Shawshank Redemption is one of the most "American" of all movies, the movie Frank Capra allways wanted to make but never did.
When I first saw this movie, in theaters, in 1995 I found it highly enjoyable, with a narrative very well built, but certainly not a classic. It is very conventional and I didn't see anything revealing or innovative about it.
Now I understand that its virtues are exactly its conventionalism. Its message is the same belief that drags people to churches and self help books: "preserve and you will prevail". The storytelling is perfect: a slow and steady stream of setbacks until a liberating end. It has a Morgan Freeman voice over, what can be more reassuring than this? That voice is so reliable that the man played the role God more than one time and Nelson Mandela.
Whenever you're unsure, confused and insecure about what you think or believe "Shawshank Redemption" is the most reassuring and comforting of all movies. Not even Frank Capra could do better.
> A type of book which we hardly seem to produce in these days, but which flowered with great richness in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, is what Chesterton called the “good bad book”: that is, the kind of book that has no literary pretensions but which remains readable when more serious productions have perished.
[snip]
> In each of these books the author has been able to identify himself with his imagined characters, to feel with them and invite sympathy on their behalf, with a kind of abandonment that cleverer people would find it difficult to achieve.
"The good bad book" is a wonderful term - thanks for pointing it out. It does a great job of expressing how I think of Lord of the Rings... It doesn't have a lot of literary pretensions, and it's just a great read.
It is a very American movie because it is 100% bullshit, and I mean that with all sincerity. It contains all the fantasy of the 20th-century zeitgeist, the modern human condition - which in America, means: prison, for after all America is a true police state. Even though it offends you, and makes you feel stupid, for indeed you are its prisoner - you cater to it, over and again. After all the pain and suffering, at the end - you realize its just been a total joke all along!
To be fair, as a modern westerner, it was around the time of Shawshank that I began to be turned off the movie genre, or at least - the mainstream genre. I actually don't think I've paid for a movie since that era of movie making. Shawshank Redemption may well be the very last movie I ever saw in a theatre, willingly.
Strange, every time I walk outside my door, I carry a handgun that I consider to be superior to the ones almost all police have (a M1911), using a license issued by the local sheriff ... I don't recall any prison or "true police state" that allows its inmates or subjects to be about as well or better armed than the guards or police, let alone encourages them (which is more of a local thing for me, but is true for many others).
I share this ability with the residents of 42 states who haven't been convicted of felonies or domestic misdemeanors. Last time I checked that was > 2/3rd of the population, and with California (and Hawaii) currently losing a court case this could well become 44 states and ~3/4ths of the population. I trust I needn't mention our right to own serious rifles "of military utility" as well...
There are more aspects to a police state than whether the citizens can possess firearms.
Besides, regardless of your handgun or rifle, the authorities command overwhelming force. They possess and are glad to use grenades, armored vehicles, automatic weapons, shotguns, superior numbers and chemical weapons against citizens when deemed necessary.
There are certainly more aspects, but my point remains, there is no "true police state" where subjects are allowed to keep and bear arms like our's does. (Well, there's exceptions like NYC and D.C. that perhaps prove the rule.) In fact, we RKBA activists know that the history of police states always includes an early period where guns are systematically confiscated from the people. I know for example the basic stories for Nazi Germany, China, Japan (1588!) and Cuba off the top of my head.
As for your latter point, you're assuming two things: someone wanting revenge on the police/government for something unforgivable is going to give a damn about that, and that if things got nasty, the citizens would play by the "rules of war" of the police. Not to mention numbers, we would utterly swamp them if it came down to something like that. Look at how batshit insane California police got when one crazy started hunting them (Christopher Dorner).
What I mean is that while citizens are allowed to possess firearms, the government still has a monopoly on force. Attempting to actually use your firearms in someway unacceptable to them will almost certainly result in your doom. It's sort of like mutually assured destruction, except it's not mutual. I don't think they're worried about loose cannons holding grudges. While individual gun ownership is allowed, or tolerated, the government does not look kindly on forming militias.
