The Memory Hole, or: Get It While You Can

A few days ago the surviving creators of THE SIMPSONS made an announcement which was greeted by little in the way of fanfare. As Fatherly.com reported:

"A beloved episode of The Simpsons is disappearing from the show’s online platform, syndication, and future physical media editions. The reason? It guest stars Michael Jackson."

The episode in question, "Stark Raving Dad," is considered one of the best and funniest shows produced during the golden age of America's longest-running primetime series. In it, Homer meets a man who believes himself to be Michael Jackson, and the faux-Michael (voiced by Jackson himself), teaches Homer and Bart a number of valuable life-lessons, some of them articulated through song. Due to the recent release of the documentary NEVERLAND, however, which alleges Jackson was a serial pedophile, "Stark Raving Dad" will no longer be commercially available. It has gone down what George Orwell would have referred to as "the memory hole."

In past blogs I have discussed the Roman concept of "damnatio memorae." It was a practice of destroying all physical traces of the existence of a disgraced Roman -- smashing his statues, chipping his name off monuments, striking his image off currency, etc. and so on. Those who were "damned in memory" were in effect, made "unpersons" almost 2,000 years before Orwell penned his famous novels about the malleability of the past, ANIMAL FARM and 1984. Michael Jackson, like Bill Cosby immediately before him, is now in the process of becoming an unperson, and as part of the process the media which bears his likeness and voice is systematically being effaced from the earth.

Some people applaud this sort of thing. Others have deep reservations about the wider implications of using an eraser on any type of history. I have already discussed the arguments about "separating the art from the artist" in either direction and have no wish to bring them up again. What I want to discuss here is something which came up again and again during my years working in the video game industry. It is the concept of ownership, which is undergoing a remarkable change even as you read this.

On the surface nothing could be simpler than the idea of ownership, and this was particularly true as a kid, when I first became interested in video games. Once you had a cartridge or a tape, or later, a disc, it was yours and required no additional time, effort or money to continue its operation. Best of all, so long as it was properly stored, it could last indefinitely. As evidence of this I exhibit my old Atari 800XL, which must have been purchased in 1980 or so. With one exception, every one of the cartridges my father bought for me for this game, and most of the discs, still function perfectly. I can play Pac Man, or Castle Wolfenstein, or the infuriating Transylvania (which I've been playing since 1982 and still can't beat), just as I did as a boy of ten. I can, and do, haul out these primitive but oh-so-enjoyable games and play them with my neice and nephew, and it's my fervent wish that if I ever have children, I can pass the system down to them. That, kids, is ownership.

At some point in the last two decades, however, the internet began to change the basic ideas behind gaming. The invention of online games -- games which allowed you to escape the self-contained confines of a cartridge or disc, and move around in a large world populated both by "bots" and other players -- revolutionized everything. Gaming became an immersive, ongoing, multi-player experience. It is now possible to log in and enter a world populated by dozens, hundreds, even thousands of other players -- to compete against them or join forces with them, depending on the demands of the game and the quirks of your own personality.

This development in gaming came at a price. When customers purchased a game, they were no longer receiving physical media, they were, in essence, simply paying for a sort of interactive television channel in which they had the ability to control one character. In practical terms, this put them completely at the mercy of those who controlled the game. It was now possible for two scenarios to unfold which would have been impossible in my day, the Era of Atari. Firstly, the game companies could and did offer "micro-transactions" which allowed players to pay more to receive bennies within the game (meaning that the initial purchase was just that -- the first payment, not the last). Worse, and dealing directly with the subject at hand, it also meant that any time a game developer wanted to discontinue a game, it could do so simply by shutting down the servers which supported it. Thus, if you paid $65 for a game and another $50 in micro-transactions, you might still find yourself out of a game a few years down the road. The company could simply pull the plug. Your ownership, in a sense, would be revoked. And this has happened to modern gamers more than once.

When one pays for something but does not truly own it, one does not own: one rents or leases. There is a world of difference in those words, and this brings me back to THE SIMPSONS.

"Star Raving Dad" is the first episode of the third season of the show, and as of now it will no longer be available in any legal way to those who wish to see it...unless, of course, like me, they bought the DVD, in which case nobody can tell them they can't watch it if they so choose.

