In China, censorship is one of those things you just accept happens and is as natural to me as say not being able to get a cab in Shanghai on a rainy day or Ricky Martin coming out of the closet.
But when someone like Scott Schuman, street fashion photographer and creater of
The Sartorialist, a person who makes an entire blog out of cataloguing OTHER people's fashion creations, throws a hissy fit over a
satirical spin off of his blog it definitely rubs me the wrong way.
Schuman, angry at Eduardo Cachucho's fake Satorialist site, went as far as send him a cease and desist email, a response eerily remincent of EMI's anger over DJ Danger Mouse's Grey Album. But the thing is Schuman isn't an entrenched company stuck in the glory yesterdays of yore before technology came and ruined everything nor is he a Communist party whose power over the people hangs precariously on strongarming the media. He's the creator of a pioneering fashion blog, a fashion maverick from what we know to be the "free world."
I can understand the desire to protect intellectual property or the rights of his subjects but isn't the brillance of this day and age the fact that people can take easily mix and remix media pushing it to levels the original creator never intended or thought of? And yes, much of the time this results in a ton of terrible youtube videos ("Look at me sing Justin Brieber's One in front of my bedroom mirror!") but at other times you get absolute brillance like
this or
this.
Not to say Cachucho's site is brillant because it's actually kind of terrible but it's not a rip off nor does it damage the reputation of those photographed on Schuman's site or Schuman himself. Instead Cachucho clumsily manipulates Schuman's photos using Photoshop to create what would be hilariously ridiculous outfits if only they didn't look so technically sad. All these image "creations" are posted in a jumble with thoughts and commentary that are slightly above mediocre.
There were few redeeming qualities in Cachucho's fake-satorialist that would ever propel it to internet celeb-dom except for the fact it attracted the ire of the infinitely more popular Schuman. Now, thanks to this
NYT article, Cachucho is getting more visitors than he ever could have on his own merits.
Here's the kicker (courtesy of the
NYT):
Mr. Schuman said his site receives about 250,000 hits each day; Mr. Cachucho said his gets about 50. But Mr. Schuman said he was still bothered by the unflattering depiction of his subjects. “Now everyone feels the Internet is a free-for-all,” he said.
Yeah, Mr. Schuman. That must be terrible, free speech and all.
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