Re: A bottomless pit of plagiarism

On Sun, 15 Jun 2025 13:22:48 -0400 (EDT), kludge@panix.com (Scott
Dorsey) wrote:

Disney has long been in the business of taking old classics and=20
copyrighting them as their own.  Many of them not technically=20
plagiarism, since the originals were never copyrighted.  Snow White and=20
Cinderella, to name two off the top of my head.

>
IANAL, but my understanding of this would be:
1. The stories as such are not copyrighted.
2. A particular book containing the stories may be copyrighted as
regards any essays, notes, illustrations, etc added to the book by its
publisher.
3. A movie based on a book is copyrightable as such, whether the book
was copyrighted or not. Of course, if it was, the rights to make the
movie would have to be acquired.

>
My objection is not necessarily that they are using old stories from the
public domain.  Shakespeare did that.
>
However, having read both Othello and the story _Un Capitano Moro_ that the
plot was taken from, I think Othello is a far better work.  Shakespeare took
a good idea with a mediocre workup and turned it into something great.
>
Disney, however, takes great works and ruins them.  That's my objection.
Whoever decided to tack a happy ending on to Hunchback of Notre Dame deserves
to be thrown in the catacombs.

When the Disney film came out, on another newsgroup, this point was
raised. One regular disappeared for a week, and reported he had
watched every movie version of /Hunchback/ he could find. The results
(as I recall them):

1. The villain is sometimes split (as in the Disney film) and
sometimes is not (as in the book).
2. Phoebus sometimes dies half-way through (in which case he is
replaced by another character -- no, not Quasimodo) or he makes it to
the end (as in the Disney film).
3. Esmeralda survives in all movie versions (but not in the book,
where she is hanged).
4. The book's ending has never been filmed. For the curious, this
involves a coffin being opened and finding in the skeletons of a young
woman and a horribly deformed man in an embrace.
5. Quasimodo and Esmeralda never end up together; Esmeralda ends up
with Phoebus (if he survived) or his replacement (if he didn't).

The conclusion from this extensive research was:

The only real difference between Disney's version and the other movie
versions is -- the talking gargoyles.

So you can complain about the ending if you wish, but your complaint
applies to all the movie versions the person doing this could find and
watch.

IOW, there is an established tradition of how the book is filmed, and
the Disney version stands well within that tradition.

Note that most versions of Dracula end in England because they are
based (directly or indirectly through an earlier movie's script) on a
stage play, not the book. And I don't think these are isolated cases.

This makes a certain amount of sense, as the playwright has already
reduced the story to something that can be shown in a reasonable
length of time.

And Disney does not really give credit to the sources... so many people today
think Cinderella was originally a Disney story.  That is another layer of
shame.

IIRC, at least one attibutes the story to a French author in the
titles.

Disney does appear to prefer the French versions to the German
versions. No evil stepsisters getting their eyes pecked out by birds
in Disney!
--
"Here lies the Tuscan poet Aretino,
Who evil spoke of everyone but God,
Giving as his excuse, 'I never knew him.'"