FACT: The Pirates Are Out To Get You

It's funny how campaigns on the issue of piracy had this erstwhile tendency to be leagues more apocalyptic than campaigns on issues that might strike you as being immediately more threatening. A few years back, we touched on the classic 1990s cautionary fable regarding Rebecca's pirated VHS experience - I'm still not 100% sure what was going on in that film, but I really did get the impression that the world was ending in that closing shot. In 2002, the Federation Against Copyright Theft got even more on the nose with a little piece called "The Pirates Are Out To Get You", the mere title of which says it all. The imperilled suburban innocence denoted by Rebecca's guileless giggling was now but a distant memory; this film might as well have taken place after the collapse of civilisation brought about by the foolish choices of Rebecca's unscrupulous parents, of which Rebecca herself appeared to have a chilling premonition at the end of her chapter. We find ourselves plunged into a burning hellscape, in the company of a pirate who might as well be the Devil himself. They didn't go so far as to give him pointy horns (although that wouldn't have been any less unsubtle), but he's got red-tinged skin and the glow of annihilation in his eyes. In place of his traditional pitchfork, he wields a brand in the shape of an X (for Forbidden!), which is first submerged in flame and then pointed at the camera, aaand it's not my imagination, is it? This anti-piracy film was intended as a parody of the Flaming Carlton Star? I mentioned in my coverage of that logo that the red-hot star-shaped brand was made all the more unnerving for the fact that we never saw the hand that moved it, enabling it to take on an uncanny life all of its own. Thanks to FACT, we get to discover if the alternative - seeing the sadistic thug with a penchant for scorching - is any more reassuring.

In lieu of turning the brute force of his weapon upon the audience, our demonic brand-wielder instead gets his kicks out of torching stacks of VHS tapes, film reels and CDs. A mere touch of the X is enough to engulf them in a flaming explosion that would make Michael Bay proud. The use of VHS makes the film feel curiously behind the times, as by 2002 the public were well along the process of tossing them out for DVDs, and countless VHS collections were meeting similarly miserable fates at landfill sites the world over. Being a VHS aficionado myself, I'll admit that the sight of all those tapes going up in flames makes my heart a little fluttery. (CDs? Torch as many of the snotty fuckers as you like. In this house it's vinyl or nothing.) By 2002, the Carlton Star had also been operation for long enough for audiences to be well-accustomed to kick-starting their watching experiences by having a burning iron shoved in their faces, so the idea was presumably to offer a startling subversion, with the (sorta) familiar imagery directing us to somewhere altogether more unimaginable. This is the Star's corrupted counterpart, signalling a dystopian world in which those pesky pirates, and not the advertisers, call the shots on what we see and hear - that being a slew of explosions and all the tell-tales noises of a society sinking deep into an apocalyptic chasm (sirens wailing, mobs chanting, gunfire rattling), indicating that our video-killer's actions have further-reaching consequences than a few melted copies of Bend It Like Beckham. I like the concept in theory, although it has to be said that the red hot X, in spite of its ability to make everything it comes into contact with to messily combust, lacks the awe-inspiring potency of its inspiration. We're issued a grim warning on the perils of letting the pirates brand us with their mark, yet "Pirates" doesn't make good on the implications of that threat - unlike the logo it's recalling, it never forces the viewer to endure the simulated experience of having the searing brand thrust directly upon them. It certainly puts a lot more emphasis on the fire visuals, making it a full-on nightmare for any pyrophobe unfortunate enough to find this lurking on the copy of Cheaper By The Dozen they rented, but compared to its counterpart, I never feel the creeping paranoia that the X-shaped brand is coming for me. The C-shaped brand (for Copyright!) that ultimately takes its place, once a bucket of cold water has put a stop to the mindless media-burning, is a slightly different story. Despite having just emerged from the same bucket of water that vanquished the X, it too ignites, with enough fury that it apparently causes the screen to burn out. It glows white rather than red, which I guess is intended to signify its purity, but the use of violent imagery to represent copyright is still jarring, meaning that it's not presented as a healing force that will put the world to rights, but an angry and vengeful one that's out to get you every bit as much as those pirates.

