The Ecstasy of Plagiarism by Akash Parammal

The Ecstasy of Influence: Plagiarism

parammalakash — 2024-10-08 01:33:19 UTC

the author Jonathan Lethem describes key details that have influenced an artist creative capabilities over the year. Through these details we see how there has been a drastic increase in the limitations set on an artist and how they ultimately end up killing art itself. With this argument I'd like to argue what could be considered as theft and what is loved through an artists point of view.

Love

parammalakash — 2024-10-08 01:50:57 UTC

Theft

parammalakash — 2024-10-08 01:51:45 UTC

Copyright

parammalakash — 2024-10-08 02:15:41 UTC

Copyright laws often limit an artist creative capabilities as it restricts the ability to take inspiration from created work. This also creates fear in many artists as they now have to be vary of the legalities that come with creating art through unauthorized use of other artists work whether it is accidental or intended.

Conflation of Intellectual and Physical Property

parammalakash — 2024-10-08 02:31:26 UTC

Conflation or mixing intellectual and physical properties is another way that creativity is limited through legalities. By establishing the same consequences for the theft of a physical object to an intellectual property, creates fear in artist who are looking for inspiration

Commodification

parammalakash — 2024-10-08 02:59:45 UTC

Commodification is the act of allocating a value to an item, and according to Lethem is considered to destroy an art of it's ability to connect with a person or audience. This could be considered as a form of theft as it robs the feeling of a personalized connection from an art to an artist by viewing the piece of art as a commodity.

Appropriation

parammalakash — 2024-10-08 03:10:04 UTC

Inspiration and appropriation allows artist to create new ideas or further improve existing ideas.

Gift Economy

parammalakash — 2024-10-08 03:17:11 UTC

"Gift Economy" allows for free exchange of ideas and inspiration. This creates a sense of belonging and creates a community that promotes creativity.

Second use

parammalakash — 2024-10-08 03:31:24 UTC

The idea of "Second use" helps an artist create a spin on an already created art which creates new connections between new audiences and artists.

Example

parammalakash — 2024-10-08 03:43:38 UTC

"Disney's protectorate of lobbyists has policed the resulting cache of cultural materials as vigilantly as if it were Fort Knox threatening legal action, for instance, against the artist Dennis Oppenheim for the use of Disney characters in a sculpture, and prohibiting the scholar Holly Crawford from using any Disney-related images-including artwork by Lichten stein, Warhol, Oldenburg, and others-in her monograph Attached to the Mouse: Disney and Contemporary Art." (Lethem 241) This quote is an example of how copyright comes into action and how it limits an artist of their creative capabilities.

Example

parammalakash — 2024-10-08 03:51:12 UTC

Lethem gives a very example of appropriation with Bob Dylan.

Example

parammalakash — 2024-10-08 15:32:35 UTC

"If nostalgic cartoonists had never borrowed from Fritz the Cat, there would be no Ren & Stimpy Show; without the Rankin/Bass and Charlie Brown Christmas specials, there would be no South Park; and without The Flintstones-more or less The Honeymooners in cartoon loincloths-The Simpsons would cease to exist" (Lethem 235)

Example

parammalakash — 2024-10-08 15:34:00 UTC

"Ovid's "Pyramus and Thisbe" with Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet and Leonard Bernstein's West Side Story, or Shakespeare's description of Cleopatra, copied nearly verbatim from Plutarch's life of Mark Antony and also later nicked by T. S. Eliot for The Waste Land" (Lethem 235)

Example

parammalakash — 2024-10-08 15:36:30 UTC

"This is the reason why even a really beautiful, ingenious, powerful ad (of which there are a lot) can never be any kind of real art: an ad has no status as gift; i.e., it's never really for the person it's directed at" (Lethem 242)

Example and Evidence

parammalakash — 2024-10-08 15:38:55 UTC

"my entertainment is sometimes lately preceded by a dire trailer, produced by the lobbying group called the Motion Picture Association of America, in which the purchasing of a bootleg copy of a Hollywood film is compared to the theft of a car or a handbag-and, as the bullying supertitles remind us, "You wouldn't steal a handbag!" This conflation forms an incitement to quit thinking" (Lethem 239)

Evidence

parammalakash — 2024-10-08 16:24:56 UTC

Lethem states "Essential commerce of art a gift is carried by the work from the artist to his audience, if I am right to say that where there is no gift there is no art, then it may be possible to destroy a work of art by converting it into a pure commodity" (Lethem 242).