Snow White in the News

Have you ever heard of Jamieson's Raspberry Ale? How about Snow White? How about 'Ho White?


















'Ho White and the Seven Dwarves is the brainchild of Jamieson's and their ad agency. As the UK's Telegraph tells us:

In this Disney dystopia, Snow White has been renamed "Ho White", while the loveable dwarves Sleepy, Happy and Doc are rebranded Filthy, Smarmy and Randy - supposedly to represent different types of drinkers.

Campaign creators The Foundry claimed the idea was to convince Australian drinkers that the fruit-flavoured beer was "anything but sweet".

However, the advertisement has reportedly angered Disney, the entertainment giant which licenses Snow White.

Duh. Realistically, this is the most fun Snow White and the dwarfs are going to have together:



Our take-away: the brand is the essence of an organization. Big corporations are very touchy about their properties. Trespass at your peril. The dwarfs are watching. And they're not happy.

Fair Use

Copyright. Fair use. Public domain. How do you bring law and order -- a respect for authorship -- to the Wild West of the Internet?

Creative Commons defines "derivative work" as "a work that is based on another work but is not an exact, verbatim copy." Simple, right? You can't copy something and claim it as your own. But how far can you stretch "exact" or "verbatim"? When does something deviate enough to the point where it's different?

"It's a mixed up, muddled up, shook up world" (to quote Ray Davies of the Kinks). We may want to add "mashed up" as well. It's commonplace, second nature for people to "choose one from Column A, one from Column B" as they search the web and assemble their posts. A decent blog is all about thoughtful appropriation, artful collage.

When it comes to writing-related resources, one of the best places to go is the Online Writing Lab (OWL) at Purdue University. When it comes to the issue of using somebody else's work, it's helpful to check out the OWL guidelines for fair use. I found OWL's discussion of "partial use" and "transformative use" to be most relevant. Where "partial use" is concerned:

Reproducing only a small part of a copyrighted work is more acceptable than using an entire work. Try to use less than 10% of a movie, television show, music, or other media. Though image use does not conform easily to this standard, consider using only a few photos or illustrations rather than an artist’s entire collection. As a rule of thumb, using a smaller portion of a work is more likely to be protected. Furthermore, take only what is necessary for the purposes of the new use.

Pretend you're at a cocktail party -- sample, don't gobble.

In terms of "transformative use":

Courts often favor uses that transform the copyrighted work into something new by adding criticism or commentary to change the meaning or message of the original. Educational use is protected to allow creativity and intellectual expression, so educational expansion of the copyrighted work is more likely to be protected. Contribute commentary or analysis to an image, or include it as part of a collage or parody. Incorporate film or music as part of a larger work, or edit and remix the clips to produce a new product. Transforming a work as part of the educational process helps it fall under fair use.

Again, sounds simple. Until a geyser of questions arise:

• At what point is something sufficiently different from the original?
• Is a dollop of commentary enough?
• Can you easily parse commercial from educational use?

What's allowed? What's allowable? And when are the federal marshals arriving?

The Sanctity of the Book

"The act of cutting and pasting and linking and annotating a text is as or more important than the writing of the book in the first place." So states Kevin Kelly (Senior Maverick at Wired magazine) as quoted in The Cult of the Amateur. Andrew Keen, the Cult's author, finds this observation absurd.

Keen rails against "a troubling new permissiveness" -- "the ease in which we can now cut and paste other people's work to make it appear as if it's ours." Keen stresses "the sanctity of the book" -- "a finished book is not a box of Legos to be recombined and reconstructed at whim."

On a musical note, Keen asks, "Can you imagine Bob Dylan releasing an interactive Blood on the Tracks that could be rearranged to sound like you?" He, furthermore, bemoans that "once all of these amateur remixes and mash-ups end up on YouTube... it is us who are faced with the task of sitting through millions of efforts to find the rare few that are worthwhile."

It's a problem. To continue in that musical vein, I can't even stand sampling. For me, there are few things more embarrassing than attempts by young Turks to update or "add to" a classic. The offspring is more despoliation/ desecration/defamation than homage. When my daughter listens to Fresh FM (105.9) on the radio, I bristle when Rihanna steals the synth line from "Tainted Love." Or the Plain White T's appropriate the melody for "1, 2, 3, 4" from, yep, Bob Dylan's "I Want You." (Ditto for movies -- I've never seen a remake that's better than the original.) I, too, wonder "Is nothing sacred?"

