Should a Charge of Plagiarism Ruin Your Life - Essay Example

Overcoming Influence There have long been questions about the nature of influence, inspiration, and plagiarism. Let’s say that a person, in an attempt to avoid all of these three, was not going to read anything and then write a book that would be completely made of this person’s ideas. However, there is a problem with this. If a person does not know what currently exists, then there is no way to know whether or not someone has already tried to do what this person is doing. Imagine the frustration and futility a person would feel after crafting what they considered to be a masterpiece, only to discover that the masterful plot which was crafted practically mirrors some random, obscure Victorian novel. The conventional wisdom that claims that everything has already done, no originality is possible, would appear to be true. Of course, the weakness in the previous argument is that no matter how much a person studies, there is no way to know every piece of literature in existence. When people go to university for a bachelor’s in Literature, they get a broad taste of writing from various eras and areas. Then for a master’s, the scope is narrowed to something like Medieval French literature, modern American novels, or Japanese literature. A dissertation for one’s Ph. D concentrates typically on one specific area of research in the person’s field of study. What exactly is the point of all this? No matter how much people study, there is no way to actually know everything. Chances are that there will be familiar echoes of another artist in any work, no matter how self-consciously the author might be attempting to eliminate those echoes. What can be done to find one’s own voice then in the midst of all of these echoes? One option, the only option it seem, is to embrace one’s influence and recognize it. As Jonathan Lethem says, “most artists are converted to art by art itself. Finding ones voice isnt just an emptying and purifying oneself of the words of others but an adopting and embracing of filiations, communities, and discourses.” The process of emptying oneself of influence in an attempt to create something completely new is futile. Anyways, what better way to create something compelling than to use a recognized and respected piece of art as a template and inspiration? Looking throughout most of the history of art and literature, appropriation has played was is seemingly a central role in the creation process. A large part of Shakespeare scholarship has been in the identification of the source stories for his plays. With the exception of a few, Shakespeare found inspiration for the plots of his plays in either well-known historical stories or various legends. Nowhere in his own work is there any sort of inclusion of a line stating “Based on” or “Inspired by actual events.” Yet Shakespeare is the best known and arguably the most revered writer who utilized the English language. Considering Shakespeare’s tendency to appropriate stories from other sources, one would think that this sort of borrowing would be a respected way to create. Another revered piece of literature, “The Waste Land” by T.S. Eliot, could be accused of simply being the ultimate cut and paste job. Eliot’s extensive notes, chronicling the sources of the poem, would seem to be saying as much. Of course, look through any scholarly republication of the poem, and you are likely to find even more notes pointing out other possible allusions or various sources for different passages in the poem. Now, keep in mind, this isn’t the first essay to point out the use of allusion in “The Waste Land,” as Jonathan Lethem did himself in his essay “The Ecstasy of Influence.” Does this make this essay any less original, strong, valid, or interesting because it is making the same point as another essay? Does the fact that Lethem’s essay wasn’t the first to point out Eliot’s use of appropriation make detract from the overall effect of his essay? And does Eliot’s original appropriation make his poem any less powerful? In simply judging the cases of Eliot and Shakespeare, appropriation and allusion, which is the literary term for artistic theft, would appear to be well-respected and considered to be valid forms of creation. That, considering the current copyright laws, obviously isn’t the case. The writer Malcolm Gladwell writes, in an attempt to sum up the general popular consensus on artistic appropriation, that “Words belong to the person who wrote them. There are few simpler ethical notions than this one, particularly as society directs more and more energy and resources toward the creation of intellectual property.” Noticing echoes of another’s work in somebody else’s creation raises cries of theft and unoriginality. The damage can be severe in some unfortunate cases. Gladwell later discusses his involvement in a plagiarism case. The playwright Bryony Lavery made liberal appropriations from an article by Gladwell and the book Guilty by Reason of Insanity by Dorothy Lewis. While Lewis had plans for suing Lavery, Gladwell had a different reaction: “instead of feeling that my words had been taken from me, I felt that they had become part of some grander cause.” Instead of feeling taken advantage of, Gladwell felt that his writing had been made better and more powerful by its inclusion in this powerful artistic creation. The was the possibility of Lavery taking the source inspiration