I'm talking today about toys - and I'm talking specifically about Barbie dolls.

Recently, the Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals upheld the right of an artist to use Barbie dolls in his art, any way he likes. The artist, Tom Forsythe, lives in a little town in Utah and he makes strange, funny photographs of Barbies doing household chores and Barbies wrapped in tortillas. He also makes photographs of Barbies having sex.

Now, Barbie has always had an intense sexual subtext - the giant breasts, the obsession with swimwear, the boyfriend Ken with his own ambiguous sexuality. Forsythe's art simply takes the "sub" out of Barbie's subtext.

But that's not really my point.

My point is that Mattel, which makes Barbies and sells almost $2 billion worth of the dolls and accessories every year, brought suit to stop an artist from making his particular kind of art - literally made a federal case out of it. And the courts have now declared that Forsythe has every right to subvert and pervert Barbies any way he wishes - not that all or even most art needs to mock or tweak mainstream values, but it must always be allowed to do that, to say whatever it wants in almost any way it wants.

I have nothing against Mattel. I had a toy chest full of Mattel stuff when I was a kid. And my own children do too. But I'll admit I had a particular rooting interest in the case of Mattel vs. Tom Forsythe.

A couple of years ago I published a fictional account of a fictional, surreal, slightly hellish pleasure palace in Las Vegas called "Barbie World." And despite the disclaimer published at the front of the novel, "There is no place like 'Barbie World' operating under Mattel's auspices" I half expected, -frankly, half wanted - to hear from Mattel's lawyers.

I didn't hear from them.

So the courts have affirmed that no giant company can tell an individual artist what he can or can't say or make, even when the artist is appropriating the company's lucrative plastic products.

But it's also up to individual artists and impresarios to protect their own creations when big companies want to pay them to turn their art into lucrative plastic products.

The recent case in point is Harry Potter. JK Rowling, the remarkable author of the remarkable Harry Potter novels, has vetoed one of the plans that a toy company - and yes, it was Mattel - had for her fictional creations.

Mattel wanted to make a Harry Potter jewelry making kit.

Harry Potter and jewelry making? In today's consumer culture we hardly even register any more what a weird, random non sequitir that is. What does a brave English schoolboy who uses his magic powers to defeat evil have to do with stringing plastic beads on wires? Why not Harry Potter air freshener? Why not Harry Potter lawn mowers and Harry Potter corn oil?

When JK Rowling said no thanks, and left some of Mattel's money on the table, in that one tiny spot of the culture she helped re-draw a boundary between art and commerce. These days that's always going to be a hazy, blurry line, but it's a line we shouldn't allow to disappear.

Maybe I'm a hopeless idealist, but I'm heartened to know that not every cultural creation is available for unlimited mutation into unrelated mass merchandise. And I'm also happy that, thanks to the 9^th Circuit Court, artists are a little freer today to make any kind of art they want. Even artists who work in unusual media like Barbie dolls and tortillas.

This is Kurt Andersen in Studio 360.