We've got the technical capacity right now to preserve a closer-to-perfect record of our culture than has ever existed in human history, and we're wasting it. It's being lost to political correctness, revisionist history, and George Lucas.
Re:There's an old saying... (Score:5, Insightful)
And where should we stop? Should we reprint and remove or rewrite politically uncorrect sequences and dialog from Anne Frank, Huck Finn, and Uncle Tom's cabin? I think not. Such revisionism hides whatever insights we might gain into the attitudes and social mores and culture of the time.
And in the case of, say, SW (ANH), replacing scenes and effects MAY make the movie look better, but it's not as we remembered it, and we lose all appreciation of the techniques and the cinematic "state of the art" available at the time. I still cringe every time I see the new, improved Death Star "ring" explosion.
The Origin of Species (Score:3, Insightful)
Most of these changes improved the book, but some did not. So, which edition is "definitive"?
Re:There's an old saying... (Score:5, Insightful)
As long as the original is still available, sure.
Lucas lost it (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:There's an old saying... (Score:5, Insightful)
People need to suck it up. If they're fragile psyche's can't handle it the way it is, then they should just avoid it entirely, rather than corrupt the author's original intent.
Which is fine, but.... (Score:5, Insightful)
You bet, that is Lucas' prerogative. You know what really grinds my gears, though? The fact that after Lucas does his new cut, the old ones are never to see the light of day. Outside of bootlegs, we will never see Greedo shoot first on DVD, or E.T. chased by gun toting F.B.I. agents. They will be stuck on a crappy medium (VHS) until those tapes stop working. Who even knows if the original 35mm prints are still saved.
This leads to the lapses in history. I couldn't believe when I watched a show about how ground breaking the special effects in Star Wars were back in 1977 and all the clips were from the re-release! They even played the clip with the Death Star exploding with the new enegery ring! Ughhhh.... That wasn't 1977, that was a couple of years ago.
Plus, it is only going to get worse. As the lack of creativity increases in Hollywood, you'll see more re-releases and remakes where the original is left in a dusty back-lot room someplace.
Re:Hmmmm (Score:1, Insightful)
I am reminded of a documentery I once saw; it was about a woman who was trying to prevent Disney from re-releasing The Jungle Book because she claimed that the song 'Like you' was racist. Essentially, for those who are unaquainted with the movie, the song is about how the chimps and monkeys want to be like men because of the things men can do. She claimed that the meaning behind the song was that black people wanted to be just like white people; her interpretation was correct but she forgot to take into consideration the time when the movie was created.
The Jungle Book movie was created well before Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat, and black people didn't really have many rights. The point of the song was a commentary against the state of affairs, and is probably the most important point in the movie from a cultural stand point; something potentially lost because of poor education in interpreting art.
If Aliens came to earth the police would be carrying around guns not walkie talkies; and if a bounty hunter was threating you you'd shoot him before he got the chance. I'm just waiting for Indiana Jones to have the Nazis removed in favor of Republicans.
Re:There's an old saying... (Score:3, Insightful)
(As with so many things) most of this controversy could be resolved merely by enforcing proper labeling. E.g. ET - The 2005 Revision ...which is, after all, just a matter of full disclosure. The goods being delivered have changed, thus their name should too.
Re:Final Cuts Are A Recent Invention (Score:2, Insightful)
I think you nailed it. History and readings of old cultural works almost always involves choosing between different versions of a story. People tinker to "improve" stories the same way they refine technologies.
The technology for revising video landed in the hands of Lucas and Disney et al first, so thealterations that heidi cites look like poor executive decisions at best, and PC censorship at worst. But that technology will soon be in the hands of the people (if it isn't already), which means finally video will belong to the people, who will begin editing out the PC, having Free Willy kill the kid, etc.
Re:There's an old saying... (Score:5, Insightful)
Political correctness is the new McCarthyism. The prosecution of thought-crime under the banner of 'diversity'. No art is sacred.
Re:What People Don't Realize... (Score:3, Insightful)
This is one of the big fallacies of IP. I saw the original film, hell most everyone here did. When that happened, it ceased to be his movie and became our memory...The proof of that is the whole "Han Shot First" contraversy. We all knew it had been changed, though it took him a while to admit it. In this, he's not only messing with "his" movie, but our minds as well.
You can't release something to the world, and then work to eradicate it 20 years later because you changed your mind about what you meant. Frankly, I am of the opinion that, when he decided the original version wasn't the "real" version anymore, and discontinued it, it ceased to be his property.
The purpose of IP law is to allow artists to make money off their creations for a reasonable time, not to give them unlimited control over all derivations of their work, for years and years to come, and certainly not to say, "Just foolin" and try to remove a released work from its rightful place in the public domain.
We didn't start the fire (Score:4, Insightful)
The Boomers inherited their "spiritual void" from the genocidal war that killed 70 million people a decade before they were born, and the 'Great War' twenty years before that slaughtered an entire generation of European males for nothing.
Plus the boomers inherited an insane structure of military leaders on both sides of the Berlin Wall that were ready, willing, and able to burn the world and kill everyone over a minor disagreement of political doctrine.
What is considered the 'spiritual void' of the Boomers is actually a reasonable and humanistic retreat from the religious cult of omnicide (the destruction of all human life on earth) that infused the leaders of the world when the boomers came to maturity.
As for the sexuality of those who create the myths and plays of our culture, it is their concern. We admire the characters that they create, and respect the skills of the writers and actors that created them. If the actors wish to exclaim that an aspect of their personality, such as their sexuality, was an important aspect of their development of the character that they created, then fine.
Re:Comes from both sides (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:There's an old saying... (Score:3, Insightful)
Bah, forget the process, some people just think that Lucus is a tool.
I would tend to distinguish art from software, I don't want to see art subject to unnecessary revisions, software is generally much more utilitarian than art. The compositing errors aren't a big deal to me, I would consider it part of the charm. Heck, for example, fixing Ed Wood movies would eliminate the reason to watch them.
Re:I must have missed something (Score:1, Insightful)
I think this is meant to say that doing good things is better than thinking about them. As in, Mother Theresa's heart was of greater measure than Grandma's. Grandma may be the kindest woman in the world, but she didn't sacrifice her life to helping others. Thousands+ of people love Mother Theresa, but only 30 love grandma...
Re:I must have missed something (Score:4, Insightful)
It does it pretty well, too. That's what makes it a classic, it says something about people in general, not just the specific people involved in the story and the targeted readership. The movie is the same, to a lesser extent.
Re:Colorizing testimony (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:There's an old saying... (Score:2, Insightful)
Because the original work gained a reputation, and applying that reputation to other works which are miscontrued as to be the originals is forgery.
Also, who are we to edit the great works? Many people alive to day think that Shakespeare was a genius, but if all we had of his works were the re-written scripts of the nineteenth century (which Dickens delighted in making such fun of in Nicholas Nickelby) then today we would consider his works second-rate mawkish melodrama.
The Oz disc should have carried a warning label: PARENTAL ADVISORY: All edginess and potential embarassment has been deleted from this film in order to prevent creating a topic for conversation. Watching this film may cause symptoms of mental sluggishness. If extreme stupidity occurs, discontinue use. If symptoms persist, consult a physician,