Harper's Magazine: The Ecstasy of Influence (now with boobs)

[headexplode]

The Ecstasy of Influence

A Plagiarism

By Jonathan Lethem

LOVE AND THEFT

Consider this tale: a cultivated man of middle age looks back on the story of an amour fou, one beginning when, traveling abroad, he takes a room as a lodger. The moment he sees the daughter of the house, he is lost. She is a preteen, whose charms instantly enslave him. Heedless of her age, he becomes intimate with her. In the end she dies, and the narrator—marked by her forever—remains alone. The name of the girl supplies the title of the story: Lolita.

http://www.harpers.org/archive/2007/02/0081387

This is a quite brilliant essay dealing with the issues of appropriation in art, the ideas behind copyright laws and the extent to which they are abused by those looking to monopolize ownership of everything under the sun, the importance of the public commons, and others. Examples of appropriation abound, including Vladimir Nabakov, Bob Dylan, James Joyce, T.S. Elliot, Muddy Waters, and many more.

This essay appealed to me because, as a writer, as a musician, as an artist I've recently become more conscious, even anxious, about the ideas or lines or melodies of others' work ending up in my own. If I come up with a really good line for a song, or a story, I invariably end up wondering if it is mine, or if I've unknowingly cribbed it from somewhere else. As someone who has been led to the creation of art by the art of others, the thousands of songs I've heard and movies and tv shows I've watched and books and articles I've read over the years, I've often fretted over whether or not my voice is indeed, my own.

Even typing on this messageboard, I will worry over certain lines, unsure of myself, unsure of whether I had "stolen" them or if their were my unique gift to the larger world. Even as I was writing the "location" in my profile yesterday I became overly concerned with the idea that perhaps I had read part of the line somewhere and used it without realizing. It's easy for me to succumb to the fear of being unoriginal, or even worse, a thief of the sweat and blood of others, a moocher, a leech.

Read on, dear friends.

[alexey]

This could be a big setback in our constant struggle to prove to ourselves that we are special and unique

[headexplode]

This could be a big setback in our constant struggle to prove to ourselves that we are special and unique

Let's hope so. The charade has gone on long enough.

[headexplode]

Here are some boobs for you:

To liven this thread up.

[G.A.C.O.L.B.]

Ok now I'm pissed. Where the **** are the boobs? All I see is some dudes.

[jbooma]

Ok now I'm pissed. Where the **** are the boobs? All I see is some dudes.

They are dem boobs :laugh: :laugh: :laugh:

[81artmonk]

Here are some even bigger boobs!!

[Riggo-toni]

Do Pelosi and Jimmy Carter go to the same opthamologist?

[G.A.C.O.L.B.]

Seriously though Headexplode, I need to go to sleep but when I get up I'll give the essay a read and give you my thoughts.

I understand where you are coming from. I know people probably can't tell from the drivel I post on here but I love to write and I write a lot and I write about serious things. I often think if what I'm doing is original or if it is something I've picked up somewhere else and it has somehow seeped into my subconscious.

Even with something like school and plagiarism. I've thought about that quite a bit. I mean with so much info out there on so many different topics, it's not unimaginable to plagiarize something without even having ever seen it. There are only so many words in the English language and only so many ways sentences can be written.

But yeah I'm tired. I'll give this a serious read later on and get back to you.

[headexplode]

"WRONG HOLE, HARRY!!!!!!!!!!"

[PeterMP]

That's not an essay. That's a book. I agree that copy right controls have gotten out of control, but even w/o copy right there is no good reason to take something somebody else wrote/did and not give them credit. Maybe in Shakespeare time it made some sense due to the expense/difficulty of making copies, but not now.

[headexplode]

That's not an essay. That's a book. I agree that copy right controls have gotten out of control, but even w/o copy right there is no good reason to take something somebody else wrote/did and not give them credit. Maybe in Shakespeare time it made some sense due to the expense/difficulty of making copies, but not now.

The author is not arguing to do away with copyright laws (and neither am I), he believes it is useful to promote invention and innovation in the arts and sciences (as he feels this was Jefferson's intention when he put it in the Constitution). He is rightly concerned with the hyper-commodification of our culture at large, especially as it relates to the creation of distribution of art.

He calls Disney "source hypocrites," for instance, because of the way they have made millions of dollars off the stories and work of other artists, yet if anyone uses their images they immediately dispatch their cadre of lawyers to quickly collect their ransom money.

[DjTj]

The author is not arguing to do away with copyright laws (and neither am I), he believes it is useful to promote invention and innovation in the arts and sciences (as he feels this was Jefferson's intention when he put it in the Constitution). He is rightly concerned with the hyper-commodification of our culture at large, especially as it relates to the creation of distribution of art.

He calls Disney "source hypocrites," for instance, because of the way they have made millions of dollars off the stories and work of other artists, yet if anyone uses their images they immediately dispatch their cadre of lawyers to quickly collect their ransom money.

Yeah, I think it's definitely more of a problem with the "ownership society" than it is necessarily a problem with the concept of copyright in general.

The best solution probably isn't to do away with copyright law, but to revise the laws to reflect the many different ways we can copy in the present day. The mechanical license (that mandates payment to composers but allows performers to cover songs without permission) was an important change in the laws in the early 20th-century that both protected artists and helped foster more creativity and wider distribution. We should have a similar kind of license for sampling - both music and video ... and probably a de minimis exception, especially for live video of news events or sports. There are plenty of ways to change the law to encourage greater sharing rather than the obsessive hoarding of property we have today.