I have quite a collection of DVDs. I have been buying them for going on 20 years and continue to do so despite the existence of Blu-Ray and various streaming services. I do this for the same reason I still occasionally buy VHS tapes of movies: I do not want to rent what I own. At the risk of sounding like any one of several characters on GAME OF THRONES, if Miles Watson owns something, he owns it.

People who swear by Amazon Prime, Netflix, Hulu etc., etc. do not have to deal with bulky DVDs or even bulkier VHS tapes. They don't have to worry about scratching them or losing them or breaking them or cleaning them. Their libraries of films and music and so forth are available instantly through any device with an internet connection. The advantages of this are obvious, but the disadvantages are painful. When the powers that be decide that Michael Jackson or Bill Cosby is now an unperson, they can also decide -- for you -- that the media of such people is no longer for public consumption. Chill with Netflix all you want: you'll never see "Stark Raving Dad" on it, nor will you catch "I, Spy" or "The Cosby Show." Before long you may not have access to any of Michael Jackson's music whether you paid for it or not. And should you have a yen for the unretouched, as-seen-in-theaters versions of the original STAR WARS films, well, guess what? You're out of luck. George Lucas took them out of circulation many years ago. They are no longer for sale in any medium, nor are they available on a streaming service. All of it is now out of your reach without resorting to illegal YouTube channels or other forms of soft or hard piracy, and in time they may be out of your reach altogether.

Faith in the Cloud, in any purely digital medium, is faith that your masters are beneficient and will never choose to take what you possess away from you. I lack this faith for the same reason I wholeheartedly support the Second Amendment. I put not my faith in princes. Never have, never will. Nobody is better qualified than me to decide what the hell I choose to lawfully posess.

We must face a hard truth. As time goes on, and our culture becomes more sensitive and more righteous about, well, everything, more and more artists will be discovered to be harboring ugly secrets of one kind or another. It is the inevitable outcome of the climate in which we live, and it will just as inevitably lead to more censorship of this type. Most recently, an almost 50 year-old interview with John Wayne, during which he said offensive things about blacks, gays, Native Americans etc., has been used to strengthen demands that the airport named in his honor be renamed. I couldn't care less one way or the other, but I am greatly concerned that this extremely belated outrage (Wayne died forty years ago) will call for demands that his films -- and he made nearly 100, including a number of all-time classics in various genres -- be removed from store shelves and streaming services. I am even more concerned that spineless executives at various studios will accede to them, setting a very dangerous precedent indeed.

Twelve years in the entertainment industry have taught me all I need to know about the moral courage of Hollywood executives.

Obviously I have no sympathy whatsoever with rapists like Cosby or (alleged) child molesters like Jackson. Such crimes are unforgivable and deserve all the disgust and anger we can muster. Nor am I a fan of John Wayne as a human being -- I never was, actually: even as a kid he struck me as a jingo patriot with a taste for bullying roles. But that is neither here nor there. The issue at hand is whether I, as an adult residing in an allegedly free country, have the choice to own the works of people who have in some cases gone beyond the pale in their personal or professional lives. It is also whether whether what I buy is my property or merely a rental which can be taken away from me at the convenience / whim of its true owners.

Most people who know me know I'm a libertarian, one who believes in personal freedom. And one of the most fundamental expressions of personal freedom is the right to decide for oneself what one reads, listens to, or watches on television. The country, however, is moving increasingly in the direction of centralized control, a state of affairs in which a self-appointed "elite" decides on our behalf what we need to see, hear, and in time, think. No need to develop aesthetic tastes or political, economic or religious opinions on your own, folks! Big Brother -- or Big Sister -- will do it for you.

Y'all might be thinking I'm making too much out of something as trivial as a 22 minute cartoon. Y'all may be right. But my money, as always, is on me. Having as much historical information crammed in my head as I do, I know all too well how easy it is to destroy the foundations of human freedom. Blasting powder and sledgehammers aren't required. Like Andy Dufraine in The Shawshank Redemption, who broke out of prison by slowly chipping away at the prison walls with a tiny hammer, the people who want to tell us how to think are content to play a very long game indeed.