To Whom Does Art Belong?

by Merick Humbert

Does art belong to the artist? To the writer? What if it is a collaboration, or a medium which requires a multitude of contributions? How about the consumer—the person experiencing the art in the moment? Or is it the owner of the physical piece or the rights?

This past year, I watched a brilliant new show called Amsterdam. It is set in Mexico City, in a trendy neighborhood called La Condesa, and it concerns a group of young artists as they chase their dreams while trying to navigate the intricacies of adulthood. The main focus is the strained and deteriorating relationship of an aspiring musician and an aspiring actress. It is a beautiful show that really captures that period in your life when you are young and trying to figure out who you are and what you want—when you are filled with desire and passion and hope, and all the complications that come with it. The first season was dramatic and compelling, and it was one of the best new series that I have seen in some time.

About four months after the show debuted on HBO Max, Warner Brothers decided to put it in their vault. Cancelling a show is one thing, but making what has already been created and released unavailable to the public is something entirely different. And it has been said that this is all so they don’t have to pay any royalties or residuals to the artists, which would be based on views. Think about all the people who contributed to this show. Think about all the hard work they put into producing this art. The writers, directors, actors, lighting, set design, costume design, assistants, etc… But Warner Brothers owns it. It legally belongs to them and they decided to lock it away, supposedly just to save a few bucks. It is wrong. Amsterdam deserves to be seen and it deserves to be available. There are others in a similar position.

The question of ownership has also been an issue that has plagued the music industry since its conception. The amount of money that the record companies have generated over the years on the backs of their artists, taking advantage of their ignorance and an artist’s desire for a “big break” is simply gross. For every success story, there are exponentially more instances of exploitation and of those who have been misled and defrauded.

            Recently, we have seen artists selling their entire back catalogs for exorbitant sums of money. Bruce Springsteen recently sold the rights to his work for a reported 550 million dollars. Justin Bieber sold his catalog for a reported 200 million dollars. But even some big artists, such as Taylor Swift, fail to own the rights to their own work. We are not here feeling sorry for Taylor Swift—she is doing just fine—but this is indicative of a bigger problem, one that plenty of “little guys” never overcome. And even if Swift is fine, what’s right is right, and the majority of the money generated by her work should be going to her.

There is a story about a collaboration between Paul McCartney and Michael Jackson. While they were working together, they discussed the ownership of publishing rights, the benefits, and Paul told Michael about his intention to buy back the rights to his own Beatles work, which he had lost to the record company previously. Shortly after, when they came up for sale in 1985, Michael Jackson outbid him, and bought the Beatles catalog for 47 million dollars. McCartney was obviously pissed.

            There is also the story about Dave Chappelle and the contract dispute that he had with ViacomCBS, and how they owned the rights to his name and likeness, so even if he wanted to create a new show, and use his own name, he couldn’t. There are countless stories like this. It has been a part of show business since the beginning.

And what happens after you die? There was a story going around that Bruce Willis sold his likeness to a Deepfake company that would give them the rights to use new technology to create a CGI digital twin that could be used as a stand in for Willis in future projects, even after his death. It turns out that this sale was never actually made, but he did authorize the use of his CGI digital twin for a Russian telephone commercial. Likewise, it has also been reported that James Dean will be resurrected in new film using the same technology over sixty years after his death. It is difficult to comprehend how this could be considered ethical. In a similar situation, James Earl Jones was recently credited with voicing Darth Vader in the new Obi-Wan Kenobi series, but the actor, now 92 years of age, recorded no new dialogue for the part, as they used digital technology to recreate the voice. Although this instance came with consent, there is something incredibly disturbing about the potential use of these technologies and the implications when it comes to ownership.

This also brings into question the difference between using someone’s likeness, or voice, to create something new, something that they never said or performed, and changing something that they have done previously to suit one’s contemporary needs or sensibilities. There was some debate recently after a popular singer changed the lyric in one of her songs after she received some backlash with some people finding it offensive. While it is difficult for me to understand how anyone could take themself seriously as an artist and censor their own expression, (essentially acknowledging its purposelessness and the lack of thought that went into creating it in the first place) that is still their decision and their right to do. On the other hand, there has been some recent controversy surrounding the decision by Puffin Books, a subsidiary of Penguin Random House, to hire “sensitivity readers” to rewrite various passages from Roald Dahl’s classic children’s books to censor language that they have deemed offensive. With the author himself unable to consent, (seeing as though he has been dead for over thirty years) this seems downright wrong, but with the approval of his estate, technically, Puffin has the right to alter and change his work/legacy. Salman Rushdie recently said, and I couldn’t agree more, “Roald Dahl was no angel but this is absurd censorship. Puffin Books and the Dahl estate should be ashamed.” It is even troubling that he felt the need to preface what is at the heart of this statement with the qualifier “Roald Dahl was no angel” out of fear of being castigated for bigotry—as if he is somehow affirming every single thing that Roald Dahl ever said or did, just by questioning his censorship. It’s ridiculous, but that’s where we are. This censorship is an outrageous precedent to set, and it makes one wonder where it will end. Are we going to change the words or descriptions we don’t like in Twain and Fitzgerald? Times change, people change, and culture changes. We evolve. Use things you don’t like as teaching moments, or don’t read them at all. I was happy to read that the publisher decided to simply publish an alternative edition of Dahl’s works, and make the originals still available, but I still think it is wrong. A writer’s work, or any artist’s work for that matter, shouldn’t be censored after their death and without their permission.

That is not to say that a given piece can never be altered or expanded upon. We see this with “sampling” in music for instance. And how many modern adaptations have we seen of Shakespeare? This is quite common in theatre. But there is a difference between an adaptation and censorship—although, even that can get a little sticky.

A professor once told me, for a writer, as soon as you put your work out in the world, it no longer belongs to you. Your intentions no longer matter. No one cares that you intended to be dark and morose, if your piece left your audience in stitches. When being interviewed about his own book, Infinite Jest, David Foster Wallace once said, “I’m not often all that aware of stuff that’s really funny in the book. I set out to write a sad book. And when people liked it, and told me the thing they liked about it was that it was so funny, it was just very surprising.” No matter the intention, if an experience is authentic, it is never wrong.

Art plays an essential role in our lives. It can be nostalgic and remind us of where we were at any given moment. The album that you listened to over and over again one summer. The series that you binge watched with an ex-lover. A song that got you through the loss of a loved one. Your favorite movie as a teenager or as a child. Anytime you see it, or hear it, it takes you back to that time in your life. Just go on Youtube and search for a classic song about love or loss and read the comments. There will be all sorts of stories about how it helped someone get through a tough time. It will break your heart and remind you that you are not alone. The purpose of art is to make us feel something on a visceral level. To connect us with our common humanity and to each other. To show us what it is to be alive, and why that is such a beautiful thing. So, who does art belong to? In its essence—Everyone.