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The Nike of Nonconformity
November 30, 2008 11:54 AM Subscribe

Emily the Strange has been the Hello Kitty for teenage girls who prefer black to pink for some 17 years now (if she were a real teenager she'd have grown out of her merchandise). Unfortunately for her creator, someone noticed that nonconformist gloomy teens are nothing new...
posted by mippy (121 comments total) 17 users marked this as a favorite

That's ridiculous. She's clearly a ripoff of Sadako/Samara from The Ring.

I mean, she's skinny, has long, straight black hair, and is a girl. Those are clearly unique elements.
posted by Pope Guilty at 12:01 PM on November 30, 2008

Read the second link. The text is almost word for word, and even the cats are nearly identical (just horizontally flipped).
posted by PercussivePaul at 12:06 PM on November 30, 2008 [2 favorites]

I was all "big whoop!" until I clicked the "new" link. Yeah, that's clearly a ripoff.
posted by Kattullus at 12:08 PM on November 30, 2008 [2 favorites]

Yeah, that's damning evidence. If the original artist and writer are still alive they should get compensated big-time. The Emily people are probably swimming in a money bin a la Scrooge McDuck.
posted by fleetmouse at 12:09 PM on November 30, 2008 [2 favorites]

I'd be tempted to agree, PG, except for the comparison pictures in the third link. Nearly identical visuals AND text are a little difficult to put up as happenstance.

On preview, what they said.
posted by elfgirl at 12:09 PM on November 30, 2008

From the current Wikipedia page:

Emily the Strange (sometimes written as Emily Strange) is a fictional counterculture character, totally and utterly ripped from Marjorie Weinman Sharmat and Marc Simont by Rob Reger and his company Cosmic Debris Etc. Inc. This link is proof. So is this one.
posted by dunkadunc at 12:11 PM on November 30, 2008 [4 favorites]

Also, big ups to mippy for the "Nike of Nonconformity" title. I am so stealing that.
posted by fleetmouse at 12:13 PM on November 30, 2008 [4 favorites]

Emily the Common
posted by lee at 12:22 PM on November 30, 2008

That's not the only person the ETS people have stolen from (see sidebars here and here)
posted by jtron at 12:28 PM on November 30, 2008

As far as the plagiarism goes, I'm sorry, but so what?

You could argue that first panel was pretty clearly inspired by the book, but what about the rest of it? What difference does it make if one character was inspired by another? It isn't like the artist is going back to the source material for all of his work with the new character.

If people couldn't create new works from other pre-existing works, all art would cease.

Who cares?

Oh yeah, bla bla bla prepackaged non-conformity hot topic sucks, etc.
posted by delmoi at 12:32 PM on November 30, 2008 [6 favorites]

Count me in among the "Oh straight hair for "spooky" girls is such a archetype*, even the new Coraline borrows** from that, blach blah" until I saw the second link. Wow. That is a damning find. Word. For. Word.

* Fun story, I took a pale-faced, straight-black hair female friend to see the The Ring. Leaving the theater, she opened the door at the same time an usher was coming in and the Usher yelped and jumped back. "I thought you were the girl from the movie!". Good times.

** Total derail, but I really liked McKean's take on Coraline's appearance. She's not really "spooky" in the book, so blondish ragamuffin seems to fit better. However, the movie's take on her seems to fit what people thought she looked like when reading, so what do I know. Fun fact! There are almost no descriptions of Coraline's appearance in the book, supposedly so all little girls could see themselves as her, which is kind of neat.
posted by The Whelk at 12:37 PM on November 30, 2008

Funny how we all had the same experience.

Second link: big deal, two chicks with long straight black hair.
Third link: whoops.

Me too.
posted by rokusan at 12:43 PM on November 30, 2008 [6 favorites]

Delmoi - I don't know what Hot Topic is, and yes, art is influenced by art. But someone's making a shit-load of money from something that is more than heavily influenced by a little-known children's book. See also here. Would it be right for me to make something based on someone else's design and sell it as my own creation? Really, there needs to be a line drawn between homage and theft. Lichenstein got the balance right. Lots of retailers who should know better don't.
posted by mippy at 12:44 PM on November 30, 2008 [2 favorites]

I expect a quick and secret settlement in the Gaiman/Rowlings fashion, followed by some scrubbing and a lot of "no comment" responses.

Paying big and fast is probably the best way to save the brand/revenue stream.
posted by rokusan at 12:45 PM on November 30, 2008

Uh...hey, look, I'm as happy to damn the man as anybody, but all that convinces me of is that whoever created that bumper sticker (and it was probably a sweatshop employee, and not the creator of Emily the Strange) read Nate the Great and saw the similarities. Either it was an in-jokey homage or a case of some poor nameless art school grad trying to beat a deadline, but it's not proof that the character was stolen.

The similarities themselves are...not that amazing: She's a gothy girl. She has black hair. She likes cats. People call her "strange." If you've been a teenager at any point in the last thirty years, I don't think any of this will seem remarkable. Absolutely any depiction of a morbid girl will more or less conform to this description.
posted by kittens for breakfast at 12:47 PM on November 30, 2008 [1 favorite]

If people couldn't create new works from other pre-existing works, all art would cease.

Well, first of all Emily the Strange isn't art. Sometimes marketing can be art, but this isn't it. It's a mascot. Second, even sampling artists regularly pay people for samples these days.

And what you say is true enough, but the law is the law, at least for the time being. If the corporate world can use copyright law as a method to protect their interests, then so can "ordinary people" use it to protect themselves when the corporate world steals their ideas. Inspiration is one thing. Wholesale appropriation of someone's work for a mascot-based line of merchandise is pure opportunism. Hey, if Cosmic Debris and Hot Topic can get their cut, I don't see why Marjorie Weinman Sharmat and Marc Simont shouldn't get theirs. If they had done the same with a Seuss character, they would have been sued into the ground by now.
posted by krinklyfig at 12:47 PM on November 30, 2008 [1 favorite]

If people couldn't create new works from other pre-existing works, all art would cease.

This Word, It Does Not Mean What You Think It Means.

