BDM103 Who Owns It- The Fans or the Copyright Holders? 10 August

(I posted this earlier this year and now I can use it for class!  I love my blog.)

                   Power Rangers Fan Video Yanked From YouTube; Filmmakers Vow To Fight

As a Costume Designer and Artist, I come from a tradition of mining images and creative works for inspiration.  The ideas and images get re-worked and a variation of them then goes into a different theatrical or filmed piece.  Sometimes it's obvious, and sometimes it's not.  Call it referencing, homaging, stealing: it makes the creative world go round.  The fashion world alone would collapse if every design, colour, accessory, or hairstyle was bound up in legal tape.

So the current legal stoush over this Power Rangers fan video is fascinating.  Joseph Kahn, a music video director, used his own money and brought in different actors to make a 14-minute dark and gritty Power Rangers short film.  (I can't review the film itself because Power Rangers owner Saban Brands has asked You Tube to take it down.  It had already clocked up 12 million views by the time it was yanked, so it may be out there somewhere.)  I've never liked the Power Rangers but the participation of Katee Sackhoff, Starbuck from the reboot of Battlestar Galactica, makes me want to give this a go.  Joseph Kahn had this to say about the take down order:

“I hope they (Saban Brands) come to an awareness of how modern pop culture works. The audience will pay for the franchise, but they want to play with it as well. You can’t just dictate that these are the things you are going to watch in the way we want you to watch it. That’s not the way society works anymore. If you want the support of the modern fandom, you need to let them participate.”  

Kahn and his crew are interacting with the Power Rangers as an idea that is flexible and open to reinterpretation.  Saban Brands considers and wants us all to approach the Power Rangers as a product which is fixed, finite and to be consumed how and when they see fit to distribute it. 

But to play Devil's Advocate, here we have the exact opposite thing happening: Fans who do not want you to touch their stuff: EVER.  George Lucas re-interpreted, re-imagined and played with his Star Wars universe.   He was happy, toy makers were happy, the fans were not happy. Nobody sued George Lucas for defamation of the character of a film franchise, so maybe that's the difference between this and the Power Rangers short film:  hurt feelings fade but a good lawsuit is epic.