The Problem with Satisfying a Demanding Audience - Essay Example

The Problem with Satisfying a Demanding Audience The paradox built into modern entertainment is well known by authors, composers, playwrights and game creators all over the world. It is a paradox the owners of intellectual property are battling with each day: the world demands new and original materials to consume and enjoy, but the world demands more of the most popular items. This demand is packaged into one universal cry for More of the same / More that is new and unique! How are creators of books, music, games and movies to tackle this age-old dilemma? They are asked for new and original content, yet they know that the public is only appeased by tried and tested content and rarely applauds totally original concepts. Originality in itself presents a problem. Before something completely original is understood, it needs to gain acceptance by an audience. By the time audiences understand and embrace a concept, it is not new any more. Various bandwagons are therefore evident in the world of literature, music and entertainment in general. Some of the most famous examples of a platform from which various spin-offs were created are Shakespeare’s plays Hamlet and Othello. In fact, the themes, premises and scenarios of most of Shakespeare’s plays are to be found in other intellectual creations since they were written, and continue to be promulgated to this day. Everybody is aware, for example, that West Side Story is a re-hash of the Romeo and Juliet story. Yet it is not paradoxical to say that the two are original. "Just as Tony and Maria, our Romeo and Juliet, set themselves apart from the other kids by their love, so we have tried to set them even further apart by their language, their songs, their movement. Wherever possible in the show, we have tried to heighten emotion or to articulate inarticulate adolescence through music, song or dance," Arthur Laurents said about the development of characters in West Side Story. (New York Herald Tribune, August 4, 1957) The statement is possibly as far removed from William Shakespeare’s original idea for a play as it is likely to be. The concept of adolescence as a pressure group did not exist in Shakespeare’s time: people were adults and ‘marriageable’ as soon as they reached puberty. The ideas are similar, but the audience ‘readings’ are necessarily totally different. This kind of work, that so clearly takes on the themes and premises of another, is called derivative. To base a play or movie on a pre-existing work is to translate, fictionalise, dramatise, condense or abridge a work, altering so that it takes on a totally new existence of its own. Is this originality? It is obviously a ‘borrowed’ idea, but the two or more resulting works can be seen as original in themselves, since it is the idea or notion that was taken, and all the rest was created on that in an original take or spin-off. When works are recast, adapted or transformed in such a way, the intellectual rights that accompany the new work are self-contained and new, so it is seen as separate, complete and original. This applies even if the ideas taken are still visible and identifiable, as we have seen with West Side Story. Title 17 of the United States Code provides that ‘The copyright in a compilation or derivative work extends only to the material contributed by the author of such work, as distinguished from the pre-existing material employed in the work, and does not imply any exclusive right in the pre-existing material. The copyright in such work is independent of, and does not affect or enlarge the scope, duration, ownership, or subsistence of, any copyright protection in the pre-existing material.’ Edgar Allan Poe himself was haunted by the rules that governed literary works in his time. As literary editor and critic known for his original style, he was hampered in his own creative writing by the lack of international copyright laws. (Quinn 1997) Instead of publishing new and original American content, publishers in the USA were producing copies of books that came out in the United Kingdom. This meant there was a limited market for his work. Where did Poe himself get his ideas? Although he was recognised as a highly original thinker who drew on his harrowing life experiences for material, we know that Poe translated a lot of Charles Baudelaire’s works. It is impossible that none of Baudelaire’s themes did not creep in and become part and parcel of what we know as Poe’s work. What is very certain, though, is that Edgar Allan Poe was inspiration to a great number of writers during and after his time. He heavily influenced Jules Verne when he wrote The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket.(Quinn 1997) John Dickson Carr, Walter de la Mare and Fritz Leiber are only three writers who have used Edgar Allan Poe himself as a character in their works. The problem of originality in the modern laws that govern intellectual property resides in the fact that ideas and premises are not subject to copyright, and indeed neither are the titles of works. It is perfect possible then to ‘borrow’ a popular notion and set it to a completely different theme, using different words or notes, depending on the currency of the genre. Modern authors have used the notions and concepts created by such philosophers or playwrights as Aeschylus and Sophocles with impunity, or perhaps in the audience’s complete ignorance of their original source. Examples of such works, whose main idea or topic has been taken as a basis for new works, are George Bernard Shaw’s Pygmalion and the Broadway show and movie by the name ‘My Fair Lady’; Vladimir Nabokov’s Lolita inspired ‘Lo’s Diary’ by Pia Pera; and ‘Aurora Leigh’, by Elizabeth Barrett Browning has a similar plot to Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte. Angela Carter's ‘The Bloody Chamber’ takes well-known fairy-tales and re-tells them