Everyone wants to make a mark, to have a personal imprint. To that end, it's fine to learn by sketching the masters. It's presumptuous to assume that you can dab, slap, or slather some paint on and improve a revelatory, time-tested piece. It's not only precocious but uninformed, misguided, even destructive. Like graffiti that sullies rather than honors what's already there. You want to shout, "That's not 'experimental,' 'artistic,' or 'inspired.' It's an abomination. For heaven's sake, make your own!" That's ownership.

You could argue that nothing is created ex nihilo -- we all borrow material from others, from the world at large. But when it's blatant, you have to credit (not discredit) the source. No matter how much Jane Average apes Jane Austen, the noodlings of the former don't match the novels of the latter.

No matter how you spin it, "cutting and pasting and linking and annotating" isn't the same as creating an original work (in comparison, it's more like a walk in the park). Because the original work has its own, incorruptible legitimacy. Because years of blood, sweat, and tears (not to mention a unique, enduring vision) likely went into that original work. Because the original work came first. Without it, you'd have nothing to cut, paste, link to, or annotate.

You can put the most powerful tools imaginable in the hands of amateurs and you won't change that fact.

Richard Heene and the Reptilians

In The Cult of the Amateur, Andrew Keen writes that "The noble abstraction behind the digital revolution is that of the noble amateur." In lambasting the noble amateur, Keen posits two camps: "the dictatorship of expertise" and "the dictatorship of idiots." In Keen's eyes, you can't trust the idiots.

Although I agree with Keen's premise -- plenty of stuff on the Internet is "free and worthless," there is no shortage of "user-generated trash" -- I wouldn't call the advent of user-generated media a "cultural catastrophe." In fact, the further I read in Cult of the Amateur, the more I wished Keen would stop being such a killjoy/wet blanket/stick-in-the-mud and lighten up.

Yes, this is Keen's "end of the world" jeremiad. Yes, he's the lovable curmudgeon. But these are the same charges that were leveled against the "boob tube" (100 channels on cable and still nothing to watch; what does HBO stand for? Hey, Beastmaster's On). We've heard all the talk of "dumbing down," of "new media" ushering in a "cultural wasteland."

Keen is absolutely right: unless information is derived from reliable, authoritative sources, people can be misled. Our body of knowledge can be degraded by a steady infusion of questionable, dubious, and -- indeed -- worthless "reportage," speculation masquerading as information. However, there's an important part of the equation that Keen seems to overlook -- the responsibility of the reader.

The discerning reader, like the discerning eater, doesn't feast solely from a trough of slop. S/he knows the difference between what's nourishing and what's enervating. And realizes that, occasionally, you can step outside your diet, indulge in that tasty morsel or sinful treat.

As for the "the dictatorship of idiots": as someone who's paused in the checkout lane to thumb through the Weekly World News, there's something to be said for the idiots. Case in point: the Balloon Boy saga that dominated websites and news channels the past week. Just the latest "child stuck in a well" stunt you'll say. Further evidence of that age-old dictum: you can't go wrong appealing to the prurient and sensational.

In a media world abuzz with commentary, gawker's "Deflated: Balloon Boy's the Story of Our Ugly Sorry Era" argued that

the story of the boy in the balloon, filled as it was with real feelings of terror and relief, is a painful illustration of the sorry state of a reality TV-addled culture....

...Gawker is as bad as everyone else. We were part of the assembly line. But we also know that the page view counts on our reality show recaps dwarf anything we put up on, say, the death spiral of the publishing industry.

Bad, bad gawker. Beyond the failings of the news industry, at worst, the Balloon Boy is the story of "misunderstood" storm-chaser (or callous, manipulative publicity hound) Richard Heene.

On the face of it, a sad, lurid tale. But a tale that, in many ways, speaks to the human experience. A tale that, to be fully relished, requires the Internet. Because the beauty, and the value, of the Internet is in its immediacy and efficiency, in the sense of community (no matter how shallow/illusory/false) it creates. Nowhere else but the Internet does the Balloon Boy story branch off into so many fascinating tangents. Just click a link and...

