The Fanatic Geek

      This first document called The Fanatic Geek is a cartoon by Patrick Chapatte. It was published in the Herald Tribune, an international newspaper, on the sixteenth of May 2008, when that year's edition of the famous Cannes film festival had just begun.

     Although it is more than five years old, it tackles an issue that is still today a much-debated topic: piracy, which seriously affects the movies industry.

     What catches the eye first is the Cannes Film Festival logo that gives specific information about the place and the time the cartoon is set in. We know that the scene takes place in Cannes, right in the middle of cultural news at the time Chapatte drew it, and that it will be built around that context. Three people are standing in the middle: a man who, judging from his hairstyle and boots, could be an American film director signing an autograph, an elegant blonde woman who comes with him and a young person waiting to have his autograph signed.

     Taking up most of the space in the upper right corner there is a balloon with a shocking message for the director: that young man has illegally downloaded all his work. So the next thing we see is the director's face, strategically placed in the middle of the image to be focused on, and the least we can say is that he doesn't look pleased. That fanatic geek with his loose jeans and his "@" T-shirt sticks out in that glamorous environment with its long dresses, its flashes, its red carpet and its screaming fan girls. He represents the internet against the movie industry.

     What the author is showing through this cartoon is a new generation of young people who would rather look for movies, music, series... free on the internet than pay their creators for what they are, in this particular case, watching. The message he is trying to put across is that the internet is slowing down the industry that feeds cinema, and that young people, with their growing use of new technologies are continuously contributing to that form of theft. Why pay if you can get it for free? The cartoon itself is in a way a caricature of that situation, imagining an extreme scene (telling your idol you steal his work) in quite a humorous way. But the situation itself is completely real; millions of people nowadays discover the work of many artists without paying a cent for it, through the internet. Cinemas, CDs and even TV are being left behind.

     Although the image raises people's awareness on the topic of illegal piracy, its author doesn't bias it and chooses to keep an open mind on the topic to let us draw our own personal conclusion with our mind just as open. He simply shows the discrepancy between the industry and its young audience, caused by the raising new technologies. 

     In terms of composition I think the drawing is very well thought out allowing a simple representation of a problem that is proving more complex than it seems lately, with caricatured characters and one concise sentence. The scene chosen here is extravagant enough to make us smile but not to the point of exaggerating the problem itself or making serious generalized accusations. The way Chapatte looks at the issue of piracy here is clever enough to make us think and open a debate that is particularly important when film festivals take place, but we are left with the disappointment of never knowing his opinion for sure. It is nevertheless a very intelligent and necessary take on a difficult question of this new century where young people won't pay for what they can get for free and the arts industries are not willing to work for free. 

     But who should change and adapt to modern times? Free downloading of any copyrighted content is undoubtedly theft and should be punished more severely, but the audience won't stop looking for ways to avoid paying for it. Thankfully, illegal downloading is not the only way to get free content on the internet. Platforms like Hulu, Spotify or Youtube apply a different method to  keep their offer free for users and pay the creators: advertisement. Despite the fact that we all dislike adverts cutting our film on Hulu, and we complain about the fact that internet media is turning into TV, it is safe (unlike streaming websites) and a fair deal for everyone, until we find a better answer to the problem. To stop intellectual property thefts effectively, the film industry should find more ways of understanding the new audience's demands instead of fighting against the consequences of technological progress.