In Metamagical Themas, Douglas Hofstadter prepares a lengthy list of examples of thought, starting with an insects automated response and ending with Bach writing a fugue; then he precedes to ask where on that list creativity begins. I'm pretty much thinking a mirror flip and changing a proper noun doesn't exactly grab the bronze ring of creativity. Or even blindly flail at it. Or raise a hand.
posted by Kid Charlemagne at 12:48 PM on November 30, 2008 [17 favorites]

I've seen a lot of that Emily Strange merch over the years, but I never knew it was an actual brand. I thought it was just a pretty generic image of a goth girl.
posted by Slack-a-gogo at 12:49 PM on November 30, 2008

Wow. I loved her merchandise when I was in college ( not enough to buy any though). Does she actually sell really well? Or is she just on novelty merchandise?
posted by anniecat at 12:49 PM on November 30, 2008

That bumper sticker was (apparently) an official item, which is a sinker right there.
posted by rokusan at 12:55 PM on November 30, 2008

I always that that Emily stuff was a rip-off. Not of somebody's idea though. Just of people's money.
posted by srboisvert at 12:55 PM on November 30, 2008 [2 favorites]

thought. I always thought.
posted by srboisvert at 12:55 PM on November 30, 2008

At least the flash games are fun.
posted by voltairemodern at 12:57 PM on November 30, 2008

That bumper sticker was (apparently) an official item, which is a sinker right there.

What I'm saying is, I doubt the official merchandise has been the product of the original creator for quite some time now. So they can prove that that particular image was ripped off from the book, yeah, but it may be a lot harder to prove that the character itself was a swipe.
posted by kittens for breakfast at 1:03 PM on November 30, 2008 [1 favorite]

Nate the Great books is not an obscure series. There are about a million of 'em, and they're every bit as popular as Junie B. Jones, and probably more popular than Ramona Quimby or the Magic School Bus. Rosamond might be an obscure character, but Nate the Great is certainly not.
posted by box at 1:05 PM on November 30, 2008 [3 favorites]

In fact, I'm pretty confident that Nate the Great is more popular and well-known than Emily the Strange. They should print up some t-shirts.
posted by box at 1:06 PM on November 30, 2008 [1 favorite]

Wait wait wait, The Magic School Bus wasn't a hugely popular book series?

God, even as a kid I was out of touch.
posted by The Whelk at 1:08 PM on November 30, 2008 [3 favorites]

Either it was an in-jokey homage or a case of some poor nameless art school grad trying to beat a deadline

It's hard out there for a hack.
posted by Halloween Jack at 1:08 PM on November 30, 2008

The girl who dated Rob Reger in Santa Cruz during the early 90's and is considered to be the inspiration for Emily used to live in Sacramento where she is a librarian.

I was surprised how much Emily Strange merchandise I saw girls in China wearing.
posted by geekyguy at 1:14 PM on November 30, 2008

I was surprised how much Emily Strange merchandise I saw girls in China wearing.

Factory seconds.
posted by rokusan at 1:17 PM on November 30, 2008 [1 favorite]

That's weird, you'd think a teenage goth girl of all people would know that there's always someone somewhere with a big nose who knows, who will trip you up and laugh when you fall.
posted by Ian A.T. at 1:23 PM on November 30, 2008 [19 favorites]

Nate the Great books is not an obscure series. There are about a million of 'em, and they're every bit as popular as Junie B. Jones

That doesn't mean anything this side of the pond. Bit like me saying that HP is about as obsure as Daddie's to an American. Maybe it's like Curious George or Stuart Little, things kids over here never grew up with (unless perhaps they saw the films).

I was a bit old for Emily - it never became popular over here until I was about 18, and was quite expensive as it was on import.
posted by mippy at 1:27 PM on November 30, 2008

It always amuses me when the plagiarism police get their pitchforks out. It's only a big deal if one is under the misguided belief that things don't get copied all the time. "original" is not the golden standard that most people think it is.

Big guys steal from little guys, little guys steal from big guys... Some do it really well, some not so well. Some agonize over it, some are barely cognizant of it. But it happens. Is it right? probably not, but we live in a world that pretty much half wrong all the time anyway.

Whoever came up with the emily strange brand concept can't be faulted for seeing that one little snippet out of that book and seeing a possibility that noone else saw. They can be faulted as a business person for not paying the originator, and for not giving credit where credit was due. But if artists were better at business, we'd live in a very different world. If originality mattered as much as people think, there'd be a lot less starving artists in the world
posted by billyfleetwood at 1:33 PM on November 30, 2008

a lot fewer

/pedant
posted by mippy at 1:43 PM on November 30, 2008 [1 favorite]

In other news: Emo is just reheated Goth.
posted by pompomtom at 1:45 PM on November 30, 2008 [2 favorites]

Emo is just reheated Goth.

Emo is goth that will not shut up.
posted by rokusan at 1:50 PM on November 30, 2008 [19 favorites]

I've always kinda liked the Emily Strange stuff, in the same way I like anything that gets girls away from that goddamn shiny-pink-fairy-Barbie universe/prison; the way they get locked into a crazy princess fantasy for the rest of their lives that includes (but is not limited to) unicorn posters, glitter, body-waxing and "dream weddings".

Right. Now girls have the option of buying into a more "counterculture" identity culture of black cat posters, black eye liner, fake body piercings, and "indie weddings." Emily is a goth Barbie marketed as a consumer rebellion. Different hair color, same price tag.
posted by zoomorphic at 2:00 PM on November 30, 2008 [44 favorites]

I always like the general idea of Emily the Strange right up until the moment I remember it's just more commercially mass produced crap for sale at Hot Topic and has nothing at all to do with DIY or underground culture.

This moment of acceptance lasts so briefly that so far I've been unable to measure it accurately. Does anyone have a SQUID and an atomic clock with femtosecond resolution I can borrow?
posted by loquacious at 2:02 PM on November 30, 2008

Emo is what happens when you see goths and think they're cool, but you don't get the joke.
posted by Pope Guilty at 2:02 PM on November 30, 2008 [5 favorites]

Emo is goth that will not shut up.

How do you ridicule an emo enough to make them cry?

Just stand around and wait a few minutes.

How do you get a goth out of The Tree?

Cut the music.
posted by loquacious at 2:06 PM on November 30, 2008 [3 favorites]

You know who else wore lots of black and had pale white faces?

Mimes.

I'm just sayin'.
posted by cazoo at 2:10 PM on November 30, 2008 [3 favorites]

I expect a quick and secret settlement in the Gaiman/Rowlings fashion

Is there more to the story than what Neil says?
posted by aperture_priority at 2:14 PM on November 30, 2008 [4 favorites]

That's weird, you'd think a teenage goth girl of all people would know that there's always someone somewhere with a big nose who knows, who will trip you up and laugh when you fall.

