Waxing Philosophical

Weird Al is allowed to parody everything because he's operating under copyright law, not trademark law.

Trademark governs who can "trade" under what "mark" i.e. the brand identity of a company. Companies don't own their trademarked word forever, but they maintain the exclusive right to sell things under that brand in their specific market sector. Patagonia doesn't own the name of a geographical region, they just own the right to be the only company using that name to sell clothing and outdoor gear.

A drag queen name can be a parody of a clothing and outdoor gear company.

A company's trademarked logo can be used in parody creative works, with more leeway if it's not for commercial purposes. Trademark parody is allowed! Patagonia has been aware of and allowed Pattie Gonia's trademark parody for years.

Trademarks are specific to market sector. Actress Chase Infiniti could start a makeup line named after herself and her trademark would not infringe on the Infiniti car brand because they are different markets and there is no risk of confusion. Pattie Gonia could probably trademark her name to sell frozen veggie burgers and Patagonia would not care.

Drag queen Jan Sport did a collab with JanSport bags. What Jan Sport almost certainly did not do is independently apply to register "Jan Sport" as a trademark in order to sell bags on her own, because that would infringe on JanSport's own trademark in the bag market sector.

What Pattie Gonia is not allowed to do -- the thing that Pattie Gonia actually did do and is being sued for -- is apply to register "Pattie Gonia" as a trademark to sell clothing, because apparently Pattie is in talks with North Face and HydroFlask to sell "Pattie Gonia"-branded gear. These companies probably won't finalize anything unless Pattie shows that she actually owns the trademark. Unfortunately, "Patagonia" is already a registered trademark in the clothing market sector, and these two names are too similar to exist in the same sector (see: "likelihood of confusion" legal standard).

Your drag queen name can parody a clothing company. You can parody the trademarked logo of a clothing company. But you cannot use the same name to then go on to also become a clothing company.

In order to maintain their own trademark, Patagonia must sue for trademark infringement. If they don't sue, and Pattie Gonia gets her own trademark, Pattie could sue Patagonia for infringement on her trademark. You can see why Patagonia won't be dropping this suit no matter how much you harass them.

The new conflict is from Pattie Gonia using the Patagonia imagery and the Pattie Gonia name on her own merchandise. This is the email Patagonia sent, with the images they feel conflict with the 2022 agreement.

Pattie responded to that by disagreeing that she had broken any agreement, and also obliquely threatening to expose Patagonia for making tactical gear for the US military?

Weird Al is allowed to parody everything because he's operating under copyright law, not trademark law.

Weird Al is allowed to parody everything because virtually every single one of his parodies is officially licensed from the rights holders. He asks permission, and shares revenue with the original artists. You hear a lot of people when you look into this - including the man himself! - saying "He doesn't have to do that! He just wants to cover his bases and maintain relationships." And....ehhhh... I mean maybe. Probably, even! But the world of copyright is vast and confusing.

For example, musicians own the copyright to both the lyrics and the music of their songs, and those can operate separately. Weird Al changes the lyrics of his parodies; but he very intentionally does not change the music. It is kind of the point, right? But if your parody recreates 99% of the music of the original, is that "transformative"? Could that not "substitute in the market" for the original work? Maybe American Pie's lyrics are a wash, and we are all only tuning in for the guitar riffs, so The Saga Begins does it for us just as well? Hey, how does retelling Star Wars comment on American Pie? That doesn't seem like a parody to me; that seems like satire, which operates under a less permissive legal regime...

CONSERVATION OF ENERGY - Food needs can be met with an expenditure of 1.23% of total magic. Proceed?

GRIEF SYNDROME [Trivial: Success] - MAGICAL GIRLS THAT IGNORE FOOD ARE OFTEN MORE PRONE TO GRIEF ACCUMULATION. MY ARMS WILL ALWAYS BE WAITING FOR YOU, HOMURA, BUT IT’S IMPORTANT TO BE HAPPY UNTIL THAT DAY. BESIDES, MADOKA WANTS TO EAT WITH YOU. DISAPPOINTING HER WILL FILL YOUR SOUL GEM WITH A HALF A GRIEF SEED WORTH OF DESPAIR.

TEA WITH MAMI-SAN [Legendary: Success] - Sayaka says the beef bowl is good? Maybe go for that. She knows Madoka’s tastes better than anyone — and if Madoka likes something, you will certainly like it too.

“I will have the same as you, Madoka.”

“I’m not feeling very hungry.”

