George Lucas is finally releasing the original Star Wars trilogy on DVD; however, these are the Special Editions, not the theatrical versions that appeared twenty-five years ago. Which brings up an interesting question: Do artists have the right to alter their work after it's already been released? The answer seems to be an obvious "yes". After all, artists can do whatever the hell they want with their own work. But the issue isn't that simple.

Here's a hypothetical situation: imagine Da Vinci appearing (in a time machine of his own design, of course) and deciding that the Mona Lisa, in keeping with tiresome Hollywood standards, should be blond. Or Van Gogh suddenly appearing and deciding he wanted to add a tiny spaceship to Starry Night. You can just imagine the outrage as critics, scholars, and art connoisseurs around the globe declared these paintings "world treasures", something that belonged to everybody and should not be altered, even by the original artists. (The Van Gogh example is better, since nobody can argue that the artist had sold the painting and, therefore, lost ownership.)

Admittedly, these examples are cheats. When you invoke names like Van Gogh and Da Vinci, or Shakespeare and Mozart, you automatically elicit a knee-jerk feeling of reverence, even from people who have no interest in these artists. You play on people's need to display Proper Outrage. I also had the artists changing things in their paintings that were patently ridiculous and, therefore, more indefensible.

Here are some other examples that don't quite work:

1) Ted Turner's infamous colourization of older films back in the '80s. Since he hadn't worked on any of those films, he had no business screwing around with another person's art. Even the fact that he owned the broadcasting rights didn't win him many supporters. Other examples of art being altered by somebody other than the original artist: Natalie Cole recording "Unforgettable" using her father's voice to create a "duet"; the surviving Beatles using Lennon's solo material to create "Real Love" and "Free as a Bird"; Junkie XL's electronic update of Elvis Presley's "A Little Less Conversation".

(ASIDE: What Junkie XL did with Elvis's recording was legal, but I'm not really interested in this as a legal issue. This is about principles, which automatically excludes any contributions from lawyers. Ha ha...ha?)

2) Taking albums form the 1950s and '60s and giving them the digital treatment, or turning mono recordings into stereo. These are attempts to "fix" or make clearer technical flaws or limitations in the original work. They no more alter the content than does removing scratches from a movie print.

3) An artist changing a work because the original version had been compromised by outside forces (social restrictions, for example). Norman Mailer hasn't done it, but I wonder how much of an outcry there'd be if he changed all the "fuggins" in The Naked and The Dead to what they were obviously meant to be. Because it was the late 1940s, Mailer decided to go with a less offensive term. Had the novel been written a few years later, the soldiers in the novel would have been using more realistic language. This would be akin to a Director's Cut - -a re-released movie that reflects the director's original intent, before studio meddling altered things. Another example in this category would be Let It Be...Naked, the recent re-release of the Beatles album with producer Phil Spector's 1970 additions removed. Spector had not been approved by all the Beatles, so the album was considered by some as a bastardization of the original work.