Your 15MB of Fame: Schlemiels, Schlimazels, and Schadenfreude
06 Jun 2007 Leave a Comment
This T-shirt means “If you take an amusingly embarrassing picture or video of me, don’t put it on the Web without my permission.” With or without Photoshop embellishments. With or without grammatically incorrect captions. The shirt is a creation of R Stevens, the brain and funnybone behind the underground fave Diesel Sweeties web comic, among so many other things that one wonders if he’s really just one person.
What this shirt is suggesting, to the legal eagle eye, is celebrity rights for the rest of us. The shirt has no legislative or judicial backing - yet. But, just maybe, this idea’s time has come:
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A Clash of Symbols: Commodification of Cultural and Religious Images
17 Apr 2007 2 Comments
in Craven Images, Splitting Heritage
Appropriation of minority religious or other cultural images by outsiders – often, though not always, as a status symbol or fashion statement – is a sharpening point of controversy in some parts of the world. People from the originating cultures are upset for any or all of a number of reasons:
- Some images are traditionally classified “eyes only” for certain individuals or subgroups under certain circumstances.
- The right to display some images traditionally had to be earned rather than bought.
- Outsiders displaying the images often do not know or care about their meanings or the traditional rules for how they are to be displayed.
- Some images are traditionally not intended for fixation in some types of media, or for any type of permanent fixation at all.
- Even if none of the above objections apply and the image may be embodied in a commodity and sold, people who believe they should be entitled to a share of the proceeds aren’t getting any.
