11 Comments

Preach, brother!

Btw if this post gets flagged and you get sent to a Disney “Re-Education” Camp, I’ll keep spreading the good word in your stead. Fall back on your training, remember where the kill-switch on the Imperial Interrogation Droid is, and know your brothers and sisters in CHISPACC (chronic hunger induced by stubbornly pursuing a creative career) stand with you and will bust you out as soon as we can.

Viva la Revolución, and May the 4th Be With You!

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I like the sound of that Rom-Com...

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May 4, 2022Liked by Adam Cecil

happy birthday

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Or maybe we need to stop fixating on fictional worlds. Disney's power over the Star Wars universe is ultimately based in the public's unhealthy fixation with it.

This is a relatively new thing. I can't think of examples from more than 50 years ago of people getting fixated on a fictional world and wanting to create more stuff in it. Am I wrong about this? Were the millions of Dicken's fans anxious to create new novels in the David Copperfield universe. Did people long to start imaginatively living in the worlds of The Grapes of Wrath or Mary Poppins?

I suppose one could point to Sherlock Holmes and James Bond as earlier examples of derivative in-universe extensions. I'm not sure how long ago that started. But it is not healthy for a culture. Create something new instead.

I don't know how this strange fascination with imaginary universes, beyond the original works that inhabited them, came from. If there is evil-doing in the Disney Corporation, perhaps it is not that they are hoarding these "universes" but that they somehow created this unhealthy fascination with them as a means of pumping out more (bad) movies and merchandise to a supine public.

The real solution here is not to assault copyright (which ultimately disadvantages all creators), it is to give Star Wars a rest. Read a different book. Watch a different movie. Train you taste and you sensibilities to move sideway, not in a narrow rut.

Ultimately the corporate evil here is the deliberate campaign to narrow the taste of the public. Fortunately, defeating them on this front does not require a change to the law. It just requires a visit to the bookstore.

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