[CALL AND RESPONSE - Medium 10] Come up with an order on your own

CALL AND RESPONSE - [Medium: Failure] - You’ve eaten here before, you’re pretty sure. Was it Loop 32… no, Loop 12..? No, wait, it was on the first Friday of Loop 68. No… that’s not right. You’ve never eaten here before. In a stunning display of incompetence, you have taken Madoka on a date to a restaurant that you have never experienced before.

THE ANGEL - It’s okay, Homura-chan! I don’t mind if you haven’t eaten here before. Remember what real me said, Sayaka thinks this place is good! And even if it’s not perfect, that’s okay, just spending time with you makes me happy.

THE CRAVEN MASSES - Sayaka has raised her blade against Madoka 16 times before. You should leave this restaurant and kill her. It would only take-

FALLING SAND [Trivial: Success] - 1528 seconds on average.

CONSERVATION OF ENERGY - It can be cut down to 1243 seconds with an expenditure of 2.7% of total magic pool.

THE CRAVEN MASSES - Exactly. Do it in front of her family and make it bloody. Kyoko would likely try and stop you, but even she isn’t immune to bullets. And if Mami comes for revenge, well, you know the exact words you could say that would destroy her, don’t you?

THE ANGEL - A-Ah, I think that’s a bit of an extreme reaction, Homura-chan!

HUMAN SHELL - Your heart rate is increasing. Stop that. You have absolute control over your flesh. Act like it.

MOE INSTINCT - AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH AHHHHHHHHHHHHHH WHAT ARE WE GOING TO ORDER MADOKA IS GOING TO LAUGH AT US

WITCH’S NIGHT - Is… is this a trap? Walpurgis may be defeated, but you know that the stage witch never truly ceases its show. Perhaps this restaurant is a part of the stage?

MADOKA - “Um, are you okay, Homura-chan?”

MOE INSTINCT - OH GOD SHE HATES US

“I’m going to kill myself.”

“I’m so sorry. Would killing myself make you feel more comfortable?”

Isn’t there anything else you can say?

YOU - Isn’t there anything else you can say?

THE DEVIL - Come on, Homura. It’s high time you do it. Really, this is just another in the long, long chain of failures that make up your life. The only way to fix it is to kill yourself.

CLOCKWORK PRECISION - Target: Located on right ring finger. Target is not moving. Chance to hit: High. Plan: Retrieve pistol. Aim pistol at ring. Pull trigger.

THE ANGEL - Oh my god, please do not do that!

"I am going to kill myself."

"I'm so sorry, I'll kill myself if it makes you feel better."

"I'm so sorry. Should I kill myself?"

There. There has to be better options than this.

YOU - There. There has to be better options than this.

MOE INSTINCT - I CAN’T TAKE IT ANY MORE. THE ONLY RECOURSE IS IMMEDIATE SUICIDE. THAT’S THE ONLY WAY MADOKA WILL LOVE YOU AGAIN.

"I am going to kill myself."

"I'm so sorry, I'll kill myself if it makes you feel better."

"I'm so sorry. Should I kill myself?"

YOU - “I’m going to kill myself.”

MADOKA - Madoka’s face twists, her eyebrows raising slightly in shock. Whatever response she was expecting, it was clearly not this.

GRIEF SYNDROME [Challenging: Success] - IF MADOKA WAS A MAGICAL GIRL, HER SOUL GEM WOULD FILL BY A QUARTER HEARING YOU SPEAK THOSE WORDS. THAT WAS CRUEL, HOMURA.

MOE INSTINCT - WHY DID YOU SAY THAT?

MADOKA - “I’m so sorry, Homura-chan. Please don’t do that. I… I really care about you and so does everyone else.” Madoka’s eyes fill with tears as she speaks. She hugs you.

DAMAGED MORALE -4

CALL AND RESPONSE [Trivial: Success] - Quick, tell her you were making an edgy joke that didn’t land. You’ve gotten away with that before, you’re pretty sure.

SPACE-TIME MASSACRE - Twelve quarter shifts left and two up from your current space-time position, and there’s a Japan that it’s actually illegal to not commit suicide in.

FALLING SAND - You’ve been seated for 5 minutes and 32.5 seconds already and still have not ordered. Mami has requested your presence at her apartment in 3.4 hours from now.

TEA WITH MAMI-SAN - She wants to help you find a hobby. She’s really worried about you, you know.

STRINGS OF FATE - You can feel Madoka’s heart beat in sync with yours as she holds you. Everything will be alright, as long as you follow the beat.

THE ANGEL - Yeah! It’s okay Homura-chan. Just explain what’s been going on and Madoka will understand. And then order something, it’s important to eat a full meal!

