“I guess people use graffiti when they feel they can’t be heard otherwise.

– A student from Year 8 English.”

–     My year 7 English Teacher.

In 2022, the beloved children’s character ‘Winnie-the-Pooh’ entered the public domain. He is yellow, round, and gentle. This character is a town-square statue of childhood innocence. Composed by A. A. Milne and published in 1924, he has been a comfort to generations and generations. But after just one year in the public domain, he was made into a gory horror-slasher called ‘Winnie-the-Pooh: Blood and Honey.’ The sequel, ‘Winnie-the-Pooh: Blood and Honey 2’ is slated for release later this year. At first glance, ‘Winnie-the-Pooh: Blood and Honey’ is a simple middle finger at the metaphorical man, a humorously perverse act of cultural vandalism. However, as it would be written on the tombstones of cartoon characters killed by falling pianos and anvils, “There is nothing funny about this.” ‘Winnie-the-Pooh: Blood and Honey’ is the destruction caused by an adolescent to disprove their impotence. In recent years, frustration with our diminishing cultural agency has reached a fever pitch. People are mad, and they’re lashing out.

Culture isn’t something that can be privately owned. The word itself comes from the Latin root cultura regarding agriculture. Something that is cultivated, something grown from where it was planted. Culture is the environment of stories, ideas, and beliefs that a group of people share. Evidently unownable. Ancient Greeks didn’t need to buy a licence to include Zeus in their fanfic about being turned into a goose because it was all publicly owned. With the advent of the printing press came the advent of one of the oldest of the mass market industries. Printing press operators suddenly found themselves possessing something arts students can only dream about: having a low supply and high demand skill set. Seizing on this power, they formed a union to enforce strict censorship on documents put to the press. The Anne Statute of 1710 became law to bust this union, the ‘Stationer’s Company’, by giving exclusive legal rights to the author for 14 years. This suddenly made farming ideas possible, the buying and selling of them. The original intention of copyright was to incentivise intellectual innovation by allowing authors to profit from their books. In the long two centuries since, the length of this exclusive ownership has increased by a lifetime.

Mr. Michael Mouse holds the keys to our culture. Over the 20th century, Disney lobbied for an increase in the length of exclusive rights three times—each successful. One of them, the ‘Sonny Bono Copyright Term Extension Act’ derisively referred to as the ‘Mickey Mouse Protection Act’, extended the ownership of ‘Steam Boat Willie’ to 2024. Over the past 20 years, Disney has expanded the number of licences they own at a rate of one acquisition per year. Since 2004, Disney has acquired the rights to the following notable cultural entities: The Muppets, Pixar, Marvel Entertainment, Lucasfilm, 21st Century Fox, and, as recently as the 7th of February this year, Epic Games. We do not own the legal rights to our culture; it is a patchwork quilt of private ideas. Our cultural agency has been tapped and slowly dripped out for decades. The only place we have left to contribute is satire. Ridicule is our final recourse, the only remaining valve to exhaust frustration. Through the gradual recession of our cultural agency, we have been left with two options: consume or deride. Either take it or take it with venom. There is no cultural ‘right to repair’, no ability to build upon, replace, improve, modify, effect. Or at least, not for most of our cultural stuff. Because exclusive copyrights do end, and our stuff is returned to us. So, what do we do with it? Well, if ‘Winnie-the-Pooh: Blood and Honey’ is any indication, we trash it.

It’s hard not to sound like a weirdo who doesn’t get the joke when it comes to discussing this cultural moment. Because I did get the joke, I really did. I vividly remember lying in bed, under the covers in my still-dark room, ignoring the need to get ready for class, with the bright phone light burning my eyes through my sleepy squint, nose blocked and whistling, when I saw a link to the trailer float up through my feed, reaching one finger, Davinci-like, to click it and mutter, 30 seconds in, lol. But in context, with more than 30 seconds of thought, it becomes clear how unfunny this is. It’s deadly serious, actually. Because the way to truly take ownership isn’t to break but to build. A horror movie adaptation of a character is only funny if you think of it as Disney’s character. But it’s not anymore. It’s ours. Our children, our childhoods, are nauseated by this kind of cultural vandalism. If we don’t take care of our culture, no one will. Now we own ‘Winnie-the-Pooh’ again we aren’t locked in the consume/deride framework. We can tell newer, better, and more beautiful stories that don’t throw the truly precious out with the bathwater. We need to do this because there is something very sacred about these characters.

I work at a campsite. We run activities like high ropes courses, bushwalks, orienteering, etc. Every year, St. Vinnies books us in January to run a camp for the low socio-economic kids in our area. Their carers must continue to work for their meagre income, leaving their kids home all day every day to relieve their boredom by eating more and fighting more. Holidays can be a brutal time for some families. So, St Vinnies runs two week-long camps for these kids, for free. On the final night of their stay every year, they do a sing-along around the campfire. My first time with this group, I found it extremely fascinating. What songs would they sing? Singing around a campfire is an ancient human tradition, but what do we have to give these kids now? Well, that night, I got a call over the radio to bring them some more firewood. It was a warm, black night. The insects thrummed and droned in the surrounding bush while birds sang their songs in the diminishing light. Over these night sounds, I heard that pitchy unison of kids singing. Then I saw the fire-glow flicker between the twisting gum trees and their swaying silhouettes. As I drew nearer, I could make out the song: ‘The Bare Necessities’. Disney songs. They were singing Disney songs. None of them needed lyrics either, they all sang off the top of their head. Of course they did. It was all they had to sing.