Are Christian Parodies Ethical?

Disclaimer #2: I am not a lawyer. The opinions in this essay are my own; I would not recommend you assign any legal value to these opinions. Consult a knowledgeable attorney before doing anything that could have the possibility of violating existing copyright laws.

Even if you're willing to admit that what bands like ApologetiX and Mark Bradford are doing is legal, another question remains: are their actions ethical? After all, Christians are held to higher standards than non-Christians (Titus 1:6-9). Is it possible that what these bands are doing could be construed as unethical even though a quirk in the laws allow this?

Nick Alexander (another Christian parodist, see http://www.nickalexander.com), once posted a comment similar to the following to rec.music.chrisitian:

For a song to be a parody, it must be humorous; otherwise it's just stealing the melody.

There are two issues I would like to address here: (1) what is required for a song to be a parody (and does ApologetiX' work satisfy this), and (2) the use of the term stealing in this post. Allow me to deal with this second issue first.

Stealing is a pretty strong term. Anyone who questions the ethics of a Christian parodist's work from a Christian perspective is surely familiar with "Thou shalt not steal." Is it possible that these parodists are commiting this sin? To make this claim is a bit of a stretch.

Back in Bible times, the term "steal" applied to tangible property only. The concept of "intellectual property" didn't really exist as best I can determine. Back then, if you had an idea you didn't want to share, you protected it by keeping it to yourself. However, once the idea got out, you couldn't claim any exclusive rights to it. The concept of intellectual property and copyrights is a relatively new concept in historical terms. The idea that one could protect an expression of an idea (e.g., copyrights and patents) has only been around the past several hundred years. Furthermore, the creation of these laws was to provide a stimulus by which those who had the idea would release it to society at large (for example, how many "secret recipes" have died with their inventor?). The paradox here is that copyright and patent laws were created to encourage individuals to give away their ideas and expressions of those ideas, not make it impossible for others to use those ideas. Originally, the copyright laws were created exactly to encourage the kind of stuff that ApologetiX and Ron Perry are doing, not to prevent it. So what happened along the way? Why would something like the 2 Live Crew copyright infringement case even wind up in the Supreme Court if the whole purpose of the copyright law was to encourage this kind of activity? Simple: corporate greed.

Somewhere along the line some concerns decided that they wanted to "have their cake and eat it too." That is, they wanted to release their ideas to the public (so they could collect money from the public in order use or be entertained by these works) but they didn't want to have to give up the idea after the mandated copyright time period. Perhaps the most famous example of this is the Walt Disney Company. They copyrighted "Mickey Mouse" and then created this marvelous machine to market products based around this character. In the latter part of the 20th Century this copyright was set to expire and the world's most famous mouse was about to head into the public domain. The Disney Corporation freaked out because they were still making a lot of money selling Mickey Mouse merchandise; they were (rightly) afraid that once the copyright expired then anyone with a silk screen would start cranking out Mickey Mouse tee-shirts. And that, obviously, would affect their bottom line. The solution? Lobby the U.S. Congress to extend the copyright law so that they could maintain their monopoly on this character; this, of course, being in direct opposition to the original intent of the copyright law. It is interesting that U.S. citizens have been "programmed" to believe that somehow we are "stealing" this intellectual property from corporations like Disney when, in fact, it is those very corporations that are behaving in an inethical fashion by, effectively, buying legislation to protect their cash cows (or mice, in this case).

Now some might argue that Disney deserves this additional protection given that they've spent a lot of money marketing the Mickey Mouse (and other) characters. However, they could just as easily have used that money to create something new (the intent of the copyright laws!) rather than try to simply protect the sales of their existing products. Protecting these sales does society very little good and the whole purpose of intellectual property laws is to benefit society, not make some corporations rich.

If your musical parodies are not humorous are you stealing tunes? (In the sense that "thou shalt not steal?"). I'd argue no. The concept of intellectual property and especially the idea of "stealing a tune" is so novel and modern that I'd argue against this.

Does this give Christians the right to disobey the law and make use of copyrighted material in a way that clearly violates the law? The Bible clearly tells us to submit to Earthly authority (Heb 13:17). On the other hand, it also warns us to obey God, even when doing so conflicts with the laws of man (Acts 4:19, 5:29). Now it would be difficult to claim you are obeying God when abusing the copyright law, but clearly there is an issue with bad laws. Although the copyright laws have little to do with being righteous or not, clearly the current revisions of the law are in direct opposition to the original intent of the law. Because of the way these revisions came about, one could claim that they are inethical.

The bottom line is this: if the law of the land offers an opportunity or loophole to praise God by writing parodies of secular music, a Christian shouldn't feel that doing so is an inethical act until the courts decide that doing so is illegal.

"It Must be Humorous"

Nick Alexander also claims that a parody must be humorous or it is not a parody. Given that bands like ApologetiX and Mark Bradford write songs that deal with some very serious subjects, one could question whether their work falls into this category.

Of course, one problem with the "It must be humorous..." argument is the age-old question "what is humor?" Nick admits that ApologetiX' work could be considered humorous in an "evangelical sort of way" but cautions that ApologetiX is probably skating on thin ice by claiming their work to be parodies. He feels that they could probably get away with what they do, but barely.

Nick argued, essentially, that humor is a necessary *and* sufficient condition for rewritten lyrics to be considered a parody. I'm not sure I agree with either half of this argument. Here's my reasoning:

(1) Humor is a sufficient condition. This would say that all you've got to do is make your lyrics funny and you can consider your lyrics a parody. However, most definitions I've seen (especially those definitions appearing the the Supreme Court decision) suggest that the parody must be making fun of the original work or its author. Just telling jokes with your lyrics doesn't seem to completely satisfy the requirements of a parody.

(2) Humor is a necessary condition. This would say that if you write a parody, it must be funny or you cannot consider it to be a parody. Now most modern definitions of parody generally include humor or lampooning, but the Supreme Court also made it clear that to be considered "fair use" the new work could comment on or be critical of the original work. This would tend to suggest that overt humor does not need to be a part of the parody work.

Keep in mind that it was the defendants, not the Supreme Court that claimed a parody to be a "fair use" of the original work. The Supreme Court agreed that a parody is a fair use of the original work and the parodists needn't seek permission nor pay royalties for that "fair use." The Supreme Court made it clear that each work needed to be judged on its own merits but the most important thing (with regard to work by ApologetiX, Nick Alexander, and others) is that the Supreme Court did not state that parodies are the only "fair use" available to those who would rewrite the lyrics. As I noted in an earlier essay in this series, the First Amendment guarantees us the freedom of religion as well as freedom of speech. The same argument made for parodies can be made for religious expression.

So I would argue that humor is neither necessary nor sufficient to avoid problems (ethical and legal) with respect to writing and performing Christian parodies of secular music.

Note that performance is an especially important component to this ethical issue. If you don't actually perform the work and sell the performance, it's nothing more than poetry and that's certainly allowable (in the U.S., at least) without any ethical question.

Now some might question whether writing lyrics to secular music is ethical from a Christian point of view, but that will have to be the subject of a different essay.