GoldieBlox and The Three Glares
By: Carl Hencey
Courtesy of SwaggerNewYork
For all the great beats, tunes, and lyrics the
Beastie Boys have produced in their prime, they now find themselves out of sync
with pop culture. Following the creation an incredibly inspirational commercial
aimed at motivating the next generation of female engineers, GoldieBlox faced a
barrage of criticism from the Beastie Boys over the use of their song
"Girls" within the commercial. Furious over the disregard for Adam
Yauch's will, which prevents any Beastie Boys song from being used in advertising,
the Beastie Boys threatened ramifications against the
well-intentioned GoldieBlox. This leaves me to question: Why not support the
modernization and expansion of their work?
The Beastie Boys chose a hard fought battle legal
battle as the best way to solve this dilemma. In the end, they lost, GoldieBlox
won, and the Beastie Boys were painted as villains the whole way there.
This commercial was not only an
inspiration to girls all over the nation, but also helped changed the nature of
the song to fall in line with modern schools of thought. Instead of offensive,
sexist lyrics of the 1980's, GoldieBlox created a version that empowers women.
By doing so, they bring a previously dead song back into relevance and expose
it to a whole new listening audience.
From the start, the
Beastie Boys were fighting an uphill battle for several reasons:
1. Supporting
the old version of their song over the transformative, new version makes the Beastie
Boys look old fashioned and sexist, and therefore take on the role of villains. A main contributing factor in their negative public image throughout the case.
2. GoldieBlox followed all the guidelines of fair use (McSherry par. 4-5), proving the legal legitimacy of their commercial, as seen through a court
settlement allowing them to keep the commercial at the mere expense of an apology.
3. Much of
the music involved in “Girls” did not belong to the Beastie Boys in the first
place (Dillion, pg 294), making it exceptionally hard for them to claim it as solely their own.
In all, the Beastie Boys made
this entire debacle much more difficult than they could have. By supporting the
transformations GoldieBlox made to their song, the Beastie Boys could have assisted
in the production of a Super Bowl commercial, expanded their listening
audience, and painted themselves in a much more empathetic light. In an
oversensitive society, the improvement in public image that could have come
from supporting the same girls who they previously offended would have been
worth much more than a lawsuit could ever bring.
Works Cited
McSherry, Corynne. "Girls Against
Boys: What's Wrong With the (Latest) Beastie Boys Lawsuit | Electronic Frontier
Foundation." Electronic Frontier Foundation. N.p., 24 Nov. 2013.
Web. 27 Mar. 2014.
Teresa, Dillon. HAIL TO THE THIEF: THE
APPROPRIATION OF MUSIC IN THE DIGITAL AGE. Netherlands: Springer, 2004.
eBook.
I believe Carl's persuasive purpose was to show the audience that the Beastie Boys were stupid to start a lawsuit over the Goldieblox parody of their song "Girls". Carl uses Ethos to show the audience his knowledge of lawsuit and the background information. He uses his quotes and links very well to further back up his knowledge and credibility on the subject. He uses logos very well. The structure of his Blog is very well done. It is evenly distributed with information, which entices his audience to read it at a first glance. His use of bullet point to tell how the Beastie Boys were destined to lose, was a very good idea. It helps add a seemingly smoother and easier read for his audience. Carl also uses logos in the structure of his information. He starts off with giving the audience information on the lawsuit, and then moves into how the Beastie Boy's beat themselves up throughout this whole lawsuit. I believe Carl accomplished his persuasive purpose. The amount of information he used to prove his argument was very strong. The way he set up his paper also worked really well with his ideas and arguments. I think Carl could make this Blog better by using smaller words and proof reading. Carl uses a lot of big words, which some readers may struggle with. I also noticed some typos and repeated words, which just effect the smoothness of the read.
ReplyDeleteCarl, I found your blog to be very informative but also very captivating in the way you positioned yourself on the issue. To me, your persuasive purpose was, that the Beastie Boys were wrong for starting a lawsuit with Goldieblox over the fair use of the song "Girls." I thought you did a great job of providing hyperlinks within in your blog in order to increase your readers knowledge of the lawsuit and other factors involved. This extra information doesn't just strengthen your use of logos within your post, but also your use of ethos, as you are gaining credibility from your readers as they continue. I felt that you were successful with your persuasive purpose due to the amount of research you had and also appealing to your audiences sense of pride in the movement that the Goldieblox company is trying to promote. Honestly, I feel that you could have done very few things to improve this post, as it is already excellent. I would only suggest to maybe add more media such as gifs and pictures to keep your reader entertained. Overall, I enjoyed reading your blog post and think it was very well written.
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