In “On the Rights of Molotov Man” painter Joy Garnett and photographer Susan Meiselas debate the bounds of copyright and how decontextualizing and “remixing” images affects meaning. The authors pose the question, “Who owns the rights to this man’s struggle?” (55).
The article starts out this debate from Joy’s beautiful painting of the Molotov man. Her artwork was created based upon a random image on the internet. However, she was called in by Susan Meiselas’ lawyer as she didn’t ask for any permission of the credit. What makes this even crazier is her painting went viral through the Internet. Count recreation artwork appeared, which result in the vanish of the original meaning behind the photo. Just like Susan says “the image has been subjected to many kinds of reappropriations, most of which, far from condemning, I have welcomed” (57).
As for me, this problem contains two aspects. One is the about the content of the image, the figure that is adopted by all kinds of coming artworks. Actually, this sort of event is also familiar to now. For example, in China, the popular images recreation of celebrity (Yao Ming, Trump, and other media stars), or funny video remix. Nobody cares about the original meaning behind the initial image. Even the latter new meaning of the recreation is nonsense. But, strictly speaking, though I’m also enjoying the fun of these remixes, is this right for us to do so? Like in the article, the original character comes from a cruel war, however, is used in many funny or even rude entertainment. The other point is about copyright. Is it truly reasonable to regulate everyone’s recreation of the artwork if it accessible to all people on the internet? Or, only set laws to control some kinds of uses?