The film's most memorable component was its infamously foreboding monologue, which wasn't actually claiming anything that Rebecca's ordeal before it didn't. There, terrorism and organised crime were also said to be the beneficiaries of our dodgy video investments, although their invisibility made them more effective foes; the mere mention of the man at the market was ominous enough in context, but the suggestion that this only scratched the surface of a far more sinister agenda unfolding beyond the eyeline of Rebecca's ignorant parents was genuinely spine-chilling. The tactic was to prompt questions about the hidden costs of piracy and, through the highly emotive figure of Rebecca, what kind of world we were building for our children as a result. In attempting to provide more concrete answers to those questions, "Pirates" ends up feeling a lot more hyperbolic, in no small way because of its exceptionally bombastic choice of visual accompaniment (in the immediate aftermath of 9/11, the specific charge that "piracy funds terrorism" had also become an especially loaded one). It was an even more drastic leap from "Daylight Robbery", the anti-piracy film we all got sick of seeing at the start of our tapes in the late 1990s, in which the pirates were represented by a cartoonishly belligerent market vendor who played like a nastier version of Del Boy from Only Fools and Horses. Obnoxious to the core, and not the kind of bloke you'd feel comfortable doing business with, but at least he was only a bloke and not the Devil incarnate, claiming your hard-earned fiver for a barely-functional copy of Trainspotting but sparing your soul. "Daylight Robbery" was a notably lighter kind of anti-piracy ad, its tactic being to present piracy as a particularly loathsome inconvenience as opposed to an all-destroying force, and it found room for humor in its featured scenario (the vendor claims that his trade was "advertised on Crimestoppers"). "Pirates", by comparison, takes the path of excess. The pirates are depicted not as unscrupulous criminals, but as unearthly demons on a mission to set the whole world ablaze, who get one step closer to succeeding every time someone fails to source their copy of Minority Report from a reputable retailer. Its message is conveyed with thoroughgoing seriousness, and yet its hyperbole is so hilariously bald-faced that it ends up getting the comedic edge on "Daylight".

For as much notoriety as its doom-laden monologue amassed, it has to be acknowledged that it is rather clunkily-constructed. There are snippets that work well enough, like the eerie ambiguity in the statement that piracy "will destroy our development and your future enjoyment." Obviously, they're talking about the jeopardy facing the entertainment industry, but after that mention of terrorism it's hard not to get the sense that they're alluding to the possible destruction of society as a whole. But the equation of those two concerns - the repeated criss-crossing between the proclamation that the very worst, most malignant kinds of people stand to overwhelmingly benefit from piracy and the affirmation that the film and music industries have everything to lose - is overall unwieldy (the use of explosive imagery to imply that these two concerns go hand in hand feels especially ham-fisted). It's further weighed down by the surplus of inelegant fire analogies - in addition to the aforementioned "Don't let them brand you with their mark!", there's "Don't let the pirates burn a hole in your pocket!" and "Don't touch the hot stuff. Cool is copyright!" (which immediately contradicted by the image of that C catching alight). You get the distinct impression that several different marketing slogans were proposed and, after a backstage deadlock on which was the punchiest, all of them were tossed into the final script, with the effect that they cancel one another out.

As easy as it is to poke fun at "Pirates" for its intensely over the top tone and production, its crudely nightmarish charm always makes it delightful for a nostalgic revisit. It also looks positively sophisticated when up against FACT's upcoming specimen for 2004, "You Wouldn't Steal a Car" (aka the worst anti-piracy film ever made). All I'll say is that it's impossible for me to watch that one and not hear Tweety Pie's voice echoing at the back of my head. "You wouldn't steal a car..." "Her don't know me vewy well, do her?!"