Here’s where I take issue with Alfonso Ribeiro attempting to sue Epic over this.
We all know the ‘Carlton Dance’, or most people should, definitely if you grew up in the 80’s. Alfonso played Carlton, a rich black kid who acted fairly white (of the rich variety of white) and he did a humorous dance that was basically a caricature of white people dancing at the time, or actually just prior to the series airing in 1990.
Here’s Carlton Dancing…
Now lets rewind back to the start of the 80’s. I give you The Go-Go’s…
…about 30 seconds in to the video you can see Belinda of the Go-Go’s doing a dance that is awfully similar to Carlton’s caricature of ‘white people’ dancing.
So, what do you all think? Think Alfonso deserves credit and/or money for a dance that he really didn’t invent, he just merely stole/modified/exaggerated something other people were doing and had long since been doing prior to his version?
This is a pointless lawsuit. He’ll lose because clearly the move existed before he made it his signature. I would be surprised if the judge didn’t throw it out right at the start because of that. Perhaps Alfonso needed some public attention? Can’t really see the point otherwise.
That’s kinda what I’ve been thinking as well and I’d been seeing comments by people claiming dance moves can’t be copyrighted or some such thing (I have no idea of the truthfulness or legality here). As for public attention… yeah, he didn’t do much of anything of note after Fresh Prince so I wouldn’t be surprised if he saw a chance to ‘try’ to get some easy money from something obviously very popular at the moment.
I would guess it’s a cry for attention rather than money, seeing how hopeless such a suit would be. If it gets thrown out he’ll still have to pay his lawyer, so there’s no money in it for him.
Not even sure if he invented it (similar dance moves aside), or only performed it. If the latter, he has no leg to stand on.
Generally speaking, this is laughable and should be dismissed. In fact, he should be fined for a frivolous lawsuit and wasting the court’s time, so this nonsense stops - yeah I know, won’t happen