Disney kicks 'Ho White' out of bed
Disney has reportedly, and unsurprisingly, taken exception to an Oz booze campaign which features "Ho White" puffing on what we assume is a post-coital ciggy in a bed full of dwarves. The offending pic, created by ad agency The Foundry to promote Jamieson's Raspberry Ale, carries the caption "Anything but sweet": The Jamieson's …
Disney didn't create Snow White or the Seven Dwarfs.
But wasn't the character 'Snow White' created by Hans Christian Anderson?
And isn't that now out of copyright?
So how does Disney get to have the monopoly on these characters?
Why? If I recall correctly (or IIRC for txtrs) the story as we know it today was written by the Grimm Brothers. copyright is probably public domain by now.
Is Disney suing for likeness with the characters they produced the Snow White cartoon so many years ago? Or have they somehow been able to copyright a classic Fairy Tale that pre-dates the company by a couple of hundred years?
There is definitely a rant in here waiting to bust out.
Cheers
I'm just trying to work out how Disney have a claim on a story that is hundreds of years old. Does Mel Gibson now have a copyright claim over the New testemant because he made a film about Jesus?
I suppose Paris is a bit obvious, but then again I doubt she's had just the seven
Whether it's right or wrong to use a well-known children's character in this way, it does raise an obvious legal question. Since Disney did not originally create Snow White, merely the best-known version of the story, how similar does this version have to be to Disney's specific interpretation before the latter has a legal basis for their complaint?
Looking at the picture, I'd guess it probably is Disneyish enough for their lawyers to sue, but I'd be interested to hear anyway.
(Disclaimer- I Am Not A Lawyer, nor even particularly knowledgeable about the law- like 99.9% of people discussing legal issues on Internet forums...)
This is, of course, aside from the issue of whether Disney should still enjoy the benefit of copyright over a film (and likenesses) created over 70 years ago, especially given that Snow White- like many of Disney's works- was originally based on older works that had fallen into the public domain. A fate that Disney hypocritically seeks to have its derivative works avoid by lobbying for the extension of copyright.
Two-faced f*****s.
Sorry, but it has to be said:
It could have been worse, she could have been puffing on a dwarf.
Paris because ... well do you really need me to explain.
How much did Disney pay the Brothers Grimm?
Are we to assume that Disney Corpse is claiming ownership of the Snow White fairy tale? Didn't the Brothers Grimm have something to do with it in the nineteenth century? And before them, generations of illiterate peasants?
No, it wasn't created by Hans Christian Anderson - you're thinking of the Little Mermaid. Snow White was the work of the brothers Grimm.
Didn't Disney take a lot of public domain stories and make them his own, using an artistic style based on previous works?
Yet another reason why I always watch Warner Brothers cartoons instead. (#1 being that Bugs could have kicked Mickey's backside ANY day of the week.)
To parody a copyrighted work is 100% legal.
Comedy and piss taking are enshrined in the law. Otherwise comedians would get their asses sued off. They can dislike it all they want. Anyone hear remember spitting image?
.......that the image is Bloody Brilliant g'day Bruce.
they can't copyright the snow white story, but they certainly have copyright over their representation of it - that's definately meant to be Disney's snow white and Disney's dwarves. Parody is protected only for parody's sake i.e. to take the piss out of Disney, not to sell beer
"Anyone hear remember spitting image?"
We all remember Spitting Image - best programme in TV history. So feared they took it off just before elections. And almost certainly something NewSpeak - sorry, New Labour - will never allow to be resurrected in the UK...
Anyone see any statement from Disney? Anyone see anything that actually shows they've made any complaint over this? Nope, neither do I.
What I DO see is an advert that's being carried front and centre in a large number of news sites, and is getting talked about. Reckon the "little bit of contact" with Disney could just be "Hey, we're doing an ad using Snow White. Yeah, we know she's a public domain character, just letting you know. Cheers mate." Job done, they can legitimately say they've had contact with Disney over it, come over as a bit cheeky and pushing the boundaries, and get their product into the press more than any advert ever could.
...re-release it with the same text and their own drawings of the Brothers Grimm's characters.
I accept the correction but the point stands.
I personally would have said that the characters looked sufficiently different from Disney' s representation as to be outside the copyright. Otherwise any drawing of one young woman and seven short blokes amounts to violation of the copyright - which is a bit much.
Not that I approve of the use of children's fairy tale characters to promote beer anyway.
IIRC the specific characters and names of the Dwarves, Grumpy, Sleepy, Bashfull, etc were a Disney invention. Get rid of those from the image and they should be fine. To be replaced with more generic dwarves, with red beards, axes and chainmail, of course, or do they just come from Tolkein?? Could be fun - oh what a big axe you have etc, etc.
Whilst every commenter here seems fixated on the trivialities of Disney trampling all over copyright law, no-one has addressed the real issue - how on earth can a raspberry beer be anything but sweet?
"I personally would have said that the characters looked sufficiently different from Disney' s representation..."
You need glasses. I'd say that was the most blatant passing off going. Beards, hats, Snow White depiction (minus the dress), even the bloody furniture and background is close enough to the Disney version to get 'em nailed to the cross in court.
Quite deliberate and appears to have achieved exactly what it set out to do, generate free global press coverage for something nobody'd bloody heard of yesterday.
