Re: Toyota Celica

James Mulholland (jsm5q@faraday.clas.Virginia.EDU)
Thu, 20 Feb 1997 22:56:15 -0500

Actually, Matt, when you first brought "Toyota Celica" up I thought of Sonic
Outlaws, and that's a good point. I definitely agree with you, but how often
does this happen and who wins? All the guys in Negativland are bankrupt,
their recording company dropped them and their record and stuck them with
the legals fees, and U2, for all their well wishing seemed to find out that
their intervention amounted to nothing because they didn't really seem to
have control of (suppsoedly) their own logos, jingles, bells and whistles.
Its about turf, and in each case, the business protects their turf. If you
think about it, with all the readings of White Noise as anti-technology or
contemporary culture, to speak broadly, it could be a marketing disaster to
have the novel called Panasonic, everytime you see the logo you are reminded
of "techno-evils." For Panasonic, the refusal was probably a smart move.
After all that though, I still agree with you in many ways. The resistances
happen in communities, and the corporations of course can destroy these
communities, but these are the most viable resistances we seem to have. And
I think you're right as well when you say its about challenging them and
making what they do visible, at least opening the space of debate about what
"we" want and how to achieve that. Acker gets sued, over "copyrighted
material she's plagarizing" and wears that badge with pride. I definitely
don't blame her.

>> I'm not sure if anyone wants to hear more about it, but I was thinking about
>> what Matt Kirschenbaum said about the poeticism of a phrase such as Toyota
>> Celica, the way it can be felt, and am a big believer in the construction of
>> new poetries from this type of language, the way that these brand names,
>> like commodities provide pleasure in that they can be recast and used in
>> unintended ways. But still, at some fundamental level, someone owns this
>> langauge, and it is considered as such from the very beginning. Structures
>> are in place to make sure we know this. So you don't use Toyota Celica or
>> you get your ass sued, you don't get to call a novel Panasonic.
>>
>> James Mulholland
>
>James and Catherine make good points. Language _can_ be
>commodified as intellectual property. One possible response to
>such a situation is to go ahead and call your novel Panasonic
>anyway and force "them" to sue your ass. Then turn the event of
>the trial into a public spectacle designed to raise people's
>consciousness about such matters. See Craig Baldwin's film
>_Sonic Outlaws_ (available at Clemons) for an account of media
>pranksters, culture jammers, and high-tech plagiarists who do
>exactly that (the film takes off from the Island Records
>lawsuit against the underground band Negativland for their
>having released a recording entitled "U2").
>
>--Matt
>
>=================================================================
>Matthew G. Kirschenbaum University of Virginia
>mgk3k@virginia.edu Department of English
>http://faraday.clas.virginia.edu/~mgk3k/ Electronic Text Center
>
>