You find "I Helped Richard Heene Plan a Balloon Hoax" (also on gawker.com) with testimony from Robert Thomas, who served as a scribe and gofer for Heene. Thomas relates that Heene

was motivated by theories I thought were far-fetched. Like Reptilians — the idea there are alien beings that walk among us and are shape shifters, able to resemble human beings and running the upper echelon of our government. Somehow a secret government has covered all this up since the U.S. was established, and the only way to get the truth out there was to use the mainstream media to raise Richard to a status of celebrity, so he could communicate with the masses.

Click on the Reptilians link and you go to Wikipedia (one of Keen's favorite whipping boys). You learn that

A theoretical reptilian humanoid has... been the focus of a widely discussed thought experiment in speculative evolution. In particular, in 1982 paleontologist Dale Russell, curator of vertebrate fossils at the National Museum of Canada in Ottawa, conjectured a possible evolutionary path that might have been taken by the dinosaur Troodon (then called Stenonychosaurus) had they not all perished in the K/T extinction event 65 million years ago.

Amazing. Or you happen across a link to David Icke, one of the leading proponents of the "Reptilian Agenda":



And you chuckle to yourself. Knowing that you take any of this seriously at your own peril. Well aware that the concept of "lizard men" has been around for decades. Was, in fact, a mainstay of pulp fiction, going back to Edgar Rice Burroughs and Robert E. Howard:

In Robert E. Howard's Conan the Barbarian and King Kull stories, the heroes are often pitted against a race of Serpent Men, shape-shifting reptilians with supernatural and hypnotic capabilities, who formerly dominated mankind and who plotted their return by infiltrating human society and becoming leaders.

And that's one of the key (addictive) qualities of the Internet -- its boundless, inescapable, unstoppably refreshed entertainment value. Dare I say, one of its many benefits.

So take a chill pill, Mr. Keen. Get off your high horse. Join the idiots, if only for a minute. Go ahead. Laugh at the lizard men.

Testing Templates

Many factors go into launching a blog (starting with "Do I even want to create one?" followed shortly by "Do I have the commitment, stamina, and substance to keep it going?"). Once a decision is made, a critical though often overlooked element is the blog's look.

To many, design seems secondary. After all, it's the content -- the words -- that count. However, like any other form of communication, it's a package deal. Visual appeal goes hand in hand with sterling (and stirring) content. Ask yourself, "What impression am I trying to make?" Ideally, the blog's look should complement, mirror, and/or reinforce the content and character of the blog -- "framing the voice" as it were.

The look is rooted in a template. Blogger offers a variety of these. The option you choose should be appropriate to the topic, tone, and personality of the blogger. I'm the type of guy who believes in the primacy of the message. You lose points (and readers) if your audience is baffled or sidetracked by the design.

• I favor a muted, no-nonsense scheme. I don't want colors, patterns, or features to clash with/distract from the content.
• The presentation should be as straightforward and as easy to digest as possible.
• The reader should focus solely on the text, images, or whatever else you happen to embed.

With that as my guiding philosophy, I chose Minima for my blog The Reconstructed Man. It's simple and stark... and I like the soothing blue font. (No surprise that I selected the modest -- though slightly more vibrant -- Sand Dollar design for this blog.)

In contrast, the No. 897 template is a welter of color and activity ("cluttered and busy" in layman's terms). From my standpoint, No. 897 is too luminous and fragmented, like a stained glass window. And, in the same way I abhor a too-small font size, I've never been a fan of white type on a color background -- too hard on these aging eyes. (Black type on a pastel background doesn't fare much better in my book. Reminds me too much of an entry-level resume.)

I have a similar gripe with the Dots template -- too much going on.

• The template is too frivolous and playful for my taste, the polka-dot pattern borrowed from gift wrap. (To its credit, posts in this template are only bookended by the pattern, not printed over it. The reader looks to these unsullied posts for respite.)
• The logic of the design eludes me. It needs to be obvious where the parts are and why they're there. Call me old school but I'm more comfortable with a newspaper-like banner head, not one relegated to a corner.