AND THE BONUS MORRISSEY POINTS GO TO...........

Ian A.T.!

(roar of the crowd)
posted by bitter-girl.com at 2:22 PM on November 30, 2008 [1 favorite]

I expect a quick and secret settlement in the Gaiman/Rowlings fashion

Um, yeah, as aperture_priority notes, whoever believes the rumor that Gaiman was ever paid off to settle a non-existent claim he never made against Rowlings for supposedly plagiarizing the Books of Magic is operating on 10-year-old bullshit that is, as Gaiman demonstrates in that link, "not just astoundingly badly written lunatic conspiracy theory nonsense, but easily disproven creepy nonsense."
posted by mediareport at 2:29 PM on November 30, 2008

I have an Emily change purse and I'm a 44-year-old man.
posted by ethnomethodologist at 2:38 PM on November 30, 2008 [1 favorite]

That's weird, you'd think a teenage goth girl of all people would know that there's always someone somewhere with a big nose who knows, who will trip you up and laugh when you fall.

Man, goth kids don't listen to The Smiths or Joy Division or even The Cure anymore. They're not buying obscure Bauhaus 12"s from tiny record stores. They're downloading Cradle Of Filth MP3s off the Internet. Say what you will about the packaged-rebellion goth subculture, at least it used to be associated with cool music.

Personally I don't see how this is such a big deal, and frankly neither would anyone else if the object under scrutiny wasn't something as easy-to-hate as a popular brand sold at Hot Topic. It says in one of the articles that the early images of the character were produced for skateboard art. If you know anything about skateboard art, most of it (in the post-World Industries era) is repurposed images from pop culture. It's not like the people behind this Emily character are constantly going back and plundering children's books for every new item and image they make. They used a single illustration and text in the earliest days of the character, and nothing since then. This is clearly more about anti-corporate-prepackaged-counterculture sentiment (look at the title of the post: "The Nike of Nonconformity") than any serious accusation of plagiarism. I dislike corporate entities cannibalizing and reselling youth-created subcultures back to the kids at a tidy profit as much as the next guy, but pick your battles.
posted by DecemberBoy at 2:38 PM on November 30, 2008 [6 favorites]

The title of the post is ironic. I have no strong feelings about Nike (I owned a pair when I was about seventeen) although I have stronger feelings about rebellion/indie style/blahblahblah being packaged and sold. But I find it pretty wrong that what was skateboard art (and I didn't know this, not being a skater) turned into a brand *without* credit being given where due. It's not like accusing Little Britain of ripping off League of Gentleman because both have a bullying, female grotesque character in them. If it were the other way around, and people were ripping off skateboard art for mass product, skaters would go mentalistico.

And as upthread, I have never heard of Hot Topic and don't believe there is a UK equivalent.
posted by mippy at 2:49 PM on November 30, 2008

See also here.

And here!
posted by Dr-Baa at 2:52 PM on November 30, 2008

Uh...hey, look, I'm as happy to damn the man as anybody, but all that convinces me of is that whoever created that bumper sticker (and it was probably a sweatshop employee, and not the creator of Emily the Strange) read Nate the Great and saw the similarities. Either it was an in-jokey homage or a case of some poor nameless art school grad trying to beat a deadline, but it's not proof that the character was stolen.

Christ, sometimes you people are stupid. It reminds me of the time Todd Goldman ripped off a character from Shmorky, made hundreds of thousands of dollars from it and his other art thefts, and people like you tripped all over yourselves to excuse what is clearly blatant plagiarism. What is wrong with you?
posted by Optimus Chyme at 2:55 PM on November 30, 2008 [11 favorites]

For some reason, Optimus Chyme, they view corporations as worthy of the understanding and protection we give to people, rather than as the amoral, money-grubbing lumbering masses of evil that they are.
posted by sonic meat machine at 2:58 PM on November 30, 2008 [4 favorites]

Wednesday Addams is full of woe.
posted by infinitewindow at 3:20 PM on November 30, 2008 [8 favorites]

http:// www.emilystrange.net/ beware/ forum/ signup.cfm
posted by eustatic at 3:25 PM on November 30, 2008

Wednesday Addams is full of woe.

I was going to suggest that this should have been posted on Wednesday.
posted by TedW at 3:28 PM on November 30, 2008

Awesome story of Nancy Stouffer and her crazy-assed scheme to get money out of the Harry Potter franchise. Wow.
posted by five fresh fish at 3:33 PM on November 30, 2008

Emily the strangely familiar.
posted by UbuRoivas at 3:34 PM on November 30, 2008 [3 favorites]

Man, goth kids don't listen to The Smiths or Joy Division or even The Cure anymore. They're not buying obscure Bauhaus 12"s from tiny record stores. They're downloading Cradle Of Filth MP3s off the Internet. Say what you will about the packaged-rebellion goth subculture, at least it used to be associated with cool music.

Exactly. The people behind Emily could very just as easily have called her "Emily Eldritch", which would have been at least a clever little nod-and-wink, but it would've gone right over the heads of the target market.
posted by UbuRoivas at 3:39 PM on November 30, 2008

The thing with Emily is that she isn't reallly a character, but a mascot. Like I said, she's very akin to Hello Kitty in that her merchandise isn't selling anything but the character on them - there is no book, TV show or film to promote, the product is purely Emily herself, and she exists only within it. There's very little, if any, differentiation between image and character.

"Emily the Strange first appeared on a sticker, a freebie distributed at concerts, record stores and skate shops to promote Cosmic Debris, the clothing line founded by skateboarder Rob Reger and racecar driver Matt Reed."

Maybe that was the first piece of merchandise.
posted by mippy at 3:48 PM on November 30, 2008

The idea that one image that was clearly swiped is the same thing as the entire character being swiped only works if you think other elements (black hair, cats, blah blah) are somehow protected, which they can't be, because they're common as dirt, and would likely figure into anyone's attempt to create a "goth girl" character.