If you ponder fictional police states such as 1984, in that situation it doesn't really matter if the citizens have firearms as they're thoroughly brainwashed that they would never use them. And, just like our world, if they did they would be brutally suppressed.
My opinion is that the people of the United States could not and would not stand up effectively to the National Guard, police and military if it came down to such a thing.
> Mr. [Stephen] King never cashed the $5,000 check Mr. Darabont sent him for the right to turn his story into a movie. Years after "Shawshank" came out, the author got the check framed and mailed it back to the director with a note inscribed: "In case you ever need bail money. Love, Steve."
"Shawshank" was an underwhelming box-office performer when it hit theaters 20 years ago
This is something to bear in mind when advocating shorter copyright terms or arguing that the market will establish the 'right' price for some piece of IP. Studios cross-subsidize pictures all the time as a matter of fiscal necessity. While Shawshank has proved to be a very reliable money-spinner and secondary & tertiary market rentals thus subsidize lesser films, in turn it is because of the residual income from other films that films such as Shawshank get made and have theatrical releases. Packaging films in the distribution cycle is a risk mitigation strategy: if every film had to be the subject of an individual deal then fewer and more (aesthestically) conservative films would get made, because neither producers' expectations nor release audiences are good guides to the long-term performance of a film. The same is true in many fields of the arts. Insistence on equating the commercial of cultural products with artistic merit promotes the lowest common denominator of whatever performs best in the initial release window, and 'whatever performs best' is typically a function of the marketing budget, which these days makes up about 50% of a film's headline cost.
That's all well and good, but copyright doesn't exist to promote the possible financial viability of art owned by megacorporations for centuries, nor does it exist to promote financial subsidies for other art. It exists, according to the Constitution, "to promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts ... for limited times".
Even if it did exist for the purpose of generating profit versus promoting culture and progress, I feel like many (except, of course, said megacorporation) can agree that its current incarnation is for a ludicrously, damagingly long amount of time.
In either case I'm not weeping for Hollywood; it's not like they've never made anything but a staggering profit regardless of copyright era, and if your argument is true then I'd rather have a handful fewer movies made than bow to the eternal stranglehold on all culture the current copyright regime entails.
I'm not trying to justify the existing copyright regime, which I also oppose; I'm saying that this is a factor you should include in your deliberations.
In either case I'm not weeping for Hollywood; it's not like they've never made anything but a staggering profit regardless of copyright era
Hollywood isn't a monolith. It's a disparate collection of people, many of whom slave away at their craft for years without ever making it big or seeing one of their projects pay off. You might as well say that you don't give a fig about net neutrality or some other topic at the intersection of computers and law because 'the tech industry has never made anything but a staggering profit'. Sure, if you cast your net broad enough, any long-established industry has been very successful, by definition.
> the purpose of generating profit versus promoting culture and progress
That's a false dichotomy. Promoting culture and progress is the end, but the means is creating a property right the value of which is, like every property right, the possibility of generating a profit.
Speaking as a Euro who works in the arts, I certainly prefer that art take priority over profitability if push comes to shove, but I'm also keenly aware that if there's no profit there won't be as much funding for the art. Subsidies are sort of a nice idea and I think there's a role for them in production financing, but they're a double-edged sword - they may help some deserving projects get made, but only at the whim of the subsidy-dispensers, which gets you back to a patronage system.
As well as working in film, I also enjoy opera, and I'm struck by how the San Francisco Opera does Tosca almost every damn season, presumably because someone on the board or high up on the donor list really loves it. Yeah, it's a great opera, but there are hundreds of operas and even a moderately large and well-financed company like the SF Opera only does about 12 productions in a year. They aim for a mix of reliable favorites and interesting new works/productions, but the near-permanent presence of Tosca on their calendar is a reminder of how badly patronage can skew things. By rights, it ought to be staged every 5-6 years; having it on stage almost every year means proportionally fewer productions of other great Verdi operas such as La Traviata.
This argues for a system of copyright where holders can pay a steadily-increasing amount to renew their works past an initial period of automatic protection. Stuff like Shawshank, which is still in demand, would be reregistered. Everything else would enter the public domain more quickly.