To be honest, a number of the Blogger templates struck me as being regimented, rigid, boxy. The templates I ended up with seemed more open and spacious. That's my preference: a clean, well-structured look that effortlessly directs the reader's eye and promises some much-needed breathing room.

Top Five Blog Tips

Like everyone else, I have so many things vying for my time, blog reading isn't the highest item on my list. I need a compelling reason to visit a blog once, let alone on a recurring basis.

What brings me back to a blog? It needs to be:

1. Intelligent - From what I've seen, the blogosphere is awash in dreck, drivel, and detritus. A dollop of originality or a meaningful remark go a long way. Discovering a well-crafted, clever, incisive blog is like finding a gem in a landfill. That's why I liked (previously reviewed) sites such as We Are THAT Family and At Home Father, where the quality of writing -- regardless of content -- is worth a visit. Beside the friendly, inviting tone, these sites boast fresh (and very human) anecdotes as well as smart commentary. Unlike myriad other blogs, you can tell that more than a modicum of thought and care went into these.

2. Authentic - You know those situations where an affable stranger steps up and starts talking to you like you're old buddies? You immediately wonder, "What's the catch?" (And quickly learn that the person is either trying to scam you or sell you something.) I don't like being conned; if you're going to be nice to me, be genuinely nice to me. In the same way, I resent blogs -- such as Memoirs of a Stay At Home Dad -- that present themselves as "innocuous observations on home life" but whose primary purpose (as readily becomes evident) is to Market! Market! Market! to me. Where's the authenticity? The integrity? The credibility? If I wanted to shop, I'd go to amazon.

3. Unique - Whenever I visit Greektown here in Chicago, I always stop at a small grocery store that stocks bars of olive oil soap at dirt-cheap prices. If a tiny, out-of-the-way store has a product you really value, a product you can't find anywhere else, you'll make a special trip to go there (unless, of course, you can order it online). Call it the "novelty factor." Good blogs have the same appeal -- inhabiting a one-of-a-kind niche, providing a stream of salient information. Case in point: District 299 is the place to go for the "inside scoop" on the Chicago Public School system.

4. Well linked - Somebody recommends a book to you. You begin reading and pow -- next thing you know it's 2:00 a.m. and you're on the last page. You want to read everything this author's ever written. Ditto for those times when I'm lucky enough to unearth an exceptional blog. I want to know what resources the blogger frequents, what other sites the blogger admires, who's on the blogroll. Because a solid site isn't written in a vacuum. It's a hub, a springboard to a like-minded community. Although folks have widely diverging opinions about Penelope Trunk, she of Brazen Careerist fame -- one thing you can say for her: she links.

5. Frequently updated - When I was a kid, I looked forward to going to the drugstore every week. Why? The drugstore carried comic books. It was always a thrill to find new issues in the rack. If I return to a blog, I want to know that new content's been posted. Click on the site. No recent entry? What a letdown. That's one reason the Wall Street Journal's Laid Off and Looking blog is part of my morning regimen. With several bloggers writing on a rotating basis, the column offers new insights every day. Regular as clockwork. Never a disappointment. I can be assured of a payoff every time I stop by.

District 299

No, not District 9, the movie about aliens in Johannesburg. District 299 is a blog centered on the Chicago Public Schools (CPS) system. Not surprisingly, District 299 is the school district code for Chicago.

District 299 (CPS) is a monster: the third largest school district in the nation, with more than 20,000 teachers educating over 400,000 students in over 666 schools (please, no jokes about 666 and "the number of the beast"). According to the official CPS website:

Chicago Public Schools is led by a team of committed, distinguished and highly accomplished individuals working to improve the education of Chicago children.

District 299 (the site) begs to differ.

District 299 ("The Unofficial Inside Scoop" per a prominently displayed disclaimer) is the brainchild of Alexander Russo. (BTW - Mr. Russo has another blog -- This Week in Education -- with a broader, "beyond Chicago" focus.)

Unfortunately, you wouldn't learn that, or much else, about him from his District 299 blog (where the brief About section confides that Russo "grew up on Roscoe Street in the 1970s, and started this blog in 2005"). Perhaps Russo's been burned before and is wary of giving away too much personal information. (FYI - Russo is described elsewhere as a "former Senate education staffer and journalist.")

