Friday, October 16, 2009

I told you so

Mattel licenses Barbie Girl. Self-dilution is as real as self-parody; in the postmodern condition, can we even distinguish between dilution and promotion? Bruce Keller and I wrote about the weakness of "rightsowners won't license" as a limiting factor years ago; we need something other than owners' behavior to define the appropriate scope of their rights.

3 comments:

Francesca Coppa said...

Oh, amazing. Amazing! In hindsight, I can't believe it took this long.

zss2f said...

Unbelievable!

And doesn't the "signature point, twist, snap" sound like a rip off of Legally Blonde's "bend... and snap"?

Anonymous said...

I have a question related to this that maybe someone can answer: does the NFL license clips of the coaches' press conferences for Coors Light commercials? (I bet it does.) These seem like uses that would qualify as parody. Also, what claims to right of publicity do these coaches have? I suspect contracts with the NFL cover this, but I have no knowledge as to that.