It's Not Unusual: The Battle Over A Dance

Do you remember The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air?  More specifically, do you remember the character Carlton from The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air?  Even more specifically, do you remember the way Carlton from The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air danced when he listened to Tom Jones’ ‘It’s Not Unusual?’  For people like me who watched the show every single week, of course I remember.  Other people quite possibly won’t have any recollection of it at all.  That was many years ago, and here we are talking about it twenty two years after the show went off air.

It turns out that Alfonso Ribeiro, the actor who played the role of Carlton Banks in The Fresh Prince, is taking legal action against the insanely popular video game Fortnite.  The reason?  The game uses an emote that makes a person’s character dance exactly how Carlton did.  Because Fortnite’s Battle Royale mode is free to play, they make most of their money through micro transactions that offer cosmetic variety to its players.  That means that for people to get the ability to dance like Carlton they have to pay money, meaning that game company Epic Games is profiting off it.  Ribeiro says that the dance is his intellectual property and that he deserves royalties from it.

I can see where he’s coming from, and I can get on board with it.  He created something that became iconic for fans of a franchise, and it is apparently something that he still does.  The goofy, energetic dance is unlike anything else.  If people who create something aren’t able to get the rewards of that then it cripples the artistic community.

On the other hand, the road that this sort of legal action takes us down also could have crippling effects on the artistic community.  So much of human dialogue is based off of our experiences of hearing other people talk, whether in person on through media.  Anyone who writes characters know that they have to speak organically, and that includes these characters referring to things within their sphere of influence.  So many times I have heard a character in a movie or television show say, “we’re gonna need a bigger boat.”  It works for the audience because this rings true to speech as well as tickling them when they can pick up on a reference they know.  What if Roy Scheider took to court anyone who used that line?  It was his line after all, and is one of the most remembered aspects of Jaws.

Would we think that someone should be able to do the Macarena in a movie, show, or video game?  I understand paying for the music, but should the artist have to pay Los de Rio for doing the dance?  This is where things will start getting murky.  Ultimately every single dance was created by someone at some time.  I know that I had seen multiple shows and movies where people have done the Moon Walk.  Would it make sense that they couldn’t do something that was such a deeply ingrained part of culture?

Here’s where I stand.  Yes, things that people create need to be protected, but in some cases it needs to be accepted that a part of that work has transcended the medium and actually become a collective part of the human experience.  If you think about it, every single cliche, catch phrase, or buzzword first came off the lips of somebody who could then claim it theirs.  There are visuals such as someone standing at the bow of a boat just like Jack in James Cameron’s Titanic that are constantly used because the reference has become ingrained as a part of North American culture.  Should something be restricted when it has become part of the public experience?

While I do understand where Ribeiro is coming from, I think that what this could lead to (not necessarily the case itself) is making things harder for artists and creators.  To capture human nature we sometimes need to lean on those references, visuals, or sayings.  To add another layer of thought for people different references or quotes could be interlaced with dialogue.  There are many reasons why an artist would ether reference or build on what someone else has already done, and it would be a shame for people to eventually become limited to not be able to use any quotes, visual imitations, catch phrases, or buzzwords.

I understand that the case of Alfonso Ribeiro doesn’t sync with all that I am talking about here.  It isn’t this specific case that is the main issue, it is the direction that this can take ownership over things that have become part of the collective human experience.  I wish him good luck in his case, I just worry over where we end up in the future.