You’ve probably heard about it even if you don’t have HBO, because it was advertised big time everywhere, I am talking about the new series Girls, created by Lena Dunham and produced by Judd Apatow and Jenni Konner. I was reading Girls’ frontman tweets, Chris Owens complaining at length about it, as you can read it below in a few of his tweets:
‘Do you think that TV show even thought twice before using our bands name for their show? I'll bet they were just like "fuck it, fuck them"’
‘I wonder what other indie bands music they'll be playing on their show, not ours. The whole thing is just weird’
‘It's a bit sucky to be informed by a giant company like HBO that you don't matter enough culturally to not have your name taken away or used’
‘I just think that because of the type of show it is/people in it, they are aware that we exist, and could've used another name’
‘I think because of the fact that both things are current and would have similar audience, that they could've chosen not to use it’
‘Girls is obviously a word that cannot be owned by anyone, But a choice was made and anyone that really respected us wouldn't have used it’
And there were more of these!… Oh Chris, get over it! You’re right in this last tweet, how can you own a word as common as ‘Girls’???
But this is not the first time it is happening, and some took it very seriously. In 1990, the hard rock band Living Colour sued the Fox Network claiming that the show ‘In Living Color’ had stolen the band's name and logo. The show changed its logo (but not its name) and the lawsuit was settled.
In the 90s, a hip-hop group called Arrested Development got some popularity, broke up in 96, then reformed 4 years later, but Fox (again) debuted its cult show of the same name in 2003, and a lawsuit followed! Again the lawsuit was quietly settled, and both acts have quite disappeared from our lives.
So again, did these bands have any rights to sue the TV network, isn’t it ridiculous to think we own words or groups of words? The guy who shot the videos in the 90s about ‘Girls gone wild’ even tried recently to keep Madonna from naming a song the same way on her new album, he probably thought he was in his own rights to do so.
I would say that the case of the Red Hot Chili Peppers suing Showtime Networks over the TV show called ‘Californication’, the same name used by the band for their Grammy-nominated 1999 album, is different because the RHCP made up that word, so they kind of owned it…. but even in this case, when the word is out there, and caught up by others, is it still yours?
It is weird that people think they can own words, it’s exactly like in the George Carlin’s famous routine making fun of the current idiom ‘Tell us…in your own words. Do you have your own words?’ Words make language, and language as a whole was created by the human species, no human being own any particular word, and in Chris Owens’ case, he should talk to Judd Apatow, the guy uses a lot of indie music, I bet he would use Girls’ music, since he has good taste!