Friday, August 24, 2018
The Big Ugly Battle Over The World's Largest Rubber Duck
theconcourse.deadspin.com: There is more than one enormous rubber duck. I did not know this when I decided to travel to Sandusky to see one, but I can’t unlearn it now. Though there was once a bigger duck in Saint-Nazaire, France, the monstrosity anchored in Sandusky comes with a registered trademark: it is the “World’s Largest Rubber Duck®.” Co-owner and local resident Ryan Whaley said that he believes it is the biggest duck in the world at the moment, but the realm of colossal avian inflatables is surprisingly convoluted.
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I have seen photos of this massive inflatable duck online for years, and I have always wanted to see it in person. Like the many onlookers mentioned in the article, I too am fascinated by this duck that is essentially a gigantic bath toy, if you choose to consider the ocean and the world’s harbors ‘baths.’ I do understand, however, why many feel so unnerved by the duck, and it is not just because the giant bath toy is strange sight to see. First of all, the artist, Florentijn Hofman, was uncomfortable with the commercial takeoff of the duck’s brand. On top of that, people were vandalizing giant ducks in their cities, and creating counterfeit ones if they did not already have one. The misuse of Hofman’s by other artists is truly frustrating, and must be especially so for Hofman himself. Nevertheless, people still enjoy the duck and its joyful disposition. I think it’s a fantastic project to bring to cities around the globe, however now that I am aware of some of the issues behind the scenes, I wish credit could be given where credit is due.
There is so much here to dissect it’s ridiculous. First off, the concept of copy right on a giant inflatable rubber duck is a bit difficult to wrap my head around. Something as ubiquitous as that, with so many copies of copies of copies swimming (floating? sinking on a bad day?) around millions of bathtubs not just in America but around the world for much longer than our giant friend's creator has been around seems a bit much to ask. Give your rubber duck something unique other than its easily replicable size if you’re so invested in your intellectual property. I think you can spin this into an interesting conversation about “Art for Art” vs “Art for Profit” and of course “art vs Art” (one being something you create for enjoyment, entertainment, and perhaps amusement, where the other is created for the sense of being something “Greater than” the rest of “that drivel”). If Hofman truly just wanted to create something to bring joy and help reevaluate public spaces, he should be thrilled that other people took the idea and ran with it. Either way, he doesn’t have much ground to stand on as his copy-cats clearly did their research and found a different rubber duck design to super-size. In this case, perhaps we should just let imitation be a form of flattery.
This article was a wild ride from start to finish. I don’t know if I’ve ever read a better sentence than “Hofman has claimed that Samborski never paid him, used Hofman’s plans to build a duck of his own, and then went rogue with said duck.” All the controversies and points of contention surrounding who the duck truly belongs to and what the purpose of it is or should be are fascinating. I largely agree with the author’s assessment of the “point” of the duck: it is meant to be nostalgic and absurd and delightful. Larger or deeper meanings do not stick when one tries and tack them onto the duck, even if that person is the artist. However, to focus on the truly bizarre battle referenced in the title of this article, I think that a piece of art such as this is interesting because no one person truly owns it. The rubber duck is such a ubiquitous symbol of childhood and innocence, I find it very strange that Hofman would choose to iterate on this idea and then have so many issues with not having full and complete control over his creation. Once any art has been released into the world, I believe that it doesn’t truly belong to the artist anymore, but rather to the public who engage with it. This is even more true when the art you are creating is simply a new or different way of looking at something that already exists in the world. I agree that Hofman’s discomfort with letting the world be inspired by and iterate on his duck does undercut his talk of artistic intentions and wanting to start conversations. The claim of copyright seems to be a gray area anyway for this project, so why not let people make the duck their own if they want to?
First of all, as a species we are completely daffy. Not only have this many birds of a feather invested this much time and energy into making all these ducks, and then other people flocking to go see the ducks, but then people end up talking about what these sitting ducks can even accomplish. Every other species on the planet would be so confused.
I honestly don’t really care if the duck makes a statement or not, and my guess is that for the people making it, whether or not other consider it meaningful is water off a duck’s back. I also don’t think something needs to make a statement to be fit the bill of being art, though to be honest I think trying to define what is and isn’t art is futile and minimally productive. But if you want to put a big duck on a river because you think it would be cool and then people take like ducks to water to the idea and go see it, cool. If you think the duck is lame and the person who made it is a quack, don’t go see it. I’m really not convinced that this duck is on the scale of the Olympics in terms of the economic issues it causes in the areas it visits.
My real question is, would Samborski’s scrooge-like trademark of giant-duck-centric water festivals really hold up in court? It seems a bit like foul play to me given that these giant ducks were already an established idea, and Hofman would barely have to have his ducks in a row to successfully challenge the trademark. Seems a bit like trademarking shooting fireworks after a sporting event.
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