The lady doth protest too much, methinks

It's been a while since the last post. I actually wrote half of this one already, but due to operator error, I lost it. This is probably a month overdue. However, I had to write about this.

During my time away from life behind the Zion Curtain (July 2001 - August 2006) a phenomenon developed: "Clean Flicks" movie rental stores. A place where people could go to rent or purchase movies with all the naughty or prurient content removed. Of course, I'm sure this was immediately popular among those Utah county residents who were more concerned with living the letter of the law when movies were too scintillating for the spirit of the law. Such an enterprise made me skeptical for a pair of reasons.

The first was reminiscent to me of the practice of showing edited-for-content movies at the BYU student center. The question that routinely came up was "Who is editing these movies?" The same thing made me wonder about the Clean Flicks stores. Generally, people doing good things deserve the benefit of the doubt. In our utopic minds we probably tell ourselves the story of the genesis of this kind of service as follows:

A person finds himself or herself frustrated that many of the high-budget or critically acclaimed movies contain language, violence, or sexual content that are offensive. In an attempt to promote the general welfare (provide for the common defense, establish a more perfect union, truth, justice, and the American way...) they opened a store where families can find fun for a Friday night.

Usually, however, the very cynical version is usually not called to mind:

A person realizes that there is a lot of complaining about not being able to watch movies from his or her coworkers. Upon further investigation, these people are talking about how much they wanted to see Schindler's List, but Speilberg decided to put some more color in the movie than just the little girl in the red coat. Such an entrepreneur sees a market and realizes that someone who isn't offended by the content could remove this from the movies and open up a shop that caters to this demographic. He obviously doesn't care to research copyright laws or to realize that to edit movies in this fashion subjects him (let's face it, it's probably going to be a
dude) to focusing on the objectionable parts of all movies he edits. The idea is to make money, and he'll stoop to this level of self-debasement and exploitation to do just that.

My other objection to this is purely on an ethical/legal point of view. Namely, it's illegal to copy movies and distribute them. There is a lot of "yeah, but" that comes with this. Isn't it okay if he buys a copy of each movie that he edits then rents? Isn't it okay if he sells the unedited version of the copy with the edited one? Isn't this about the directors trying to exercise control over their 'art'? No. It's about copyright and distribution. If the studio had no property interest in their right to control how many copies exist, how movies are distributed, and, subsequently, how much they can charge to do so with their copyrighted work, there would be no sense in having copyright laws. The reason you are in business is the same reason they are: to create wealth.

In January, I heard a news report about the story found here. Now, it's a good chance that Clean Flicks is a company founded under the principles from my utopic story. They were taken to court over their copyright infringement and lost, but they remain committed to providing quality, family friendly flicks. Which, in my opinion, should have been their aim in the first place.

It is important to note that one day in late 2005 I decided to remove all rated R movies from my collection. I just felt like I needed to get in the habit and clean up the media that I am watching.

This leads to the following questions. Is it possible to edit a film entirely? You may be able to mute out a word, remove a scene with lewdness, or chop up a fight scene to exclude some of the blood, but, how do you edit a movie's theme? I remember a quote from my younger days: "If you add a teaspoon of wine to a barrel of sewage, you still have sewage. If you add a teaspoon of sewage to a barrel of wine you now have more sewage."

Since January 25, Clean Flicks has launched quite a public relations campaign to distance themselves from Daniel Thompson. Furthermore they have filed a suit against him that seeks, among other things, $100,000 under the Cyberpiracy Prevention Act. I have the same question that those at Ars Technica do - is it hypocritical for a company to turn around and sue someone else for intellectual property infringement right after it has been sued for infringing on copyright laws?

But, this Thompson character fits the mold of the cynical view. He is willing to debase himself for money, and when he gets that money, he is willing to debase himself even further. The worst of this all is that he was soliciting minors. To raise the churn-your-gut ante, from what reports implicate, there was potential of this kind of activity to be recorded using a camera set-up connected to a television in the back room where pornographic material was found.

It is critical for those of us who are in the world and trying not to be of the world to use critical thinking skills. When we are faced with something that is commercial, yet plays to something that we hold sacred, we should exercise some scrutiny.