Not so much hitting cinemas this week as gently slapping them, the documentary Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed is purported to be Ben Stein’s argument for why Intelligent Design is just as valid as Evolutionary theory, and therefore is being unfairly discriminated against by the scientific community. I say purported because the movie has been almost universally savaged by critics for being little more than a manipulative attempt to editorialize away hundreds of years of valid scientific study and extrapolation as being of no more merit than the simple supposition that “some invisible guy did it”.
One of the big stories around the movie has been the accusation that the film’s producers misrepresented their intentions to the pro-evolutionary scientists they invited to take part. That on its own is bad enough, but according to BBC News, the case against Ben Stein’s “documentary” just got even dirtier.
John Lennon’s two sons Julian and Sean, his widow Yoko Ono and EMI Music are suing Premise Media for using footage of Lennon’s “Imagine” video in their movie without proper permission. They are seeking to stop Premise Media from distributing, promoting or selling the movie. That means yanking the thing out of theaters and preventing it from being shoved out on DVD later on. They are also seeking a financial settlement.
Ono, a notoriously vicious protector of the rights to all Lennon’s work has claimed that the movie wrongly gives the impression that she sanctioned the use of the footage, creating a massive backlash by Lennon’s fans who are accuse her of “selling out”.
Now I may not have seen the movie, but one can only grimly imagine, given the reports of intercutting the discussion of atheism with images of Nazis, what similar job was done with Imagine and it’s notoriously (if you’re a Christian) "anti"-religion “Imagine there’s no heaven, it’s easy if you try. No hell below us, above us only sky” lyrics. It’s not hard to imagine why it might earn the ire of Lennon fans.
Ono’s complaint says that she was never approached about the rights to use the footage, because they knew that the family would never allow it. In response, Premise Media issued this statement: "Based on the fair use doctrine, news commentators and film documentarians regularly use material in the same way we do. Unbiased viewers of the film will see that the Imagine clip was used as part of a social commentary in the exercise of free speech and freedom of inquiry."
Premise Media’s counter-argument is flawed in the extreme. Fair use is a concept rather than a set in stone law and it has become the latest trendy thing for people with money to use to try and get out of their obligations. Fair use as stated in law is only really applicable within education and review. It is not a get-out-of-jail free card for people to use on something that belongs to someone else as long as they deem themselves to have “just used a small enough bit” The statement then goes on to make an inflammatory passive aggressive statement implying that anyone who doesn’t take their side is, funnily enough, persecuting them (a running theme with this project).
Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed is not an educational tool or a review, it is a documentary making a tidy profit for its creators. This means that the company is in effect, making money from using other people’s work without paying the dues for that work. An argument that amounts to "others do it so it must be okay" is juvenile stuff.
Worse, there are rumors of other unauthorized usages too. Ono may not be the only person with a case against Expelled. It wouldn't be a surprise since, as Ono stated, had the owners known the real context for their use, would they really have given the go ahead?
The excuses being carted out to defend Premise Media's actions are that people like Michael Moore have been doing it this way for years and now the boot's on the other foot, so people have no right to complain. Well I call bullshit. Michael Moore got sued for using footage of soldiers wounded in the Iraq war without obtaining their permission. That was over 2 years ago, and he’s taken flack for his borderline propaganda tactics with nearly every film he’s released. Michael Moore has already made the mistakes. Why not learn from them rather than using them to excuse more dangerous and disingenuous audience manipulation. Instead, Expelled seems to be intent on taking propaganda films to an all new level, and the forces lined up on its side seem only to ready to make excuses for it simply because they agree with the films premise. In this case though, the ends do not justify the means.