Taken separately, sure, black cats, long straight black hair, short dresses and so forth are not trademarks belonging to one character. But when you have a character who is surrounded by these separate elements, and then someone else come along, copying not only the character but also her surrounding elements, what you have is reinforced plagiarism.
posted by Marisa Stole the Precious Thing at 3:54 PM on November 30, 2008 [3 favorites]

And here I thought I was just being a fuss...I'd always had loyalty to the Nate the Great series and felt like the Emily thing was a rip-off. And obvious. And over-saturated. It's more the loyalty of nostalgia than the other things. But they surely apply, nonetheless.

As to similarities with the Gaiman/Rowling/dozens of other UK storytellers thing, there is some truck with that: they're all dealing in archetypes for a developing being bearing the weight of its history and culture which happen to include glasses, scars, owls, and not a little magic. Like Tarot, where thousands of variations exist of the same concepts based on cultural and aesthetic symbolic translation. And there's nothing really wrong with that (hence Gaiman's "acceptance" of the Harry Potter juggernaut).

It's just when you take so much of the spirit of your inspiration - which happened to be invented around the time the archetype was settling into existence with the creators in living memory, and still easily located and contacted - and do so in such a specific manner as the Emily creators did is kind of, well, shady.

It's my sincere hope that if the Emily Strange license-holders are determined to have denied rightful compensation to Mr. Simont and Ms. Sharmat, they cheerfully and gratefully deliver the appropriate sum post-haste to their inspirations, which they should have arranged with in the first place...or at least once they saw it was a money-maker.

ANYWAY! Interesting stuff. I like how the second link clears up any lingering doubts cast by a careful reading of the first and the third polishes it all off. Mmm, build-up!
posted by batmonkey at 4:00 PM on November 30, 2008

Right. Now girls have the option of buying into a more "counterculture" identity culture of black cat posters, black eye liner, fake body piercings, and "indie weddings." Emily is a goth Barbie marketed as a consumer rebellion. Different hair color, same price tag.

No shit. This is hardly a new development. Barbie had 'punk' accessories in the 80's. Yes, I know, mass marketing is always bad and evil, but I don't see how giving girls choice in what they consume is bad. Counterculture always gets assimilated into mainstream culture once there is enough money to be made on it. It helps it become an acceptable part of society too, which I can't say I'm against. You can call tweens dressing up (with parental consent) like Emily Strange fucking sellouts and slaves to marketing, but it makes for a nice change.

Don't worry, kids will come up with new ways to shock and piss of their parents with their non-conformist ways. It might even be 1950's housewife Barbies.
posted by slimepuppy at 4:01 PM on November 30, 2008 [1 favorite]

Christ, sometimes you people are stupid. It reminds me of the time Todd Goldman ripped off a character from Shmorky, made hundreds of thousands of dollars from it and his other art thefts, and people like you tripped all over yourselves to excuse what is clearly blatant plagiarism. What is wrong with you?

1. We perceive meaningful similarity when there is none more often than we realize. That is not me saying that Emily the Strange is necessarily not a ripoff of the Nate the Great character. This is me saying that a similarity between one book illustration and one piece of licensed merchandise does not imply a case where one ripped off the other. It is possible for both creators (whoever the real creator of the art in the EtS case may be, indeed it was likely a flunkie) to have arrived at that design independently, or to have been accidentally inspired by the other, or to have included it as a sly homage. We're not talking about inventing calculus here, we're talking about the arrangement of shapes on a page.

2. Let's say it is a ripoff. So what? It seems evident that the Emily character is not simply a rebranded Rosamond. From what little I see in those illustrations, Rosamond's more well-rounded than that; she doesn't have that persistent glower, she doesn't dress solely in black, she interacts with the other characters in the Nate the Great stories, etc. If Emily is a ripoff, she's evolved since then, and not in a positive direction.

2. Even the simularity between the character ideas does not prove plagiarism. A couple years back, before I'd even heard of Emily the Strange, I invented my own (mostly unpublished) antisocial little girl character. I'd hate to think that, because I didn't jump immediately to press somewhere, that I am forever barred from doing anything with it. The concept of a little girl who doesn't like to play with dolls is not anything special. Even if she has four cats. Especially if you marry the idea with that goth meme that's been going around meatspace for a while now. These are types we're talking about, and it's insane to think any anyone owns them.

3. Plagiarism is means different things in different contexts. We're talking about obnoxious little pop culture signifiers here, not essays on Melville.

4. The Shmorky case, going solely from memory, was a lot more clear-cut than this one. It was a trend over time of a uncompensated flow of ideas going from the independent creator to the corporation.

I'm not trying to defend corporations, either this specific case or in general, here, and I'm so not trying to protect these kinds of hateful merchandise phenoms. (In particular, I find myself wanting to strangle that Happy Bunny creature.) But faulty reasoning brought to bear against a corporation could come back to harm independent creators (Disney: "You so totally ripped off Winnie the Pooh."), and whenever there is a power struggle between one guy working on his own struggling to make a living and a giant megacorp with fleets of well-funded lawyers, the megacorp tends to be the one that makes faulty reasoning prevail more effectively.
posted by JHarris at 4:03 PM on November 30, 2008 [2 favorites]

Uh, it would be like that, if this one image were the very genesis of the character, etc. It's a little more like the idea that J.K. Rowling ripped off Books of Magic or Captain Marvel was a rip-off of Superman* -- it's a case of two entities both using tropes so familiar as to defy the concepts of ownership and invention.

they traced an illustration if you don't get that i'm not even going to bother with you
posted by Optimus Chyme at 4:05 PM on November 30, 2008 [3 favorites]

It might even be 1950's housewife Barbies.

There is something of a vogue for knitting, baking and '50s dressing amongst late teens/twenties lasses at themoment.
posted by mippy at 4:08 PM on November 30, 2008

Since when is a kind of gawky kid with unkempt black hair and glasses and an owl being the most powerful wizard of his age but completely clueless about any of this a familiar trope? I mean it would be like having a character who was a conniving, back-stabbing weasel who has worked his way into the good graces of a heroic character only to betray him, naming him Wormtongue, and not being named J.R.R.Tolkien. Hell, why not have Hagrid get the womping willow to chill out by putting on his yellow boots and singing it a little song.

It's not like Rowling didn't have a cool story to tell, but she'd be a lot less annoying if she'd at least tried to file the serial numbers off of some of the "tropes" she borrowed, or not stuck so steadfastly to the line that she has no influences! Hell, why not suggest that you invented the English language and the very concept of magic independently?
posted by Kid Charlemagne at 4:17 PM on November 30, 2008 [4 favorites]

If you can't see that the images of Emily Strange in link three is a direct lift from Nate the Great, then this wallet in my hand is not the one that you are missing from your pocket, but merely a very similar one that coincidentally has your ID in it.
posted by Astro Zombie at 4:29 PM on November 30, 2008 [18 favorites]

I have an Emily change purse and I'm a 44-year-old man.

