Creators: Kill The Hobbit To Save Regular Earth, And Win!

from the with-apologies-to-martin-freeman dept

Mon, Dec 17th 2012 3:59pm — Leigh Beadon

Last week, we wrote about an article by Joe Karaganis discussing the huge tax subsidies and political concessions wrested from the New Zealand government by Warner Bros. in order to film The Hobbit in the country. The editorial was entitled Kill The Hobbit Subsidies To Save Regular Earth, which inspired an editorial cartoon that Bloomberg View attached to it, which in turn has inspired Joe to launch a contest for creative interpretations of The Hobbit as an allegory for the situation.

First, I confess I hadn't fully thought through how to map the various heroes and villains of ‘Kill the Hobbit’ back onto ‘The Hobbit.’ But on reflection, this drawing seems a bit off. In my version of the story, the hobbit is the villain, stealing gold from the people of New Zealand (I guess to take back to Hollywoodshire?) This would make Smaug the dragon the public, and Smaug’s giant pile of gold the commonwealth (that’s why it’s so large). Smaug should be casting the Expecto Patronum (EP) spell to banish the Hobbit, not the other way around.

But hey, people may see it differently, and their right to publish those perspectives on our common culture is part of what’s at stake in ‘Kill the Hobbit to Save Regular Earth’ (pivoting here to New Zealand’s support for the IP-enforcement-on-steroids Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement).

So with that in mind, I am happy to announce the ‘Kill the Hobbit to Save Regular Earth’ Initiative– KH2SREI for short (pronounced Kisstory, after the ancient Elven admonition to beware Hobbits bringing gifts).

I invite you to flesh out the Kisstory allegory in whatever direction makes most sense to you. If you send me pictures, I will publish them here (as long as they are not obscene or gratuitously nasty). I will even try to talk the good people at Bloomberg View into running them. And if we get enough submissions we will have a public vote to award copies of the “semi-epic” Media Piracy in Emerging Economies to the two most worthy entries (plus whatever other awards we can accumulate in the meantime.)

As for those "other awards", we're throwing a Techdirt t-shirt into the mix. So if you're a creator, whatever your medium, we hope you'll submit something! Head on over to the contest page for more details and some "extra points" guidelines, including a "Special award for the best pro-Hobbit, pro TPPA, pro Warner Bros art, if we get any" because hey, political cartoons can cut both ways.

Thank you for reading this Techdirt post. With so many things competing for everyone’s attention these days, we really appreciate you giving us your time. We work hard every day to put quality content out there for our community.

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Filed Under: hobbit, hollywood, infringement, movies, new zealand, subsidies

17 Comments

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Rikuo (profile), 17 Dec 2012 @ 4:02pm

Two words. Tolkien Estate.
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Eponymous Coward, 17 Dec 2012 @ 4:14pm

Good luck,
A bad Hobbit's hard to break...
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Anonymous Coward, 17 Dec 2012 @ 5:06pm

Kisstory?
Gene Simmons and company filing lawsuit in 4..3..2..
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- That Anonymous Coward (profile), 18 Dec 2012 @ 12:40am
  
  Re: Kisstory?
  I thought he finally STFU about this sort of thing after his son was shown to be a crappy plagiarist using other peoples work and calling it his own.
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vegetaman (profile), 17 Dec 2012 @ 7:20pm

I'm sure if we likened the **AA organizations of the world as Sauron pouring his might into crafting The One Ring (read: copyright extensions, fighting "piracy" of those damned immortal elves, etc.), and its inevitable fall (read: failing of their business model) where Mt. Doom turns out to be The Internet...

But drawing that, aye, there's the rub.
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- That Anonymous Coward (profile), 18 Dec 2012 @ 12:41am
  
  Re:
  the internet, its a series of caldara's
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- Ninja (profile), 18 Dec 2012 @ 2:19am
  
  Re:
  No, no, the intertubes is Galadriel's mirror! I'd say his interpretation is accurate in a sense (hobbit the villain, Smaug the public with its Public Domain treasure) BUT you could see the hobbit as the people (small and powerless against the great corporations robbery) in a quest to recover their treasure much like in LOTR. They are small things in the middle of great powers but in the end they are the ones driving the fall of Sauron (the MAFIAA).
  
  Good lord and Tolkien says in the book he did not intend to make any allegory...
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Beta (profile), 17 Dec 2012 @ 8:29pm

They delved too deep.
"Smaug should be casting the Expecto Patronum (EP) spell to banish the Hobbit..."

That causes me almost physical pain. I never knew I was that big a fantasy nerd.
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orbitalinsertion (profile), 17 Dec 2012 @ 11:28pm

The thing: In order to "kill the Hobbit", one would likely need to know about the Hobbit than one really wants to know.
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- Anonymous Coward, 17 Dec 2012 @ 11:45pm
  
  Re:
  "Duck season!"
  "Wabbit season!"
  "Duck season!"
  "Wabbit season!"
  "Duck season!"
  
  *Cue poster with an image of Elijah Wood as Frodo, with the caption "HOBBIT SEASON"*
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Anonymous Coward, 18 Dec 2012 @ 2:03am

regardless of the success or not of this little project, the ones that should be lambasted and take notice of what this is really about, ie Hollywood and the other entertainment industries continuous whining about losing, losing, losing, while being given millions, millions, millions under false pretenses, will totally ignore it!
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Anonymous Coward, 18 Dec 2012 @ 4:53am

When are they going to make a movie based upon "Bored of the Rings"?
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- That Anonymous Coward (profile), 24 Dec 2012 @ 3:19pm
  
  Re:
  Once we destroy the copyright cartels evil, then we can focus on the evils of the Olympic Committee.
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  - Ransoms, 27 Oct 2013 @ 11:53am
    
    Re: Re:
    Your right
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Your dum!, 27 Oct 2013 @ 11:45am

This sucks dummy!the hobbit is awesome!
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Your dum!, 27 Oct 2013 @ 11:45am

This sucks dummy!the hobbit is awesome!
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Smarty, 27 Oct 2013 @ 11:48am

You suck now get a life!dummydummydummydummy!and your a loser
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