Carlton Sues Over Carlton Dance

It's not unusual to win this kind of lawsuit.

(Photo by Kevin Winter/Getty Images)

So, I’m a black guy who can’t dance and that fact has been a permanent obstacle to happiness over the course of my life. My father, my own damn father, used to do this joke: he’d tell one of his friends, “Let me prove something to you,” and then call me out and ask me to dance and I would and my dad and the friend would laugh and then my dad would say, “See, that there is PROOF that all black people DO NOT in fact have rhythm!” And more laughter. YES, I’VE TALKED ABOUT THIS IN THERAPY!

That’s a little bit of context to help you understand why Alfonso Ribeiro’s portrayal of “Carlton” on the Fresh Prince of Bel Air is important to me. Carlton wasn’t cool. He was the butt of most of the jokes on that show. His “book smarts” were constantly put in opposition — losing opposition — to Will Smith’s “street smarts.” But you know what, Carlton was also kind and good-hearted and LOYAL to his friends and family. He wasn’t as shallow or materialistic as Hillary. And goddamn it, when Will got shot protecting Carlton, it was Carlton who had to be talked off the ledge of going full Boyz in the Hood on their enemies.

There’s MORE THAN ONE BLACK PERSON, and Carlton v. Will always made that okay. AND, Carlton couldn’t dance. The Carlton Dance is so delightfully iconic exactly because it takes all those black people dancing stereotypes, smashes them, and yet makes it all funny again.

The Carlton Dance has been copied more than any of Will Smith’s dance moves, and now Alfonso Ribeiro wants a cut… a cut that he almost certainly deserves. From NBC:

In separate lawsuits filed Monday in federal court, Ribeiro alleges that Fortnite-maker Epic Games and 2K Sports-creator Take-Two Interactive used his signature steps, dubbed “The Carlton Dance,” without permission or credit.

Ribeiro’s dance was popularized through his character, Carlton Banks, on the 1990s sitcom.

Ribeiro says North Carolina-based Epic Games and Delaware-based Take Two used his dance he first performed on a 1991 “Fresh Prince” episode. He’s asking for a judge’s order to stop both games from using his moves.

Ribeiro says he is currently in the middle of copyrighting the dance.

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First of all, Ribeiro can clearly copyright a dance. A dance is like any other form of intellectual property: if Ribeiro “created” it, the question of whether it’s “distinct” is already answered, given that we all call the thing the “Carlton dance.”

I spoke with a patent attorney friend (who wishes to remain nameless because he doesn’t want people to know he knows me). He opined:

Dance choreography is eligible for copyright protection as an original work. As soon as it is recorded in “fixed form,” which I assume is in a 25 year old episode of [Fresh Prince], it is the intellectual property of the creator, Carlton…

If [Fortnite et al.] are smart they’ll do something funny/ public with Ribeiro, put some cheddar in his bank account, and maybe get Will Smith to return one of his phone calls

It’s not a slam dunk case. There might be some other Fresh Prince choreographer who can claim ownership of the dance. We don’t know the full details of Ribeiro’s employment contract with the producers of the show; perhaps he reverted all ownership of his creations while on the show over to them. But even those scenarios don’t give Epic Games or Take Two Interactive a right to put an unlicensed replica of the dance in their games.

Don’t go putting the Carlton Dance in your games without respecting Carlton. You have no idea how much that appendage arrhythmia means to a small subset of awkward kids, and we all know who deserves credit for it.

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‘Fresh Prince of Bel-Air’ star sues makers of Fortnite, NBA 2K video games over use of ‘Carlton’ dance [NBC News]


Elie Mystal is the Executive Editor of Above the Law and the Legal Editor for More Perfect. He can be reached @ElieNYC on Twitter, or at elie@abovethelaw.com. He will resist.