Mine has a picture of Riley from The Boondocks.
posted by PeterMcDermott at 4:30 PM on November 30, 2008

they traced an illustration if you don't get that i'm not even going to bother with you

I live in hope.
posted by kittens for breakfast at 4:34 PM on November 30, 2008

Since when is a kind of gawky kid with unkempt black hair and glasses and an owl being the most powerful wizard of his age but completely clueless about any of this a familiar trope?

The gawky kid of fuzzy parentage who right around puberty discovers-that-he-is/becomes totally awesome and powerful? Yeah, that's Star Wars and every other superhero comic published since 1963. I'm going to guess, and this is just me going out on a limb here, that Rowling and Gaiman independently got the idea that a wizard should have an owl from...oh, gosh, I dunno, somewhere.
posted by kittens for breakfast at 4:40 PM on November 30, 2008 [1 favorite]

But faulty reasoning brought to bear against a corporation could come back to harm independent creators

Exactly. Dont lower the standards for copyright/trademark infringement and dont make copyright/tm more powerful because it feels good to yell at hot topic culture. Hell, Nate the Great is also part of a corporate channel, or are we denying they have a corporate publisher? I dont see any indie here, just people being sold commerical products and ideas that could pass for indie to suburban teens.

Heck, independent is a meaningless term and the idea that all children's authors are kindly old men and women who are scrapping by is a myth. Children's books are owned assets and marketed by corporate entities to maximize profit. Just like regular books.

I wouldnt be surprsied if both Nate's owners and Emily's owners hashed this out years ago.

I thought people here were for watering down copyright and IP. Funny how that works.
posted by damn dirty ape at 4:51 PM on November 30, 2008 [2 favorites]

mippy: There is something of a vogue for knitting, baking and '50s dressing amongst late teens/twenties lasses at the moment.

This seems one of these ever-flowing counter-culture movements that seems to arise here and there around the world but never really gel into anything like a world-recognized Hebdige-approved subculture. As far as I can tell the first "ironic housewives" (to coin a phrase) came into existence around Evergreen State College in Olympia, Washington in the early 80's. Since then it's popped up here and there but it's never been particularly visible. This may have something to do with the fact that it's largely been a women's subculture and therefore escaped the attention of about half of hip humanity and has never had the rebellious caché of riot grrls (another Pacific Northwest invention) or separatist feminism. But I really don't know why "ironic housewives" haven't gotten their due, which is a shame really.
posted by Kattullus at 4:56 PM on November 30, 2008 [2 favorites]

...the Gaiman/Rowlings fashion...
Is there more to the story than what Neil says?

Ha. I hate it when I open my ass and words fall right out! Thanks for the re-education linky, Aperature.

I'd never researched it (obviously, heh), but had always assumed that some negotiated settlement was the reason for a weird "no comment" Gaiman made on a panel discussion once, and the Hollywood gossip supported that evidence-free theory in spades. Maybe he was just tired of answering the question.

I was also probably too profoundly affected by first impressions: when I saw a stand-up advertisement for the first (?) Harry Potter book, my immediate exclamation was "Wow, there's a Tim Hunter movie?"

Back on Emily: it's the words of that storybook page that damn it more than the similarity of shy girl art. Tough to have that many coincidences at once, I think.

But then again... I got my orphan-in-big-round-glasses-who-is-destined-to-become-world's-greatest-mage-if he-can-leave-behind-his-Mundane/Muggle-stepparents stories confused, so I guess anything is possible, Horatio.

(Molly was a better character than Hermione. Nyah.)
posted by rokusan at 5:00 PM on November 30, 2008

Now girls have the option of buying into a more "counterculture" identity culture of black cat posters, black eye liner, fake body piercings, and "indie weddings."

Point taken, and I realize it's cooler to hate everything... but I still think trying anything different is better. Barbie pink unicorn fairy dust is a gateway drug into Stepford adulthood, and I find that way creepier.

I buy my nieces Lego and construction toys. :)
posted by rokusan at 5:05 PM on November 30, 2008

I also like a lot of Emily's graphic design. In that way, it's much improved on the original ?stolen material.
posted by rokusan at 5:06 PM on November 30, 2008

As someone who
-has straight black hair with bangs
-pale skin
-wears dark clothing
-and sometimes stripedy socks
-has what many consider to be an odd sensibility
-once, yes, even had a black cat

-AND who happens to share a first name with this merchandising juggernaut

I would not be terribly heartbroken if all Emily the Strange merchandise were catapulted into the fucking sun. In fact, I would like that very much.
posted by louche mustachio at 5:06 PM on November 30, 2008 [23 favorites]

louche mustachio is a woman?!?? wow, that "mustachio" completely threw me!
posted by UbuRoivas at 5:21 PM on November 30, 2008

What does Frank have to say about all of this?????
posted by cmoj at 5:39 PM on November 30, 2008

I always like the general idea of Emily the Strange right up until the moment I remember it's just more commercially mass produced crap for sale at Hot Topic and has nothing at all to do with DIY or underground culture.

Yeah, I hate mass-produced culture too. Not enough opportunities to wallow in your own sense of smug superiority while hating on 14 year old girls for not being into whatever obscure gubbins you've defined as cool and "underground" this week.

(I mean, christ, did you just use that word sincerely?)
posted by cillit bang at 5:48 PM on November 30, 2008 [4 favorites]

louche mustachio is my beard.
posted by hermitosis at 6:02 PM on November 30, 2008 [2 favorites]

Not that I'm disagreeing that this is a particularly nasty rip-off, but on the subject of plagiarism, I find that the most difficult part of creativity is trying to figure out what you're subconsciously stealing from. Whenever I put together a tune, I'm 70-90% sure I've stolen it. Sometimes, I later find songs that I really have taken pieces from. Other times, I find that I've copied an entire song, note for note, without realizing it. And other times, I never find anything I appear to have copied, so I assume those are the original ones.

But some part of me always suspects that all creators do is to assemble pieces of other things, and either there is really no such thing as creativity, or I'm just not capable of it.

