The Failure of a Broadway Play Frozen - Essay Example

Lewis is saying that though someone has a right to use her professional discoveries, publications, and so on in whatever way they like (these being public documents that she puts out as part of her job) there is something special about the circumstance of her life that belong to her alone, and no one should be able to use them without her permission.

          This is an argument that makes a good deal of sense. Surely the person who wrote the play wanted to be accurate about the life of someone like Lewis, but that does not mean they needed to actually steal instances from her own life.  This speaks to lazy, derivative work on the part of the playwright – it would be as if someone who wrote a new play could not think of a new villain so simply wrote in Lord Voldemort or Darth Vader.  Part of the magic of art is that it takes something that is creative and makes it feel real and authentic, and small personal details are an important part of making a character real.  To simply steal those details from a living person is not doing your job as an artist.  This play is not original.