YOU - “Ah, sorry Madoka. I was… overwhelmed with choice, and my… brain spit out the first thing it thought. I am not planning on killing myself.”

MADOKA - “Um, I think we should probably talk about this more, Homura-chan….”

CALL AND RESPONSE - Ask her a question to change the topic. It’s worked in three different loops, it should work here.

RATIONALITY COMPLEX [Trival: Success] - Ask her if she wants to try anything else and then order that for yourself. This will accomplish your goal of deciding on what to order, as well as showing Madoka that her desires are important to you.

YOU - “Is there anything else you’d like to try, Madoka? We can share our dishes.”

MADOKA - “Uh, okay Homura-chan. Maybe get some tempura?”

Order 10000 yen worth of tempura

Order 1000 yen worth of tempura

Order 100 yen worth of tempura

YOU - “Excuse me waiter, give me 10000 yen worth of tempura.”

HUMAN SHELL - Calories and magic are just two different types of fuel. Feed me and control me.

THE ANGEL - T-that’s probably too much, Homura-chan. Maybe you can sneak some into your cool shield, though!

MADOKA - Madoka doesn’t say anything, but her eyes do bulge out slightly. She gives you a gentle pat on the shoulder and smiles at you.

HEALED MORALE +1

RATIONALITY COMPLEX - Displays of wealth like this can broadcast value to potential mates. This will increase your value in Madoka’s eyes, furthering along one of your goals.

THE ANGEL - I think you should just focus on enjoying the food, Homura-chan. Take a break, everything is okay.

Thank you.

Why don’t you hate me?

YOU - Why don’t you hate me?

THE ANGEL - Because I care about you, Homura-chan! And besides, you hate yourself far too much already.

Thank you.

He will go to Fairyland And ride the mountain ways; Fine companions will he have To last his summer days.

Occasional reminder that the Hirohito Mickey Mouse watch story — which rotates through r/todayilearned every couple of years presented as charming trivia about how even the divine ruler of Japan was a Disney adult deep down — is also probably the single most semiotically loaded piece of consumer merchandise produced by the entire late-20th-century US-Japan settlement, and basically nobody clocks it as such.

Like, the facts. Hirohito visits Disneyland on October 8, 1975, signs the Mickey Mouse guestbook, is photographed in his suit next to a man in a six-foot rodent costume, and leaves with a Mickey Mouse wristwatch which he then wears at official functions for the next thirteen years until he dies. The Washington Post in their 1984 birthday writeup of him at 83 calls it a gesture — "Hirohito expressed his approval of America not in words but with a gesture." The watch is the gesture. And in 1979 when it stops working the chamberlains rush it out to American-watch specialists in Tokyo, because god forbid the Emperor be seen at his next public engagement without his Mickey Mouse watch, a sentence I want you to read again.

(The detail about it being buried with him in 1989 is "unproven" — Snopes' word — sourced to Edward Behr's biography which doesn't cite where it got it, picked up from there by the Lodi News-Sentinel obituary, which became the source for the burial-with-watch claim that lights up the TIL circuit. The Imperial Household Agency declined to confirm or deny, which is the IHA's standard verb tense for anything they don't want to touch. The pre-1989 part — the wearing-it-around for thirteen years — is solidly documented.)

Okay so who's the guy wearing it. By 1975 Hirohito has had a long, weird run. He's the postwar Hirohito, the one MacArthur kept on the throne because executing him would, in MacArthur's estimation, require a million additional American troops to occupy a furious Japan. On January 1, 1946, he has formally renounced his divinity in what's called the Humanity Declaration. Under the 1947 constitution drafted by MacArthur's staff in roughly a week he's been demoted from absolute ruler of a quasi-divine theocratic state to "the symbol of the State and of the unity of the people," with sovereign power explicitly residing in the people, which is the Allied-occupation way of saying "in us." He has been spared the war crimes prosecution that hung Tojo. The position he occupies in 1975 was specifically designed in 1946 to be filled by him personally, for the duration of his life, as the human guarantee that occupation reforms would stick. The man is a structural fixture of the postwar settlement, walking around inside it.