I still haven't heard a decent argument for keeping the unpopular stuff protected as long as it currently is.
The best argument I've heard for the current length of copyright is this-
If someone spends decades building a business, such as a drycleaning chain, they're able to pass that on to future generations. In fact, the ability to pass a business on is a major motivation for a lot of people to build that business in the first place.
So why shouldn't Rowling be able to pass Harry Potter on to her kids? Why should her business be treated differently?
I don't completely agree with this argument. It doesn't address rights sold to corporations, for example. And personally I'd like to see copyright terms at about half of what they are now.
But this particular argument does have some merit, and I'm not completely against it, either.
> So why shouldn't Rowling be able to pass Harry Potter on to her kids? Why should her business be treated differently?
Because her kids could do absolutely nothing and live off of royalty checks or whatever her media empire generates and still be very very rich. That's dishonest in a lot of people's minds, right and left, and people tend to want to fix that problem.
(Just because I mentioned that mindset tells you absolutely nothing about whether I hold it.)
A more sophisticated take on that argument is, if someone can set up their entire genetic lineage from one series of novels, where's their descendants' incentive to create more? Are we really that sure that nobody descended from Rowling would have been a creator but for this windfall?
Another, somewhat related argument, is the idea that copyright stakes out too much territory, which would otherwise have been used by legal fanfic, which could set up other families, and why should we disallow that? I know Rowling is very permissive about fanfic, but why should someone else's business be up to her?
>Because her kids could do absolutely nothing and live off of royalty checks or whatever her media empire generates and still be very very rich
Sure, that could happen. But it happens all the time with drycleaners and steel mills and car dealerships and whatever else too.
It takes a huge amount of work, not just creative, but business work, to get build something that lasts like that.
What about brands? What about people who build a large brand in retail or fast food or cars or whatever? They can leave the fruits of their brand building to their children. Why is the Harry Potter brand the odd man out?
And there's certainly a lot of work to be done keeping the business going. Someone is running the James Bond empire, the Disney empire, the Tolkien empire. They don't run themselves. Actual work is involved.
Anyway, like I said, I don't totally buy the argument, but it's not completely invalid either.
Because it can keep ticking along without producing a single new thing. Coca-Cola, to remain worth anything, must at least keep producing new bottles of soda.
> And there's certainly a lot of work to be done keeping the business going. Someone is running the James Bond empire, the Disney empire, the Tolkien empire. They don't run themselves. Actual work is involved.
Actual work which nobody but the heirs will see the benefits of, assuming what I have assumed.
Now, it's possible I'm completely out to sea on this, and that if nobody keeps making new works in the Harry Potter universe the brand and franchise will die. But the mere fact copyright law makes such self-sustaining non-productive empires possible is irksome.
That's a meaningless argument. You're equating new bottles of soda (which are like copies of a book) with new works (which would be more like new flavors of cola). I would imagine, incidentally, that Harry Potter will continue to spawn new work, in the same way that Star Wars has spawned a variety of new fictional works in the form of animated series, videogames, book tie-ins and so on which are all ancillary to the 'original' 6 films (soon to be 7 and later 8 and 9). As well as that there are all the other non-fictional ancillaries, like books about Star Wars, from the production of the film to catalogs of all the different spaceships and robots etc. etc.
I'm not at all sure that copyright should extend beyond the life of the author but I think you should acknowledge that while all the stuff above serves a marketing function it also provides utility to hardcore fans of the original works.
Actual work which nobody but the heirs will see the benefits of, assuming what I have assumed.
Viewers and consumers get a benefit from the careful transfer of original works to new media and the production of new ancillary media. Transfer of existing work to a new medium is not as simple as 'copy originals_star_wars_scan TO 4k_project_template upres'. Although it makes up a tiny part of the consumer cost, format transfers generally require a huge amount of work by skilled professionals, the cost of which can run into the millions. On a film like Star Wars it's a vanishingly small amount of the revenue a new release format can generate, but indirectly that subsidizes (through technological debt) the cost to do similar work for much less popular films, eg the very high quality reissues of substantially less popular films via brands like the Criterion Collection, which maintains very high technical standards for art films with a relatively small audience.
