"Tupac: Resurrection" and the Mash-up

"Nothing is original. Steal from anywhere that resonates with inspiration or fuels your imagination...And don't bother concealing your thievery, celebrate it if you feel like it. In any case, always remember what Jean-Luc Godard said: 'It's not where you take things from, it's where you take them to'." - Jim Jarmusch

"Resurrection" serves less as a biography and more as a posthumous memoir through the use of mash-ups which allow the film to be narrated by Tupac Shakur years after his death. According to the film's press notes "Tupac loved doing interviews and would answer questions at great length", which gave the film's directer much material to work with. Materials which may otherwise be protected under copyright law fall into a somewhat gray area when it comes to mash-ups like the one done for this feature length film. "The courts tell us that fair use should be 'transformative'--adding value to what they take and using it for a purpose different from the original work." Mash-ups are a means of "quoting" other material to create a commentary and new piece of popular culture. While the idea of allowing Tupac posthumously to create his "own commentary" is an interesting one, it falls short in this film when contradictions about his life and music begin to emerge and there is no way to call on him for further explanation. When footage/photographs/voice recordings/etc are mash-uped this can often happen as the author of the work is able to create their own "truth" and not be held responsible for supplying more substantial information

New technologies allow everyone a platform to make their own realities and commentary. The space limitations of many types of media, such as Twitter's 140 characters, means that information is given as soundbites and lets the author off the hook for having to explain in more depth or cite sources. In addition, technology offers us a sense of privacy, and detachment, even as we're sharing these things with the entire Web. The online mentality is one of entitlement and total freedom, no one has ownership over anything and the truth changes depending on who is doing the typing. Most popular mash-ups are purely for entertainment, but in addition to parady and comedy, there is a great breadth and diversity of potential fair usage that is taking place in this new creative space that mash-ups allow. However, one positive thing that funny or silly mash-ups can remind us is that the First Amendment doesn't only protect serious and meaningful works for freedom of expression, but makes a wide array of things eligible for protection under "fair use". New forms of media are often criticized compared to the dominant medium of the moment and many have managed to overcome their early deficiencies and become very important to society. Whether or not this path will be followed by mash-ups is yet to be seen.