But yeah, I guess, what Kid Charlemagne said (the first one).
posted by Xezlec at 6:11 PM on November 30, 2008 [3 favorites]

louche mustachio is my beard.

Pretty sure you got more beards than all of Hassidic Brooklyn and Lancaster Pennsylvania combined.
posted by piratebowling at 6:12 PM on November 30, 2008 [3 favorites]

What Rowling (and Gaiman too, for all I know, though I've never read it) ripped off so heavily is the vastness of British public school boys' stories.

If you read those public school stories (which were extremely popular) you can see all the tropes of Harry Potter, except for the magic bits.

Wodehouse wrote quite a few of them in his time.

Alec Waugh (Evelyn's brother) wrote a scandalous book about his experiences at Sherborne.

Desmond Coke's The Bending of a Twig quotes heavily from famous school boy stories.

The St. Dominic's stories by Talbot Baines Reed were very popular.

And of course Greyfriars is still a familiar example.

They're extremely formulaic and were, as I said, very popular. Apparently the reasons for their popularity still exist, as evidenced by the fortune Ms Rowling has amassed.

The Emily stickers are cute on first examination, then grow increasingly wearisome on further inspection. It's hard not to look at that third link and conclude that it wasn't just pulling ideas from the aether that started the ball rolling on those dreadfully trite pieces of merchandising. And if they stole someone else's specific character, rather than simply drawing on exhausted mines of traditional children's stories as Rowling did, they should pay the original creator for the privilege.
posted by winna at 6:15 PM on November 30, 2008 [1 favorite]

It really stuck in my throat that Emily the Strange was just a brand. I would've had a lot more respect for it if it had been a novel or comic or something, but it's essentially just a logo.

hmmm.. Emily the Logo ?
posted by robotot at 6:26 PM on November 30, 2008

louche mustachio is a woman?!??

Damn, that's one effective mustachio!
posted by rokusan at 6:26 PM on November 30, 2008

This is me saying that a similarity between one book illustration and one piece of licensed merchandise does not imply a case where one ripped off the other.

The second work is unquestionably an infringing copy of the first. That there is a subsequent history of the Emily the Strange character does not change this fact. Its very existence stems from the Nate the Great character.

But I encourage you to stick to your guns on this, as I've repurposed a few panels of Amy & Pix for my upcoming line of t-shirts. Look for "Samy & Nix" on Cartoon Network soon.
posted by schoolgirl report at 6:45 PM on November 30, 2008

I'm sure everyone will be floored by my newest song, "Staircase to Heaven."
posted by malocchio at 6:54 PM on November 30, 2008 [4 favorites]

wow, that "mustachio" completely threw me!

It's awfully strong.
posted by louche mustachio at 6:56 PM on November 30, 2008 [1 favorite]

i say it's all a ripoff of wednesday addams
posted by pyramid termite at 7:16 PM on November 30, 2008

I personally could not care less about the entire mass produced vs. DIY debate with regards to this, and can't really see how it's relevant. There's a very strong case to be made that there's plagiarism going on here, and it wouldn't matter if it was a corporation ripping off a basement industry or vice versa. Pay tribute, work in the spirit of, be inspired by, but do not plagiarize, no matter who you are.
posted by Marisa Stole the Precious Thing at 7:51 PM on November 30, 2008 [1 favorite]

It's awfully strong.

And rather disreputable.
posted by UbuRoivas at 8:16 PM on November 30, 2008 [1 favorite]

I also like a lot of Emily's graphic design. In that way, it's much improved on the original ?stolen material.

Probably because the original wasn't graphic design, it was illustration.
posted by George_Spiggott at 8:23 PM on November 30, 2008

they traced an illustration if you don't get that i'm not even going to bother with you

Traced? Where? Certainly not in any of the links in the FPP.
posted by delmoi at 9:07 PM on November 30, 2008

Presumably in Northwestern California, judging by the 707 area code for Cosmic Debris, the design & fashion company behind the Emily product.
posted by UbuRoivas at 9:32 PM on November 30, 2008

>> I also like a lot of Emily's graphic design. In that way, it's much improved on the
>> original ?stolen material.
>
> Probably because the original wasn't graphic design, it was illustration.

It's graphic design if the chix are hot. Nate, poor Nate, is illo and not hot. And that, to ~~plagiarize~~namecheck Frost, is what makes all the difference.

> I have an Emily change purse and I'm a 44-year-old man.
> posted by ethnomethodologist at 5:38 PM on November 30

I really really wanted that Emily Epiphone SG that appeared a few years back. Yes it's just an Epiphone SG, not a Gibson, and Angus Young wouldn't touch it with rubber gloves, and the two examples I played at Guitar Centers weren't even particularly good Epi SGs, and it's way overpriced, being a "limited edition" and all. (Though it can't be all that limited, since it seems to be still available.) All the above being true and all of it militating strongly against getting suckered by this particular piece of merch, NEVERTHELESS if I were ever back in one of those Guitar Centers with a $400 bill in my pocket it's entirely possible that everything might go black, and I might come to at home later and find myself winding a new set of 10's on one.

Actually, you know the image of a 53-year-old Angus in his schoolboy shorts-tie-and-cap outfit and a pic of an eleven-year-old hottie on his ax is one I would treasure.
posted by jfuller at 9:39 PM on November 30, 2008

if I were ever back in one of those Guitar Centers with a $400 bill in my pocket it's entirely possible that everything might go black

especially if the shop assistant notices that the bill's a forgery.
posted by UbuRoivas at 9:53 PM on November 30, 2008 [1 favorite]

Burn burn down burn down Hot Topic
don't let it steal your soul away
burn down burn down Hot Topic
light the fire
take control
posted by fungible at 9:59 PM on November 30, 2008 [1 favorite]

Probably because the original wasn't graphic design, it was illustration.

Book design is graphic design, and illustrated children's books more than most.

Illustration + text + layout all composed into attractive and effective pages of communication is most certainly graphic design.
posted by rokusan at 10:35 PM on November 30, 2008

I too, see this a little bit differently than the Shmorky case.

If "Emily the Strange" consisted solely of that one copied illustration and text pairing then sure, she would be clearly 100% ripped off.

That bit is completely ripped off, no question. And that might have even been the genesis of the brand. Someone redraws a couple of things from a childhood book and slaps it on a skateboard sticker because it looks cool.