Businesses and culture are very different. Businesses exist solely to make money, and perhaps solve a real-world problem doing it. You can start a new dry-cleaning business even though there's another dry cleaner across the street who does the exact same thing.
Culture--the fabric of our past, woven through creative work like art and literature--isn't the same. Some culture exists to make money, but much doesn't. We all absorb it almost without realizing it or intending to. A child might inherit a dry-cleaner and build a career running and improving it, or likewise failing and causing the inheritance to go bust. But the child of JK Rowling had absolutely no practical bearing on the creation of Harry Potter, and the books Rowling already wrote are unalterable. Thus children who inherit intellectual "property" wind up as pure rent-seekers on our culture, at best idle managers/stewards of someone else's hard work.
(Now you might say that a child might inherit an apartment building, thus making them rent-seekers in the practical sense--and that's true, literally. But an apartment building has taxes, upkeep, maintenance, etc. involved--it requires work to maintain. But opening a mailbox to collect the royalty check on your grandparent's grandparent's novel is rent-seeking in the philosophical sense.)
Furthermore, new culture is invariably built upon old culture. All the famous old Disney films that Disney is trying so hard to keep out of the public domain were themselves based on public-domain work. Try using a character from a Disney film in your work and see how quickly their lawyers find you. Try copying a dry-cleaner wholesale and you're just one more business on the block.
In short, comparing an inherited business to an inherited intangible cultural work isn't a fair comparison. It might seem fair because nowadays we (tragically!) use the word "property" to describe what is actually a "temporary government-sanctioned monopoly"--but ideas aren't property, and business isn't culture.
> So why shouldn't Rowling be able to pass Harry Potter on to her kids? Why should her business be treated differently?
Because we grant copyright in order to encourage further production of creative works. Rowling's kids are not likely to produce further works no matter how long their copyright is. There is no benefit to society for granting copyright much beyond the life of the creative individual.
In fact, the problem is precisely the opposite. Because we keep giving longer copyright terms, properties like Mickey Mouse and Sonic the Hedgehog get dull, uninspired treatments when new people could take those properties and make something cool.
I don't by that analogy. Copyrights don't constitute a business. They are pseudo property. Property with limitations. For example, owners are not allowed to obstruct, etc. shared resources contained within their real property.(air above, water running through, right of ways).
All creative output is derived from our shared culture, a shared resource. One requiring renewal. Copyright holders should only be granted their rights selectively and for limited times. Returning the shared resources contained within their works to the Public Domain.
I would point out that the argument from non-immediate-success can work the other way: if Hollywood movies can be sleeper hits, so could orphan works - at least, if they were able to pass into the public domain at all.
The writer/director had a chance to flip the rights for a huge profit and turned it down so he could make the film:
Mr. Darabont said he took a night to think about it. "But it was never an option," he said. "Most of it boils down to, 'Why are we here?' That was a passion I was very determined to pursue and not just sell to the highest bidder."
By the way, I have heard high praises for the Halloween tours (I'm not sure if they are "scary" tours or not) that the Mansfield Penitentiary offers every year. If you're in the area in October, you might want to check it out.
Like 'Casablanca' for many, 'Shawshank Redemption' is "my movie' of sorts to keep quoting from -- at least in terms of being uplifting. "I guess, I just miss my friend", "Everyone in here is innocent", and "Get busy living, or get busy dying", for example.
When I first saw this movie, in theaters, in 1995 I found it highly enjoyable, with a narrative very well built, but certainly not a classic. It is very conventional and I didn't see anything revealing or innovative about it.
Now I understand that its virtues are exactly its conventionalism. Its message is the same belief that drags people to churches and self help books: "preserve and you will prevail". The storytelling is perfect: a slow and steady stream of setbacks until a liberating end. It has a Morgan Freeman voice over, what can be more reassuring than this? That voice is so reliable that the man played the role God more than one time and Nelson Mandela.
Whenever you're unsure, confused and insecure about what you think or believe "Shawshank Redemption" is the most reassuring and comforting of all movies. Not even Frank Capra could do better.