I’m new at this blogging! Thanks in part to links from Cartoon Brew and The Disney Blog, there was some great feedback on the licensing rant from the other day. If it made anyone angry or hurt anyone’s feelings, do not worry! I wield as much influence in the animation industry as my dog wields in the United Nations. I’m just a fan thinking out loud, so don’t wet your pants. Go watch some cartoons.

Here are a few good points people brought up:

1. Stop saying Chris Harding is calling all licensing evil
There’s always a tension between art and commerce. In some cases it can run amok and made a mess out of good things. Still, I say there’s no way to argue that a diaper with a character’s face on it is a dignified presentation of that character. All we can argue about is whether it matters. Maybe it doesn’t.
As Amid Amidi at Cartoon Brew pointed out, “it’s something of a necessary evil, so the best thing is to just make sure it’s done well.” Right on. See how he said in one good sentence what I couldn’t say in 3 pages of raving? Now that’s blogging!

2. Easy for me to say!
The truth is I don’t know how I would react if someone wanted to back the money truck up to my house in exchange for the questionable use of my work. I can say that I have turned down licensing deals in the past, miniscule though they were, because they would have diminished the work. But lord knows I have also done some really awful things for money, whoring out my limited skills to make garbage. But that’s a whole different crime. Anyway, I grant that it’s easier for me to shoot my mouth off because I do not have a large peronal stake in this licensing game, other than a love of animation.

3. Disney Princesses
Three people pointed out that pulling six characters from six distinct worlds and lumping them together as the “Disney Princesses” is such a complete violation of their original context that the “illusion of life” is already ruined no matter what trinket you slap them on. Good point.

4. There is hope
We should give credit where it’s due and note that licensing weasels have so far resisted turning most characters into toilet paper, and sometimes piñatas. There are limits.

5. The strong survive
Some characters and studios manage to survive massive licensing campaigns. Peanuts, Pixar, The Simpsons, and Star Wars (thanks for the link, Jacob) come to mind. Others seem to collapse under the weight into expressionless black holes. Why?

Dr. Seuss’ work has been injured, perhaps because the movies are so much louder and more media-prominent than his books. He was reportedly uneasy about the Chuck Jones version of the Grinch. I imagine he’s curled up in the fetal position, weeping in his grave these days.

6. Things that should go without saying
It should go without saying that marketing people are not all weasels. A lot of people work really hard to make money for everyone involved in a creative business. Unfortunately, it doesn’t go without saying, because the ones who are weasels have made so much crap and so much noise that they’ve given the whole thing a bad reputation. Stop referring to characters and stories as “properties” if you want audiences to believe in them!

It should also go without saying that animation is a rich medium, capable of almost anything; that it’s not only for children; that it could be a vital, diverse art form. But that doesn’t go without saying either, maybe because few of us fans and artists get pissy enough about all the lost potential.

But to be fair to the business guys I was ripping the other day, most artists should not be in charge of their own checkbooks, let alone entire animation studios. If people like me ran the show, there would not be an animation industry at all. It would go out of business within 48 frames.

7. Licensing can be a force for good!
Sometimes licensing does a hell of a lot to support artists– like a band selling t-shirts while they tour. The Homestar Runner crew and Don Hertzfeldt, for example, make their living by selling merch on their websites. The merch makes the art possible, not the other way around.

Bigger studios also pretty much make their living the exact same way. There’s nothing inherently wrong with it. Maybe it’s just a matter of quality, and artists having some control over their work.

8. Bill Watterson hates all mankind
Here is a quote from one email response:
“Watterston[sic] railed against pirated Tee shirts and that was his own fault. He knew the
demand and he witheld[sic] it from the public. That’s flipping the bird at one’s fans. Not nice. The people who rail the most against licensing are those who’ve failed at it…”

I know this is a common sentiment, but think about it. A man works his ass off for ten years, holds himself to impossibly high standards of quality, and produces one of the greatest comic strips in history. People offer him tens of millions of dollars to put his characters on t-shirts and boxer shorts, because they want a piece of the action. He resists incredible pressure from collectors and his syndicate (who went along with his wishes, to their great credit) and turns down these deals.

What would motivate a man, not just to turn down 8 figures, but to fight tooth and nail for ten years to turn it down? It was his way of saying “F You” to the fans? Are you joking? Sit down for one minute and really try to imagine why a man with these opportunities would choose to resist them. What did he value more than vast wealth?

Forty years from now, Bill Watterson will still be rich from his publishing royalties, Jim Davis will still be obscenely rich from his licensing royalties, and people will still be reading and laughing at Calvin & Hobbes in its original context while they sit on their Garfield Brand toilet seat covers and clean themselves up with Disney Princess shit paper.

The preceding was an old Jedi mind trick, known as being deliberately provocative. Obviously, not everyone is in a position to take a purist stance like that. Nor would everyone necessarily want to. It should be up to the artist.

A few years ago, John Densmore, drummer from The Doors, wrote an article about the difficulty in resisting lucrative licensing deals, and tried to explain his reasons for doing so:

“People lost their virginity to this music, got high for the first time to this music,” Densmore said. “I’ve had people say kids died in Vietnam listening to this music, other people say they know someone who didn’t commit suicide because of this music…. On stage, when we played these songs, they felt mysterious and magic. That’s not for rent.”

We don’t tend to think of cartoons this way. But maybe we could in some cases. Sure we gotta make a living, but there might also be rare occasions when we can afford to be choosy– even unreasonable– about what we do with our work.

9. Shut up already
I should shut up and go do something constructive.

10. Confession
I stole a phrase in the original rant (”to rot and stink in the nostrils of posterity”) from Ben Franklin.

Read the original rant here.