Then that person's boss/partner says, "Okay, I like this character. Give me more." And so then more is created which isn't ripped off, it's just an extension of the theme. And hey, maybe the only reason Emily isn't more of a rip off is because there was nothing left to rip off.

The Shmorky incident was one image literally traced, which lead forum readers to find several other one-off cases of direct copying. The Shmorky image was being sold at auction (? or displayed in a gallery?) on its own.

It seems they both started the same way, in any case.
posted by ODiV at 10:47 PM on November 30, 2008

If people couldn't create new works from other pre-existing works, all art would cease. -- me
This Word, It Does Not Mean What You Think It Means.

In Metamagical Themas, Douglas Hofstadter prepares a lengthy list of examples of thought, starting with an insects automated response and ending with Bach writing a fugue; then he precedes to ask where on that list creativity begins. I'm pretty much thinking a mirror flip and changing a proper noun doesn't exactly grab the bronze ring of creativity. Or even blindly flail at it. Or raise a hand. -- Kid Charlemagne

Hah! I see what you did there. You responded to my point about how ideas all build off of eachother by quoting the Princess Bride, thereby self-refuting your own comment. Fascinating. Then, to hammer home the recursive inanity, you ramble on incoherently, but do so referencing Gödel, Escher, Bach, a book that explores recursion.

Although I do have to ask, what word do you think I was misusing? "create", "new", "pre-existing"?
posted by delmoi at 11:23 PM on November 30, 2008

If it's on sale at Spencers Gifts and Hot Topic, has its own line of stores, and is beloved of Julia Roberts, it has to be punk as fuck!

If this news about plagiarism makes even a small dent in the armies of Goth n Go girls in identical striped black and red (or purple) Emily outfits on my local high street, it's a plus. It's to the point now that I'd welcome the Anime Princess trend just to break it up a bit. C'mon, put on the Ministry and sing along... "Halloween is every day"!

Anyone trying to do defend this along the lines of inspiration vs rip off, or skater graphics gone amok, I'd remind you of the Obey Giant. Emily the Safe isn't the Obey Giant... she's a rip off.
posted by Grrlscout at 12:33 AM on December 1, 2008

But I encourage you to stick to your guns on this, as I've repurposed a few panels of Amy & Pix for my upcoming line of t-shirts. Look for "Samy & Nix" on Cartoon Network soon.

I don't think your analogy holds water, for Emily the Strange and Rosamond are not even names similarly.

But let's be honest here, on purely a surface level, my own thing might be considered, by some looking upon it in an unfavorable light, as a ripoff of someone else. (Maybe someone with the initials J. M. B.?) It's not, but when that unfavorable light is cast upon it, say by a post written in a leading manner, on a blog named youthoughtwewouldntnotice.com, then a lot of things that would otherwise seem innocent begin to look guilty.

This doesn't excuse the similarity of the text on those pages, it is true, but is Emily the Strange really built entirely on those two sentences and one fragment? And even that could have been meant in the spirit of homage.

I'm not at all saying that there definitely was no plagiarism here, but that I don't think I have enough information to say for sure. Innocent until proven etc etc.

(As for worrying about protecting your work, my favorite writing professor, the [recently, sadly] late Peter Christopher [.], told me not to worry too much about it. Could someone steal your work and claim it as his own? Sure he could. Is there a lot you could do about it? Maybe not. But the difference here is that you could make more, while he'll have to keep stealing. It's better to focus on doing good work than to let yourself get distracted. And it is the sincerest form of flattery, after all.)
posted by JHarris at 1:30 AM on December 1, 2008

Surely Harry Potter is similar to school stories as it's genre fiction?
posted by mippy at 3:16 AM on December 1, 2008

Until yesterday, I'd never heard of Emily the Strange, Rosamond or even Nate the Great.

QED.
posted by DU at 5:33 AM on December 1, 2008

All this hand-wringing about plagiarism is so last century --- After all, I'm sure the creators of Emily the Strange will come along shortly and acknowledge their ~~blatant rip-off of~~ artistic debt to the creators of Rosamond. Furthermore, they will let everyone know that, if someone wants to make a cartoon or movie about a skinny, black haired girl called Amelia the Weird, they are a-OK with that and won't be suing their pants off.
posted by ghost of a past number at 6:48 AM on December 1, 2008

I sort of liked the early Emily the Strange stuff as far as pop-market kitsch goes. But then again, a big Batz Maru on my cell phone.

To me, both of them are clearly derived from Chas Addams' work.

And in regards to Potter/Hunter. I have to say "meh." Hunter was clearly intended to be the next Constantine (working class and self-trained on the side), while it seemed that Potter's home life read more like Dahl. The round-framed glasses was a repeated Sandman motif, having also been used (off the top of my head) for Thessally, Fiddler's Green, and the Corinthian. And of course, Gaiman's Tim Hunter was little more than a plot device to get four stock DC characters into giving a guided tour of the DC magical universe according to Gaiman, and was passed off to another writer.

But then again, people get really uptight and worked up over perceived unacknowledged influences.
posted by KirkJobSluder at 9:03 AM on December 1, 2008

There's a difference between derivation/evolution of an idea and plagiarism. I would say that there's a definite through-line from Wednesday Addams to Glenda Glinka ('69) to Rosamond, but I wouldn't use the word "rip-off," as I would when looking at the third link.
posted by queensissy at 10:55 AM on December 1, 2008 [1 favorite]

While I can accept that the Tim Hunter/Harry Potter thing may have roots in "English schoolboy lit," or that the kid-wizard-who's-destined-for-greatness may have some Jungian archetype point of common origin ... but *must* all English school boy wizards *also* have lightning bolt scars on their foreheads? If Gaiman doesn't care, then neither do I, but chalking it up to nothing more than coincidence seems a bit ... implausible.
posted by Amanojaku at 11:55 AM on December 1, 2008

Yeah, the third link is (IMO) clearly plagiarism. I'm less convinced by the illustrations in the second link. The Emily tea party is a recreation of Tenniel's illustration for Alice in Wonderland and the Rosamond is not. Other Emily work is derivative of J. M. Flagg and J. Howard Miller.

There's a very strong case to be made that there's plagiarism going on here, and it wouldn't matter if it was a corporation ripping off a basement industry or vice versa. Pay tribute, work in the spirit of, be inspired by, but do not plagiarize, no matter who you are.

