On Mon, Jun 1, 2015 at 7:12 PM, Kevin M. <[email protected]> wrote:
> >> I confess I've been preoccupied by this all day. I don't know if there > was ever a civil suit against Manson by families of victims who might > subsequently have a say in the "rights" to the use of and/or profit from > his likeness or his name. I know convicts can't earn money off of their > convictions while incarcerated, but I don't know how much say they have in > unauthorized works of fiction about themselves. It just struck me watching > it that if Manson was lucid enough to sit through a one-hour NBC drama (and > let's face it, one doesn't have to be Manson to struggle doing that), he'd > be annoyed at how he was portrayed. > > Many years ago when I was in junior high, we watched a documentary in > school about Jonestown. If you can imagine how watered down Jonestown has > to be for it to be shown in a Christian junior high classroom, that's > basically how Manson was portrayed in the pilot of Aquarius. Strumming a > guitar while doe-eyed girls fawned over him, not really doing anything > until the end of the episode in the parking garage, at which point I > remembered that Manson famously got others to do his dirty work, so the > parking garage scene only served to rip me out of the story. > > Manson has to be a hard character to write, since he was a puppet master, > but nobody could ever quite explain how he pulled so many strings beyond > getting people so full of drugs they lost all their senses. He didn't take > direct action, wasn't conventionally attractive, things he said rarely if > ever made sense, so you can't get Hannibal Lector style quotes from him. In > "Aquarius," he looks like every male Starbucks barrista I've ever seen and > speaks in "beat" poetry. > > <[email protected]>I don't know. I guess I just need > to let it go and wait until the new X-Files episodes to get my Duchovny fix. > Manson happened to get blown up by the media in 1969 because he represented an evil dark side to the hippie experience. As he went defiantly through the justice system with his co-defendants he provided fodder for a narrative of how dangerous nonconformism can be. So he was not only a public figure in 1969-70, he became a central figure and that is why I could see that a work of historical fiction for that era could use his name and likeness without compensation. I think Manson is a hard character to write because he just is not a significant person. The media echoes of the consequences of the Tate/LaBianco murders destroyed all proportions of the crimes and built a small industry around the "mystique" of Manson. A fictional Manson character has to embody that mystique even if the actual Manson did not. -- -- TV or Not TV .... The Smartest (TV) People! You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "TV or Not TV" group. To post to this group, send email to [email protected] To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [email protected] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/tvornottv?hl=en --- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "TVorNotTV" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected]. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