I think the legal standards are actually pretty well developed for written works, and the Wind Done Gone controversy ended in a relative victory for the parody writer. We just need to stop extending the copyright terms indefinitely.

[PeterMP]

The author is not arguing to do away with copyright laws (and neither am I), he believes it is useful to promote invention and innovation in the arts and sciences (as he feels this was Jefferson's intention when he put it in the Constitution). He is rightly concerned with the hyper-commodification of our culture at large, especially as it relates to the creation of distribution of art.

He calls Disney "source hypocrites," for instance, because of the way they have made millions of dollars off the stories and work of other artists, yet if anyone uses their images they immediately dispatch their cadre of lawyers to quickly collect their ransom money.

I'm agreeing w/ him.

[TheLongshot]

What we need in this thread is this video:

Jason

[pjfootballer]

I agree. I'm not seeing the right kinda boobs.

[81artmonk]

Are these boobs better??

[DjTj]

Hmm ... I wonder what Gilbert Arenas has to say about this:

Yeah, you’ve all been talking about it. I used someone else’s joke. What’s the big deal? I thought it was funny, I blogged it, you all laughed.

Mission accomplished.

Listen, nobody even heard of Ian Edwards before me. He’s no Chris Rock. I helped him become famous. Now everybody is going to YouTube and looking him up.

The joke was worth about $7 when I heard it, now that I’ve used it’s probably worth a little bit more. I’ll sell it back to him for $7.78. Seventy-eight cents, Ian, you can put that in a royalties check made out to me.

Puffy and Ashanti made careers out of stealing other people’s beats. This is America, the land of the reused.

If you think about it, nothing is original. Every joke has been retold at some point. What I did was recycle a new joke instead of waiting for it to get old. It was too funny not too. I mean, at least I picked a good joke, right? It’s not like it was some lame, “Yo momma” joke.

Let’s not forget, “Hibachi” was stolen too. Brendan Haywood used to say it before me. But I recognize good stuff and make it popular. Now “Hibachi” is patented by Agent Zero, son.

I’m not a thief, I just reused it.

Know who is a thief? The guy that is trying to sell the domain name of GilbertArenas.com to me. It’s my name! I have to buy it back from him. Now that’s stealing, borrowing, whatever you want to call it.

I mean they were even talking about it on PTI. Patrick McEnroe was saying I should quit making jokes about sharks and worry about rehabbing. Patrick, you’re right, I should be focusing on my knee. I guess taking 15 minutes to tell a joke doesn’t leave 23 hours and 45 minutes the rest of the day to be working on my knee. Rome was killing me too, but Rome’s my boy so I can’t say anything bad about him.

Patty Mac, shouldn’t you be “focusing” on talking about real sports that are going on? I didn’t realize that telling jokes can get me on PTI. I should do it more often.

Did you hear the one about the monkey and the dog …

I would finish the joke, but I already spent too much time on this post and need to get back to the gym according to McEnroe.

Before I do though, I’m going to go play with my new pet. It’s called a “liger.” It’s a cross between a tiger and a lion. I made it up. Man, I’m so original.

(Yes, I stole that from Napoleon Dynamite. Rent it. It’s funny.)

Oh yeah, Bow Wow gave me a shout out on my jeans, Fly Jeans, in his new song with B-5 so I just wanted to give him a shout out too.

http://www.nba.com/blog/gilbert_arenas.html#070803_01 ...interesting...

[willmb5]

Are these boobs better??

Much better

[headexplode]

There's a quote in the essay (can't remember who said it) that goes something like, how can you say something better than something that's already been said in the best way? Humor, like music, like all art, is perpetually built upon itself, with jokes and melodies and stories passed down over time. I wouldn't say that we reuse or steal the material given to us as a gift, but we decontextualize it in order to contextualize it in a different sense.

We all steal jokes from comedians. I often quote Bill Hicks jokes on this board (though I generally try to credit him). A few posters know what I am referring to, but most posters wouldn't know who I was quoting or what I was referencing. Is it plagiarism if I don't source his lines every time? Or is this an allusion? Was James Joyce a plagiarist, or an allusionist?

Look at hip hop, where the same lines will end up in different songs from different artists all the time. "You are now rockin' with the best" is one that ends up in thousands of different hip hop songs. Is this a case of artists paying homage to their musical forbears, or is it laziness and unoriginality?

Listen to the Simpsons DVD commentaries and you would be surprised at how many jokes, story ideas, camera shots, etc. are appropriated from other sources. (Of course, parody is given a wider license to appropriate from other places, but not everything they do is a parody.)

How many jokes or phrases or sayings have we learned on the playground, on the jobsite, at parties, that we regularly use and quote in different situations? Must we pay royalties to the guy who first said, "A priest, a rabbi, and a monk go into a bar . . ." or "Wrecked him? Damn near killed him."

Because here's the dirty little secret: that the people who are now appropriated from by our contemporaries, also did some appropriating themselves, and those who they appropriated from appropriated from those before them. Doesn't mean there is no originality, or we're lazy or dishonest. It just means that we have the ability to learn and adapt and innovate on the things that have inspired us to do more.