Hmm. Similar, but very different.
In Snow White, six of the seven dwarfs had beards (Dopey was the odd one) - in this picture ony three have beards;
In Snow White, she had different hair, and <ahem> clothes.
Funny ad tho'
As it is not permitted to use sex to sell alcohol. Boo, I say!
They created this particular visual representation. It is by no means the best one, but it is the best known one. Same as with Winnie the Pooh.
***"how on earth can a raspberry beer be anything but sweet?"***
Quite easily.
The fermentation process turns sugar into alcohol.
That Disney are griping that the characters are an obvious parody of *their* interpretation of Snow White & the Seven Vertically Challenged Individuals.
Dreamworks parodied a number of fairytale characters in the Shrek movies, but none of them looked much like their Disney versions. I assume this was to avoid being sued by Disney.
Then again, Dreamworks didn't intimate that Snow White was a dirty little slapper, either.....
So even if this is a visual copy - when does the corporate copyright on these things run out? Presumably it can not be indefinite, and presumably it will differ in different countries.
I made a quite delicious chocolate raspberry stout that was anything but sweet. Lambics are generally sour, and have fruit syrups added to make them palatable. By themselves, raspberries are quite tart, so a slutty Snow White (a Tart, right?) seems like the perfect advertising vehicle.
I believe that Farquhar was supposed to be a "stand-in" for Eisner.
I think there was even a bit of defamation sabre rattling that didn't go anywhere.
Funnier than having someone ask me where to get a AAA battery so they could weigh it (work related question) for our database. At least the office was empty so I could get a good chuckle without the nutters getting upset.
It's totally different. The original Winnie-the-Pooh books had illustrations, which are very well known, and the original Winnie-the-Pooh books are still in copyright in the USA and in the EU.
(Partly thanks Disney-sponsored legislation and US pressure on other countries as far as the text is concerned, as the author died in 1956, but the illustrator didn't die until 1976 according to Wikipedia, so I would guess those images are in copyright till 2026 almost everywhere. I note that
http://winnie-the-pooh.ru/ has the text but not the pictures.)
In their megalomania, they forgot there are actually some things they don't own.
Great ad.
As this is Australia, shouldn't they have worked in the national sport of Dwarf Tossing?
Ithankyew. Mine's a XXXX.
Yes Disney is nonsensical to try this, but witness the legal debacle over the Princess Di merchandising and Apple Beatles vs Apple Jobs. Right is not necessarily legally provable, I watch with interest.
Raspberries are not very sweet, which is why in Germany, home of the brothers Grimm, you get Himmbeergeist but not Himmbeer-Schnapps. Most fruit can be fermented and distilled to make a Schnapps, but Raspberries are soaked in pure alcohol and then distilled to extract their essence - the Geist, or spirt. Raspberries don't have enough sugar to make it worth fermenting them.
"Disney didn't create Snow White".
Yeah, but Disney has a lot more money than the ad company. 'Nuff said.
The website is actually http://anythingbutsweet.com.au/ but yes, it's password protected now
Should we add a Ho-white icon to the list, where we can have ho-white and Paris fight it out the leanth of a comments thread?
Paris, because she is the only hoe we have right now.
If Disney's copyright and/or trademark extends to a woman in bed with 7 men (their bodies aren't shown so their dwarfness is questionable) I think there may be a few infringing porn flicks too.
Doesn't necessarily matter - if 'a reasonable person' associated snow white and her prime numbered vertically challenged friends with Disney then the ad could be a libel of Disney.
At least in the libel friendly UK - there was a famous case over 200years ago where a cartoon of a pear by Hogarth was banned as a libel of the prince of wales because 'everybody' knew the cartoon was about his gluttony.
You're all a buch of quasi lawyers/fairy tale historians and members of CAMRA now are you?
Anyone see the real dangers of this advert, and it's not the selling of beer using sexual images, or using characters associated with infancy in a sexual innuendo kind of way.
Enough of the beer drinking legalese, where are the anti smoking (for you earthy young men out there, I'm not talkng about your wives, girlfriends, or in the case of most of the commentards, their underage boyfriends) brigade.
The anti tobacco brigade should be having a field day here too, all taboo's in one advert, it isn't Disney they should have been having a little chat with, perhaps Plod might like a word, maybe.
Jamieson's got better publicity than they ever would have if Disney hadn't made a fuss.
Welcome to "the Streisand Effect", Jamieson's & Disney! :) Suit is moot.
The original Snow White story and characters are in the public domain in the US. Not sure about NZ, but even if the story copyright still holds, its unlikely Disney is the copyright holder.
The Disney depictions of the characters are still copyrighted, but that picture is obviously distinct from the Disney version, despite the similarities resulting from use of the original source material. So this seems like it would be worth fighting. Even a small liquor company for which the legal costs might be burdensome could milk extra publicity out of it to help defray the costs(as they seem to be doing).
Apparently, in Cantonese chinese, the 'Hi ho, hiho..' song has the correct tonal qualities to mean "Do I have a good c*** or not?" although I might be inaccurate there. Amusing pic, though, and I'm sure the marketroids are aiming for a Streisand Effect here.
Could this be the time that the two missing dwarves, cruelly replaced in the Disney feature in the 1930's, could make a comeback?
Let's hear it for Rumpy and Pumpy!!!
