Rebekah Modrak and Kenzie King Featured in Harvard Fair Use Week Blog
Recently, professor Rebekah Modrak’s essay, Miller Beer-Cam & Fair Use, was published in the Harvard Fair Use Week Blog. The essay discusses Modrak’s new work Miller Makes It Right, created in collaboration with Stamps student Kenzie King (BFA ‘20), in the context of fair use.
Inspired by Christine Blasey Ford’s testimony during the Brett Kavanaugh hearings, Modrak and King responded to Kavanaugh’s declaration of “I like beer” in a way that checks male power and privilege through the weaponization of beer cans.
The cultural critique took the form of a press release, with Modrak and King’s announcement that MillerCoors would recommit to their tagline “Miller Makes It Right” by installing a camera in every can of beer to “hold men accountable.”
Modrak writes: “Kenzie and I asked ourselves: If conscience and the judicial system are not enough, if police cars and bodies need to be outfitted with cameras to keep power in check, could we do the same with the beer can? If beer is to be weaponized, could it become a tool for the protection of women? We imagined a world in which MillerCoors reinterpreted their tagline “Miller Makes it Right” in the context of #MeToo.”