Criticism and Controversy
With its taboo subject matter, Mouchette.org has "provoked heated reaction" in the art community. An interactive forum allows participants to state why they hate Mouchette.
In an early version of Mouchette.org, there was a quiz comparing web persona Mouchette and the lead character in the Bresson film Mouchette. Images taken from the film were used in this quiz. In 2002, the Robert Bresson estate "threatened legal action against the artist" responsible for Mouchette.org. According to Toni Sant, "This case brought the online piece to the attention of many who might have overlooked it in the plethora of Net Art that has emerged over the past few years". In a letter from the SACD (Société des Auteurs et Compositeurs Dramatiques) (the French Society of Dramatic Authors and Composers) addressed to the creator of Mouchette.org, it states that Bresson's widow "demands that all reference to the film Mouchette...be eliminated from your website." According to Sant, "this copyright issue raises the question of ownership over fictional identities...and raises issues of originality and ownership."
After the forced removal of the quiz from Mouchette.org, "as a protest, a growing network of websites are hosting copies of this work which is no longer allowed to be shown on http://mouchette.org" The distributor of the quiz blames the "narrow-mindedness of the heir of the copyright" for censoring "a work which is an homage celebrating the source of its inspiration."
Read more about this topic: Mouchette.org
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“It is the will of God that we must have critics, and missionaries, and Congressmen, and humorists, and we must bear the burden. Meantime, I seem to have been drifting into criticism myself. But that is nothing. At the worst, criticism is nothing more than a crime, and I am not unused to that.”
—Mark Twain [Samuel Langhorne Clemens] (1835–1910)
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