No, there is a very strong case to be made regarding a single product. Across the entire product line there is a very strong case to be made that Emily is an original work unrelated to Rosamond, unless Rosamond drops Keith Richards jokes, imitates Victor Frankenstein, and uses remote controlled robots to get revenge on a driver who killed one of her cats.

but *must* all English school boy wizards *also* have lightning bolt scars on their foreheads? If Gaiman doesn't care, then neither do I, but chalking it up to nothing more than coincidence seems a bit ... implausible.

I don't remember Hunter having a scar or any distinguishing marks until he gets a tattoo, but Hunter wasn't Gaiman's character at that point. All of the artwork I can find online shows Hunter with a scar-free forehead.

But of course, Gaiman doesn't care because Hunter is no longer his character. Tim is a Warner Bros. baby and John Rey Nieber is responsible for most of Tim's character development. But I'll also make the case that the most iconic of the similarities can't be laid on the shoulders of Gaiman and Rowling, but on illustrators John Bolton, Thomas Taylor, and Mary GrandPre, the latter having confessed little direct contact with Rowling. My admittedly strained memory is that Rowling provides very little physical description of characters.
posted by KirkJobSluder at 12:34 PM on December 1, 2008

Here's Shmorky vs Todd Goldman's squirrel, adjusted accordingly and appearing like a spot-on trace job. Classy lad, that one. I still can't fathom how his simplistic originals sell for more than $20 per piece. I don't care what you say, this is not worth $850 USD unframed. And how does adding a frame bring the total up to $1,200 USD?

At best, this is a cheeky postcard or a little poster. Anything larger, and I'm feeling dumber by simple proximity.
posted by filthy light thief at 12:36 PM on December 1, 2008

The problem with saying that Potter and Hunter are both derived from boarding school stories is that isn't at all how the Books of Magic developed.

The Books of Magic 4-issue penned by Gaiman takes place in a dream-like ambiguous mystical alternate time similar to Alice in Wonderland or Wizard of Oz. When Nieber takes over the character, Tim Hunter lives with his father (a literary clone of Thomas Constantine, a bitter, one-armed widower), flunks out of day school, and runs away in search of magical training. While the early Potter novels are obsessed with the minutiae of school life, Books of Magic school only exists as a symbol of Hunter's mundane life that is a miserable failure for him.
posted by KirkJobSluder at 1:07 PM on December 1, 2008

I had an Emily the Strange shirt seven years ago, loved it, and wore that thing to tatters. I have a second one currently moldering away in my closet. I always thought the stuff was cute, but every single time I went outside wearing an Emily shirt, someone would inevitably point at my shirt and say, "Okay, who is that character exactly?"

And I'd always pause and then stammer, "well, she, um, she just appears on t-shirts and that's it, I mean, I guess she doesn't really actually do anything," and I'd walk away feeling supremely uncool.

Having had that awkward conversation a few too many times, and feeling just a little too old to be wearing anything from Hot Topic, I've been almost ready to give up on ever wearing that Emily shirt again. Now that this news is out, that shirt's probably going to Goodwill.
posted by Metroid Baby at 1:20 PM on December 1, 2008 [1 favorite]

And as upthread, I have never heard of Hot Topic and don't believe there is a UK equivalent.

Most of Camden High Street in London probably counts.
posted by acb at 5:04 PM on December 1, 2008

Shmorky vs Todd Goldman's squirrel

I do not understand why Todd Goldman has not been successfully sued into oblivion. That fucker appears to have stolen everything he ever created.
posted by five fresh fish at 5:26 PM on December 1, 2008

THIRD LINK, folks. I can't help but think, some of y'all are not clicking through to the third link.
Here, I'll transcribe it.

First picture, taken from a Nate the Great book:
Drawing of black haired girl in shapeless dress with black tights and white mary janes, with two cats at her ankles, another cat behind her, and one cat a smaller speck in the distance.
The text printed underneath is this:
"Rosamund did not look
hungry or sleepy.
She looked like she always looks.
Strange."

Then, there's the second picture, from what's purported to be the first publicly offered Emily bumper sticker. Here's how that one looks:

Drawing of black haired girl in shapeless dress with black tights and white mary janes, with two cats at her ankles, and one cat a smaller speck in the distance.
The text printed underneath is this:
"Emily didn't look
tired or happy.
She looked how she always looks.
Strange."

Line breaks and all.
Third links' got your plagiarism, cut and more or less dried. Getcher hot plaigiarism at the third link.
posted by redsparkler at 10:19 PM on December 1, 2008

I don't remember Hunter having a scar or any distinguishing marks until he gets a tattoo, but Hunter wasn't Gaiman's character at that point. All of the artwork I can find online shows Hunter with a scar-free forehead.

Oops. You're completely correct. My memories of Books of Magic clearly just blended with Harry Potter at some point, and I was sure I had the lightning-bolt thing right. Crazy.
posted by Amanojaku at 3:53 AM on December 2, 2008

Third links' got your plagiarism, cut and more or less dried. Getcher hot plaigiarism at the third link.

Yes, I think everyone agrees that is plagiarism. What is not clear is whether we can say that the body of work as a whole plagiarizes the other body of work as a whole.
posted by KirkJobSluder at 4:59 AM on December 2, 2008

I dropped a note to Marc Simont, with links to this thread and the 3rd link. It looks like his website was last updated in late August, so I hope he gets it.
posted by hooray at 11:39 AM on December 2, 2008

redsparkler: This could also be called homage, something included specifically to remind a reader of the original, instead of claim it as its own. I lean towards that explanation because that example is the only conclusive copying.

KirkJobSluder: No, there is a very strong case to be made regarding a single product.

(As opposed to the entire product line.) This could, conceivably, be claimed and proven. Which saddens me a bit since to my eyes it does look like it was intended to be a reference. I mean, why just copy the text verbatim like that otherwise? Nate the Great isn't obscure, someone WOULD have noticed it. Enough people, I'm thinking, that it must have been intended to be noticed.
posted by JHarris at 12:39 AM on December 3, 2008

This could also be called homage, something included specifically to remind a reader of the original, instead of claim it as its own. I lean towards that explanation because that example is the only conclusive copying.

You're treading on thin ice here - If they included a Rosamond reference expecting people to identify it, wouldn't they have had a chance, in the 17 years they have been around, to acknowledge the influence in some unambiguous manner?
posted by ghost of a past number at 5:12 AM on December 3, 2008

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