And the settlement is, by 1975, looking very different from how it looked in 1946. Japan in the 1950s is a starved occupied country eating American wheat. Japan in the 1960s is the Income Doubling Plan boom, blue collar factory work flooding the cities, the Tokyo Olympics. Japan in the 1970s is the OPEC shock and the pivot to high-value exports — cars, electronics, optics, the stuff that's about to produce 1980s American panic about being out-competed by an economy we restructured from the ground up specifically to do this. By 1975 Japan is the second-largest economy in the world. The original occupier-occupied asymmetry has quietly inverted into "senior partner and increasingly muscular junior partner," with the junior partner running massive trade surpluses, but the formal apparatus of the settlement is still in place. Article 9 is still in the constitution. The emperor is still the symbol of the State. The Security Treaty is still operative. The wearer of the watch is still wearing the watch.

The 1975 trip is his first proper visit to the United States. The closest he'd gotten before was a refueling layover at Anchorage in 1971 on his way to Europe, where Nixon flew up to meet him on the tarmac, which is a fun image. Ford had been to Tokyo the previous November as the first sitting American president to visit, and Hirohito is reciprocating. The whole itinerary is goodwill diplomacy — the imperial couple as touring ambassadors, remarks at the White House about "reflecting on the past relationship between the two countries and looking to the future," which is diplomatic for "let's not make a thing of the war."

So when he's photographed grinning thinly next to a Mickey Mouse costume on October 8, this is an act of state. He has, the previous day, had lunch in Los Angeles where he specifically requested to meet John Wayne — an actor who, in films, had killed more or less the entire audience he was now greeting. Wayne walks over and gives him a signed photo and they bow and shake hands and there are no apologies, in the spirit of either samurai or cowboy code depending on which one you find more flattering. (Hirohito actually really did love Westerns, and read them through the same moral-clarity frame as Kurosawa samurai films, which makes a lot of sense if you've watched any of either.) Disneyland is the next stop on the script.

And the thing about Disneyland in 1975 is that it's almost exactly the same age as postwar sovereign Japan. The park opened in July 1955. The San Francisco Peace Treaty took effect in April 1952, ending the occupation, and the US-Japan Security Treaty was simultaneous with it. Disneyland and postwar Japan grew up together, are roughly contemporaries, and the institution we're now bringing the Emperor to as the climax of a goodwill state visit is exactly as old as the sovereign Japan he was kept on the throne to symbolize.

Hot take: Disneyland in 1975 is not a theme park visit, it's a state visit to a foreign capital, the capital being the capital of American mass-cultural soft power export, which is the major thing the United States is exporting in the postwar period, which is the apparatus that has been working on Japan since the occupation.

Like, remember that Walt Disney himself made training and propaganda films for the US military during WWII, including ones with anti-Japanese caricature. Mickey was on the other side of the war. There's a 1934 Japanese propaganda film called Evil Mickey Attacks Japan, made before the war proper, because the cultural assault was already legible as such. The Disney brand was deeply implicated in American imperial projection — one of its primary delivery mechanisms. So having the postwar emperor visit Disneyland as the climax of his state trip is, on a certain level, having him pay respects at the cultural shrine of the side that beat him. And he does — he rides the Lilly Belle Presidential Train Car around the park and signs the Mickey guestbook and is photographed grinning thinly next to the rodent, and then leaves with the watch.

Now the watch itself. The accounts differ on whether it was presented to him formally or whether he picked it out himself — one version has him "insisting on" visiting Disneyland and buying it as a souvenir, another has it as a formal presentation. Doesn't really matter. The watch is what he leaves with.

It is a cheap quartz consumer object, a piece of mass-market American merchandise, manufactured (probably) somewhere in Asia under license to Disney, the kind of thing a child gets for a birthday. The Emperor of Japan, descendant of Amaterasu in the official theology he had publicly renounced twenty-nine years earlier, the man who reigned through the Manchurian Incident and Pearl Harbor and the firebombing of Tokyo and the atomic bombs and the surrender and the occupation and the constitution and the reconstruction, the currently sitting constitutional mascot of the world's second-largest capitalist economy, leaves the happiest place on earth with a Mickey Mouse watch on his wrist. And then he wears it. He wears it for thirteen years. He wears it at official functions.

The Imperial Household Agency lets him do this. The agency that controls every detail of his public presentation, the same agency that for decades insisted his childhood hobby horse was named something other than Snow White (the actual name was Shirayuki, "white snow," a Japanese name that predates Disney by approximately forever, which gets retconned by Western biographers into "Snow White" as Disney tribute, which is impossible because the Disney film came out in 1937 when he was thirty-six and already emperor — but the IHA also went out of its way to clarify the actual name, because they were aware of how the association read), the agency that exists to manage the divine-symbolic dignity of the chrysanthemum throne, allows him to keep wearing this thing at state functions. In 1979 when it breaks the chamberlains panic and rush it to specialists. They could have replaced it. They could have said "your majesty, perhaps a more dignified timepiece." They didn't.

