Revisionist Fictional History

It is ia question that has long plagued the world of art:

Who owns a piece of art?

Does the original artist own it? He or she created it.

Does the purchaser own it? He or she paid for it.

Does the audience own it? They are the ones who enjoy it.

Do the revisionist historians own it?

The latter does seem to be the case in one recent incident in which British television networks requested that old Tom & Jerry cartoons be edited to remove any incidents in which smoking is portrayed glamorously.

I recognize very easily that certain works of art are a picture of the time of their creation and must be understood within the context of that time. There were a number of movies from the earlier parts of the 20th century that used white men in red paint to portray Native Americans (sorry, almost typed injuns there) and others that were offensive enough to use Mickey Rooney as an Asian man.

Sure, those actions seems comedic and offensive in light of today's politically correct climate, but they bring a more important question to the table.

Who has the right to go back and change a work of art?

Is it wrong for someone to buy a copy of an old movie and colorize just that copy of the movie, leaving the original print in its black and white state?

Is it wrong for the director of Hoosiers to go back and digitally clean up the print for a new DVD release? What if he includes a few previously cut scenes as "DVD extras"? What if they're inserted into the film with a note? What if they're inserted seemlessly?

It's all sort of a sliding scale of right and wrong, isn't it? And where you fall will probably depend a lot on which movie is being tampered with and just how much emotional involvement you have with that movie. But do you have any sort of right to anything more than enjoy a piece of art - in particular, a film - more or less just because the artist, the creator has decided to go back and make a few adjustments here and there?

What if it's Steven Spielberg editing out the FBI agents' guns and digitally replacing them with walkie talkies? What if he changes "don't dress like a terrorist" to "don't dress like a hippie" during the same changes to E.T.?

What if it's Disney snipping out one line from the classic The Muppet Movie? What if it appears those edits might be imagined?

What if we're talking about another great director taking a true masterpiece of American cinema - Apocalypse Now - and reinserting forty-nine minutes into a film that had originally bee over six hours long at the first cut? What if that addition totally polarized critics and fans?

What if it's George Lucas adding in a few extra creatures that he didn't have the technology to throw in the first time? What if he's changing a shooting to make his hero look more heroic? What if he's not changing that really awful tongue-slipping that Lea gives Luke in Star Wars which is so icky in retrospect?

Who are we, the audience, to tell any of the creators of these works of art that they don't have the rights to change their creations?