Both of Russo's blogs are well written and professional. For many Chicago parents, District 299 (and Substance, "the newspaper of public education in Chicago") are essential reading. Russo's the proverbial gadfly (ditto for George Schmidt at Substance), standing up to the leviathan, acting as a counterweight to CPS's side of the story. Russo provides an astute, informed, alternative perspective (that "inside scoop").

What makes District 299 valuable? For one, it occupies an important niche. The blog serves as a nexus of information on CPS -- the place to go if you want an "unofficial" take on the news. For example, Russo had this to say about Secretary of Education Arne Duncan's appearance on the Colbert Report:

Arne Duncan was on the Colbert Report last night, talking about education and (of course) playing one on one against Colbert. I didn't think it was all that funny -- Arne just says the same things over and over again...

For another, it offers a much-needed forum for disgruntled parents and disbelieving residents. When folks encounter public-school stats (one comment: "[CPS CEO Ron] Huberman makes up the numbers as he goes...") or stories (like the school violence summit) that seem fishy, they can visit District 299 and ask, "Am I crazy or...?" And quickly discover that they're neither nuts nor alone.

THAT Family

In my search for worthy blogs, I stumbled across We Are THAT Family. I have to admit: I cringe when I see "family" in the title of anything. In a blog, "family" usually signals a cloying, saccharine "report from the home front." You know, too-candid photos, vacuous chatter about a spouse's foibles, a hackneyed retelling of the kids' latest escapades, late-breaking news on the household pets.

But as I started sampling the posts and strolling around the site, I realized "This blogger can actually write."

First, what is THAT family?

According to the blogger, THAT family is

The family that always has troubles. Something out of the ordinary is always happening and they are usually followed by disaster....I used to gossip about THAT family. I’d quickly pass judgement on the mother who didn’t watch her kids closely enough or the kids who were overly active. We are THOSE people now.

The blog has a definite message ("We have met the enemy and he is us"). Moreover, as evidenced in the above excerpt, the writing is invested with a sense of acceptance, humility, and humanity ("I'm not passing judgment...").

Second, there's skill and style to the writing (something I prize not only as a reader but as an English major). For example:

Just when I think we've got the hang of this parenting thing, my hubby and I have a weekend where we are reminded that. we. don't.

Or:

I write about creating a home and the loves who make up my life, my spirit as it's inspired, and my soul as it tangles with sin.

Or this, from a family visit to the Goodwill store:

We made our way around the store and my son exclaimed loudly and hurried us to the pre-worn lingerie and underwear department, saying, "I found outfits for 'sexy night!'"

Uh, that would be sixties night.

More than the content, I admire the way the blogger expresses herself. In a blogosphere filled with "space junk," it's a delight to come across spry writing instead of the usual leaden prose.

Third, the blogger has an audience -- every post has stirred a flock of comments. She's clearly touching a nerve. Readers are responding to the fact that this blogger's authentic, intelligent, and insightful, she has a facility for writing, she has something to say and a compelling way to say it.

That said, I do have a few concerns about the site:

• I was confused by the organization. Although the "THAT family" tab explains what "THAT family" is about, some of the other tabs left me scratching my head. For instance, the "editor" tab provides a profile of the blogger (not obvious from the heading). And don't ask me what the difference is between "best of" and "features." So, points taken off on the logical/intuitive scale.
  
• Although some thought obviously went into the visuals and I'm fine with the design (the masthead with its type-written characters, the overall old-fashioned typewriter motif), the look seems more convenient than customized. What's so special about typing? Every blogger is "typing" in material. I would've preferred a stronger connection between graphics and text.

Although some may balk at the Christian undercurrent of the blog (observations such as "There is... a HUGE God who is always there, especially when others aren't" or a post titled "How I Met Jesus"), I had initially feared a lot worse -- an updating of "The Brady Bunch" or a version of "Jon and Kate" that's too cute by half. There's a vital, nay ingenious, quality to the writing. It speaks to people. And how can you not like someone who quips "our family of five has met individual deductibles and it’s still January"?