Art & The World: Your Day Of Reckoning Is Here!

The issue of originality and theft are almost always intertwined with each other throughout history. From everyday objects to abstract concepts and ideas, human beings have grown too obsessed with uncovering the details about a particular work, including its originality and misuse through plagiarism. Even our forefathers, who have been the bastions of our nation, have enshrined this idea of avoiding plagiarism in our constitution; thinking about is as something that is absolute and necessary such as the laws of physics or morality. Today, the concept of originality and theft is apparent in the ideas of providing copyrights, patents, and any other restrictions that are aimed at properly crediting ‘who created it first’ and vetoing compensations for those who used it later. However, this idea of properly crediting the original makers and/or thinkers raises a lot of questions especially since some authors like Lethem (believe that originality is not even real in the first place. To explore these questions, and provide some answers Lethem’s “The Ecstasy of Influence.” This seminal piece by Jonathan Lethem discusses the controversial issue of theft and originality in contemporary society. Lethem believes that originality simply does not exist, making plagiarism a necessary evil. Today, this contention about plagiarism being a “necessary evil” resonates even further as social media plays a colossal role in propagating ‘plagiarism’ by making these once grave issues less perceptible but serious. However, this does not mean plagiarism is pure evil; rather I still believe that it is needed by our society to advance towards the next stages of our civilization. Specifically, by providing the seeds needed by both intellectuals and non-specialists in order to create new movements and propel us into the future. In the influential work written by Lethem, he discussed how we as a society, see originality and the strict need for its observance as a natural law that should not be broken, despite the fact that we do it both intentionally and unintentionally in our everyday lives. However, when viewed in a different light, this could be seen that nothing that humans do or think of are original ideas and are merely the recreation and reiteration of past events, concepts, and instances that we experience our own lives. Just as the case of Shia LaBeouf’s tweet as he apologize for the instances of plagiarism when he said “Copying isn't particularly creative work. Being inspired by someone else's idea to produce something new and different IS creative work”, the idea of plagiarism as recreation of past ideas could be seen since, this statement is surely taken from recollections of past ideas by other people.
As Lethem declares in his work, “Inspiration could be called inhaling the memory of an act never experienced,” signifying that even our inspirations in creating our revered works are merely memories which have previously crossed our mind (Lethem 3). Although Lethem’s idea might be true in a sense, it does not mean that plagiarism must always be tolerated. In fact, I believe that Lethem’s work, although very influential, is sometimes outdated––requiring additional facts and ideas, because even though it say that copyright should not be tolerated because nothing is original, it does not consider the blatant plagiarism these days, which needs to be prevented for the sake of the authors.
Perhaps the main reason why one may think that copyright and patent laws are as fundamental as moral or physical laws is that humans tend to believe originality is something that exists and thus should be promoted and celebrated. In line with Shia LaBeouf’s cases of plagiarism, the reason why he recycled what others would call ‘plagiarized statements’ is because he was able to get a previous idea, which perfectly fit the context of that time, thus prompting him to capitalize on it. When viewed with Lethem’s perspective, this idea that copyright laws are not needed could be considered as ethical as it argues that originality does not exist. However, in line with the context of our times, one could consider this outright copying as rules and regulations have already been set by those in authority.
According to Tim Parks, a British Novelist, translator, and author, the reason why copyright matters is because the original creators should be able to “reap the just rewards for [their] effort” (Parks 1). This article also talks about the idea of copyright and its necessity for authors these days in relation to how our society thinks these days. In his article, he said that “Copyright, we see, is not essentially driven by notions of justice or theories of ownership, but by a certain culture’s attachment to a certain literary form” (p. 3). Going back to Shia’s tweets, Parks idea about our attachment to some literary forms could mean that our own disregard for this kind of action is not due to the idea of serving justice but simply because our attachment to a particular literary form, which is social and mas...