By MJ Quigley
The Public Domain and Commodification:
So 2024 started, with a lot of buzz around the public domain and the world’s most famous mouse, no I’m not talking about Basil the Great Mouse Detective. At the start of this year, the copyright on Steamboat Willie and thus the first designs of Mickey Mouse expired, and much like when Winnie the Pooh entered the public domain in the US in 2022, several people immediately jumped on it. They announced some of the most generic horror projects making use of these characters, most capitalising on shock value.
Now I am no friend of the corporations that would love to close off the public domain and hold these works in a death-grip for eternity, but this makes me think the public domain was a mistake. These sorts of works look to commodify the public domain and mine it for content. As writers and creators who care for our art, we should recognise the debt that we owe the public domain. We need to be bold and try new things when making use of the public domain and writing retellings.
The Dark Interpretations, Horror, and When It’s Cheap:
Blood and Honey and Mickey’s Mouse Trap, are the two most prominent horror projects that come to mind, but that is not to say that they are the only ones. A cursory search on Steam of Winnie the Pooh will present you with a whole bunch of games, some of which can be described as asset flips and others that clearly have had more effort put into them, but still look capitalise on this idea of placing it in the horror genre. It is fairly trite and unimaginative, “Oh look, I’ve taken a whimsical character and made them into a crazed killer” after the first or second time the novelty has worn out its welcome.
Now, one can debate when and how such a trend began with these dark interpretations; some would point to the dark reinterpretations of Alice in Wonderland. With the most prominent being that of American McGee’s Alice and its sequel Madness Returns, in which Alice returns to Wonderland in a dark and twisted state, having to murder her way through. I am inclined to say that it is not the case. While its darker interpretation will obviously raise some eyebrows, it does so much more than just using the characters for the basis of a slasher film for the shock value.
American McGee’s two games leverage the source material in such a way that lends a new depth to it, using Wonderland and its twisted state to reflect the trauma that Alice had experienced prior to the game’s events. The journey that we join Alice on throughout the two games is one in which she processes the grief and trauma along with coming to understand the truth of what happened to her family. It wears the original book on its sleeve, and comes from a level of understanding and care for the original work, existing beyond mere shock value. At the end of the day, there is nothing wrong with a dark or horror adaptation, but it needs to understand how that intersects with the original work and its themes.
It is also important to note that these darker projects are not the only way to radically transform a public domain work. To continue to beat the dead horse of Alice in Wonderland, it is time to consider another reinterpretation of it. Let us consider Frank Beddor’s Looking Glass War Trilogy, which leans more into the fantastical elements of Wonderland to give us a tale focused on the other world in which Alice is in fact the rightful heir to the throne of Wonderland, having escaped to London and been adopted by Lewis Carroll. The series follows Alice as she looks to defeat her aunt. Personally, I am not a fan of Beddor’s treatment of the work; it feels somewhat played out in numerous other retellings, but it at the very least has flavour and life to it.
Blood and Honey and Mickey’s Mouse Trap both seem to lack these qualities, relying on the novelty of taking something whimsical and making it a gory mess meant to shock the general public. It is a great marketing tool to make such announcements as soon as the original work has entered the public domain, a definite boost to the directors’ and writers’ public profile, but I do not believe it will get them far if they continue to rely on such a gimmick to prop up their career.
How to Get The Best Out of The Public Domain:
One must first recognise that the public domain exists for the public good. It is the commons in which we as creators owe a massive debt to. I think it is also important to understand the role of originality in copyright. It is hard to call it a test of objectivity, especially when different countries have different approaches to it, but originality has its limits, and you will be hard pressed to find a wholly original idea. Our creations are a sum of our personality, experiences, and the works that have inspired us.
In my own experience, I had once attempted to do a mash-up leveraging several public domain works, Dracula, Frankenstein and Faust in the vein of League of Extraordinary Gentlemen by Alan Moore, and Kuota Hirano’s Hellsing. This was early in my writing career, when my influences were worn on my sleeve and ultimately I only wrote like four chapters before realising I wasn’t quite vibing with it on the basis it felt derivative and that I wasn’t doing anything interesting with the concept. I moved onto greener pastures, learning the craft and thinking about those works and why they resonated with me in such a way.
While on the subject of what has influenced me as a writer, I think one of the most important bodies of work to consider in the context of the public domain and making creative use of it, is that of H.P Lovecraft. The mythos that has been developed over the years since it entered the public domain has become a grand creative effort with so many people reinventing the wheel and taking the necessary critical eye with his work. Any discussion involving Lovecraft, inevitably will cycle back to his abhorrent racism and how baked into his stories it was. His use of harmful tropes is well documented, and this is where the best work has been done. People have used reinventions of Lovecraft’s stories, or sequels, or the lore to write tales that interrogate the racism that exists. Lovecraft Country is one such example that uses the Eldritch Horror of Lovecraft and focuses on Black main characters to interrogate the racism that is rife in Lovecraft’s work and American society.
One work that had gotten me really thinking about the public domain was Abigail Thorn’s The Prince, which I had the pleasure of seeing in person in 2022. It was a fantastic show, leveraging Shakespeare to explore the themes of queerness, and the expectations of “Playing the role” was beautiful, every scene meticulously crafted with a passion and care for the work. The understanding of the structure, and then using that to subvert and breakdown the plays in question was truly something to be inspired by.
All in all, the public domain is something to be treasured. Our greatest mistake would be to view it as this pit of free ideas to just dredge up and use on a whim. It is a public good, and we as writers can achieve great things with it, but only if we recognise our debt to it. When you even begin considering using a public domain work as the foundation for something, the first advice is to read the original work and immerse yourself in it, read recent adaptations and reinventions to get an idea of what has been done. Then you should ask yourself the important questions, such as your passion for the work and the takeaways you have from the themes and how it speaks to you. Look at the problematic elements and deconstruct them to better understand the work and how you can avoid such things, or if you are daring, how you can subvert and interrogate the original author’s positions.
What you do should be fun and engaging for both yourself and the audience, which is the final bit of advice with it: have fun with it, indulge ideas that you may be scared to try, but do it in the context of the above Immerse yourself in the work and understanding your reasons for picking it out of so many other things in the public domain. Give us art, rather than a cheap product designed to get as many eyes on it as possible.