and changing it to the point of being unrecognizable, but Gladwell has thoughts on that as well: “A savvier writer would have changed all those references to Lewis, and rewritten the quotes from me, so that their origin was no longer recognizable. But how would I have been better off if Lavery had disguised the source of her inspiration?” Gladwell seems intent on defending Lavery’s appropriation, though the articles goes on to detail how the playwright was more or less blacklisted for basically doing the same thing as what Shakespeare had done in a previous century. How much different would the play had been if the words “Inspired by” or “Based upon” had appeared somewhere within its pages? Would the playwright had been considered to be any less original if the source of the inspiration had been originally disclosed? The simple fact of the matter is that Lavery made something interesting and extremely compelling (there were talks of a Tony nomination), but we as people outside of the situation don’t really have the right to determine what Lewis’ reaction should have been. The great writer Ralph Waldo Emerson once said that “Our debt to tradition through reading and conversation is so massive, our protest or private addition so rare and insignificant, - and this commonly on the ground of other reading or hearing, - that, in a large sense, one would say there is no pure originality.” It’s hard to disagree with this statement, but when we are able to make such a small contribution to the tradition, people seem intent on being recognized for it. Let’s consider this: what if the stories that Lavery had appropriated had come from people, but that these accounts hadn’t been previously published in another book. This is probably the most commonly done thing in writing; a writer hears a real-life story, finds it interesting enough to want to write about it, and then decides to change certain details about it enough to the point where it is now the authors own words. In this case, the author will receive endless praises if the work is well received, but Lavery did practically the same thing, and because someone was able to identify the source of the inspiration, the playwright was blacklisted. Something seems fundamentally erroneous and contradictory in this whole ordeal. There are other example of appropriation in which the source goes unacknowledged, but the entire point of the appropriation is for the audience to recognize the source on their own. Consider the television show Family Guy. The majority of the jokes revolve around the shows use of pop culture references. Often times there are simply the characters rein-acting scenes from other sitcoms. When the Family Guy scene appears on your television screen, it does not state that this specific show was the inspiration for this scene. In fact, the entire point of pop-culture references seems to be an inside joke. When a person recognizes a pop culture reference, it’s like a little light goes off in this person’s head and say “Hey! I know that! I recognize that reference! The creators of this show must have watched this show as a kid as well!” It’s a sense of shared cultural heritage, and if the show had a caption stating what was being referenced, the entire point of the pop-culture reference would be made pointless. These are appropriations that build upon the original, increasing the value of both the source inspiration and the new scene. Another aspect of this to consider is what Don Swanson, a library scientist at the University of Chicago, called “undiscovered public knowledge.” Swanson did what, after considering the implications, seems almost obvious and might be considered plagiarism of sorts by current standards: “Swanson showed that standing problems in medical research may be significantly addressed, perhaps even solved, simply by systematically surveying the scientific literature.” The answers were already in existence; they merely needed to have somebody do some cut and paste work from various different journals, and the answer to a significant medical dilemma was solved. Of course, as students the cut and paste method is abhorred and we are told that we will receive failing grades if we partake of it. But what are we to make of this same technique being used to cure medical dilemmas and to write the most famous modern American poem? Obviously if a person takes another person’s work, slaps their own name on it, and tries to take credit for the entire creation of the work, this is plagiarism and should be punished. The issue become tricky when their own details taken from another person’s work which then are used in the creation of something completely new. Though the current thinking seems to view this as just as heinous as the person that slaps their own name on something already in existence, looking back through the literary canon would seem to contradict this. Works Cited Emerson, Ralph Waldo. “Quotation and Originality.” -The Complete Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson - Volume VIII -Letters and Social Aims (1876): http://www.rwe.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=47&Itemid=224 Gladwell, Malcolm. “Something Borrowed: Should a charge of plagiarism ruin your life? New Yorker 2004-11-22. www.newyorker.com/fact/content/?041122fa_fact –. Apr 23, 2007 Lethem, Jonathan. “The Ecstasy of Influence” published Wednesday, January 31, 2007. http://www.harpers.org/archive/2007/02/0081387 Read More