You don't really hear about how loaded this is, I think because the framing the story rotates through is the "lifelong Disney superfan" frame, which is mostly the Disney corporation's preferred version and which you can find in D23's official A-to-Z entry on Hirohito, this being apparently the only major world leader of the twentieth century with a corporate-fandom encyclopedic entry maintained by the entertainment company that supplied him with a watch. The framing has been buffed. The actual story is that an aging head of state on a goodwill tour was given an object that the institutional apparatus around him then carefully maintained as part of his public iconography because it served a diplomatic function. He may well have liked it. People do get attached to objects. But the apparatus was the apparatus.

And what's the function. The watch is a wearable diplomatic ornament that says, every time he raises his wrist to check the time at an official function, that the relationship between Japan and the United States is normalized, that the man who in another timeline would have hanged is now wearing a souvenir from the country that didn't hang him, and that the souvenir is from Disneyland rather than from, say, a Pearl Harbor museum. The choice of object is the message. Like, a Mickey Mouse watch is too stupid to function as a war trophy or a tribute or a sign of reverence for a former enemy as defeated nobility — it can only function as friendship. You can't be coerced into wearing a Mickey Mouse watch. The signal has to be voluntary or the signal doesn't work. Which is what makes it useful.

There's a marine biology angle here too, that I think gets underweighted. Hirohito's actual lifelong intellectual passion was hydrozoa — small tentacled colonial polyps in Sagami Bay. He published over thirty books of plates under the byline "Hirohito Emperor of Japan," described more than a hundred species new to science, maintained a working laboratory at the Imperial Palace. (Some of his pre-war hydrozoa specimens collected from Sagami Bay in the 1930s ended up at the Royal Belgian Institute of Natural Sciences in Brussels and weren't repatriated until 2014, which is the kind of detail that tells you something about the post-Sphere disposition of imperial Japanese scientific collections, but never mind.) During the 1975 US visit he took time to visit the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History on October 2, six days before Disneyland, where he did actual lab work on marine specimens. At Disneyland, the exhibit that reportedly interested him most was the Grand Canyon diorama with its prehistoric animals, because that was something he could read with the same eye he used on a polyp. The lifelong-Disney-superfan thing has been retrofitted onto a constitutional symbol on a goodwill tour who in his private hours liked nature documentaries.

You can think about the watch as the second of a pair. The first object is Article 9 of the postwar constitution. Article 9 is the formal, legal, binding written instrument of the postwar US-Japan settlement, MacArthur-drafted, inserted into Japanese constitutional law by the occupying power, which renounces war and renounces the right to maintain a military as a means of settling disputes. The watch is the same operation in informal, embodied, semiotic form. And the wearer is the same person in both cases. Hirohito promulgated the 1947 constitution in his own name, the constitution that stripped him of all but symbolic power, and he wore the watch that Disney gave him until he died. Both objects required him to occupy a specific position — the position designed for him to occupy — and to keep occupying it visibly and ceremonially for as long as he was physically able. He did. He died in January 1989 having performed the role essentially without break for forty-three years.

(The watch shows up in the press obituaries because it's the kind of detail that personalizes him at a moment when his obituary writers had to grapple with what they were going to say about the war. The LA Times mentions it. The Lodi News-Sentinel reports the burial detail. The watch lets American papers write affectionate obituaries about a man whose name appears on the order books for the Nanjing Massacre. It absorbs the awkwardness. He liked Mickey Mouse. He was buried with his Mickey Mouse watch. Wasn't that touching. The watch performs the laundering.)

The really dark version of this, which is also the correct one I think, is that the Mickey Mouse watch is the closest thing the twentieth century produced to a successful version of the kind of tributary object that older empires used to demand — the Roman gold coin worn by the client king, the British Crown medal pinned to the maharaja's chest, the official portrait of the colonizer's monarch hanging behind the desk of the puppet governor. Those were all coercive impositions and read as such by everyone, including the people wearing them. The watch reads as cute. The watch reads as a guy who likes Mickey Mouse. That's the upgrade. That's what soft power is — the same tribute structure with the coercion disguis#ed as preference, and the preference disguised as personality. He wore it because he wanted to, or because it suited his role, or because his handlers decided he should, which is one of the eternal questions of Hirohito scholarship, and the answer doesn't actually matter to whether the operation succeeded.

The operation succeeded. He's wearing it in the photographs the Imperial Household released for his 88th birthday in 1988, the last birthday before he died.