from a feminist point of view. Richard Nathan wrote ‘A Night in Elsinore’, which is a play completely taken from Shakespeare’s Hamlet; and there have been any number of spin-offs from Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen, including the book by Helen Fielding (and movie) ‘Bridget Jones’ Diary’. When the individual works are studied side by side, they form a very good basis for debate about originality, and what constitutes a totally original work. When authors borrow each other’s plots, themes or even characters, are they really creating something of their own? We have seen that legally, they are not breaching copyright; but what about the audience? It is possible that the audience - the market - demands more of the same idea. In order to understand original works, we must also hold the works up against those we consider as groundbreakers: the ones that came first. What were they based on, if anything? How did Bernard Shaw think up Pygmalion, or Shakespeare Hamlet? There is nothing really new under the sun. Most celebrated plays, novels and poems are based on something that came before them, and these are themes and plots to be found in ancient books such as the Bible. All human exchange and endeavour can be condensed into about a dozen main themes, and these in turn can be reduced to the most salient of abstract human emotions: greed, envy, gluttony, laziness, lust, pride and anger. Yes: we can base most plot lines on the seven deadly sins, but we can also add love, charity, faith, hope and a host of desirable abstracts which are possible to trace in all works of fiction. Many readers and movie goers are sometimes unaware that they are enjoying something re-hashed from an older theme, story or concept. Even Shakespeare himself took certain ideas from the Decameron by Boccaccio. Because Boccaccio’s works were seen as scandalous, and were often banned in European states, they were largely unknown, so few suspected, when they were watching King Lear, that the concept was not one that Shakespeare thought up on his own. When we observe the recent inundation of vampire movies and books, we do understand that the concept is not original, but we accept that each work, although loosely based on the Dracula novel by Bram Stoker, is in itself a self-contained work within what is fast becoming a genre. The Bible is a very old book that is long out of copyright: that is, it can be copied without fear of legal repercussion. Its ideas and notions are of intrinsic human interest, because they concern all the abstracts and constructs and emotions we live and breathe. That is why so many books have taken their plot lines straight out of the Holy Book. These include: Stone Tables by Orson Scott Card, The Red Tent by Anita Diamant, The Timothy Diary by Gene Edwards, Solomon’s Song by Roberta Dorr and Beyond the Road to Damascus by Ferrel Glade Roundy. Poetry seems to readers to be focused mainly on emotions, and therefore must be the most original kind of writing there is. William Wordsworth is one of the world’s best known poets. His words have come down to us from the past and he is often quoted in other works and studied as part of literary courses. Apart from the actual poetry, his introductions and prefaces to his poetical collections also are important writings that are quoted and respected to this day. But were his ideas original? Historical critics have examined all his works and found that ‘his theories were deeply rooted in the practice of earlier poets, especially John Milton.’ (Dictionary of Literary Biography 2007) One of the springboards that novelists use for ideas for books is current affairs. There have been spin-offs from such alarming events as the assassination of President John Kennedy, the Nine-Eleven disaster, the Great Train Robbery, the mystery of Azaria Chamberlain and many others. Writers borrow ideas frequently and with great success. What we read, watch and listen to is not as original as we think. Perhaps there is no such thing as a novel idea. The same twelve old notions are going round and round all the time. This is happens with great regularity, and generates enormous amounts of money. Perhaps it is financial gain, and not a lack of ideas as such, that prompts a playwright, movie maker or novelist to create a spin-off. Some are clear facsimiles, others are well-disguised, but all have the one motive: to make as much, if not more, money than the preceding ones. Even the making of money in itself is a notion that has been used over and over again - without much originality - in books and movies. ‘Money’, by Martin Amis, ‘A Bargain For Frances’ by Russell Hoban, and ‘Making Money’ by Terry Pratchett are only three among thousands. Money and wealth, the gaining and losing of it, have been universal themes in fiction since the beginning. Many of the novels by writers such as Jane Austen, Charlotte Bronte and Henry James are based on the wealth - or lack of it - of the protagonists, and what they did about it. Fiction is notoriously devoid of originality. Even the concept ‘formula fiction’ exists, where writers use a well-loved template of ideas over which to spread new words. Voltaire, the cynical essayist who defended the notion of free speech as long ago as the mid-1700s, said, ‘Originality is nothing but judicious imitation.’ It is possible to deduce that it is not originality that sells, but new interpretations and versions of the same old premises and scenarios, and very possible to conclude then, that uniqueness resides in the novel treatment, analysis and elucidation of age-old and popular themes, stories and concepts. * Works cited New York Herald Tribune Feature on Arthur Laurents and Leonard Bernstein. (August 4, 1957) Quinn Arthur Hobson Edgar Allan Poe - A Critical Biography The Johns Hopkins University Press 1997 Voynar, Kim Is originality dead in Hollywood? (2006) Dictionary of Literary Biography (2006) Gale Read More