Unit
Six Blog Post
For this week’s blog post, I want to
talk about some interesting topics that were brought up in Joseph Harris’s
chapter “Remixing” in the book, Rewriting, How to Do Things with Texts.
In this chapter, Harris mentions two articles that discuss the nature of
remixing. The first article is Jonathan Lethem’s “The
Ecstasy of Influence, A Plagiarism.” Lethem’s 2007 article defends the
practice of remixing in the arts. What pushes Lethem’s article into the
postmodernist territory is that almost all the sentences in the article come
from other writers and artists. This makes “The Ecstasy of Influence, A
Plagiarism” a remix about remixes in defense of remixes. Holy porcupine, this
article is the conceptual equivalent of a Matryoshka doll! Here is the link to
the article:
The second article is Malcolm Gladwell’s 2004 article “Something
Borrowed.” In Gladwell’s article, he writes about how a profile he had written
about a criminal psychologist was placed in the script of a play. The play
wasn’t just Gladwell’s information about the criminal psychologist, but the
dialogue of the play used his exact words and passages from the profile. Although
Gladwell wonders why he wasn’t credited in the play, his take on the situation of
creative originality is more highly nuanced than Lethem’s article. The article
is definitely worth reading. Here is the link to the article:
After reading Lethem’s and Gladwell’s articles, I was
thinking about how many contentious lawsuits about originality and plagiarism there
are in the music world. Here is a list of some of most bizarre music related
lawsuits about plagiarism/originality.
John Fogerty was sued for plagiarizing himself.
John Fogerty was sued for plagiarizing himself.
This actually happened! Fogerty’s
record label, Fantasy Records, thought that Fogerty’s song,“The Old Man Down
the Road” was the same as “Run Through the Jungle.” Since Fogerty didn’t own
the copyright to the Fogerty song, the case went all the way to the Supreme Court.
What happened afterwards? The
case basically ended up being remembered on listicles like this one.
Here is a link about the details of the case:: http://mentalfloss.com/article/27501/time-john-fogerty-was-sued-ripping-john-fogerty
Gilbert O’ Sullivan vs. Biz Markie.
Gilbert O’ Sullivan vs. Biz Markie.
In 1972, Gilbert O’ Sullivan had a
number one hit with the song, "Alone Again (Naturally)." Biz Markie
sampled "Alone Again (Naturally)"for his 1991 song “Alone Again.”
O’ Sullivan
sued Markie for this. It became the first sampling lawsuit to go to court.
Who won the case? In
1992, O’ Sullivan won the case.
What happened afterwards? This
case changed the “Wild West” era of sampling in Hip-Hop. After the lawsuit, it
became required that any sampling of music must be preapproved by the original
copyright owners in order to avoid a lawsuit. Critics and music fans are still
divided over case because of the nature of sampling. Here are some links about
the lawsuit:
Tom Waits turned down Frito Lay to
appear in a commercial. Instead of getting another celebrity to promote chips,
Frito Lay still had Waits on their minds because they were inspired by Wait’s
song, “Step Right Up,” which is a song about…being against advertising.
Cognitive dissonance aside, Frito Lay had a strange way of getting around this.
They hired a Waits impersonator to promote their product instead. When Waits
heard this commercial on the radio, he was taken aback. So Waits sued Frito Lay
for plagiarizing his sound, persona, and image for the sake of a “corn chip
sermon.”
Who won the case? In
1993, Waits won the case.
What happened afterwards?
Waits
said that he blew all the settlement money on candy. “My mom told me I was
foolish” added Waits.
Here are some links about the
lawsuit:
So, what do think about all this stuff? What do you think about Jonathan
Lethem’s “The Ecstasy of Influence, A Plagiarism” or Malcolm Gladwell’s
“Something Borrowed”? Do you agree or disagree with them? What do you think
about the lawsuits? Alas, I leave you with one of my favorite remixes, which is
Cookie Monster singing Tom Waits’s “God’s Away on Business.” By the way, the video is even more fun when you put it on 1.5 speed. Here is the link:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U5X4N2exOsU
Wow I really loved this. Mixing Harris’s remixing with copywriting. Very interesting. I can’t believe Fogarty was sued for plagiarizing himself. I think lawyers have enough of their in the sun to allow for a breathable atmosphere free of their constructions. I like the way Gladwell handles plagiarism. He has a futuristic view of the situation and doesn’t let something sort of out of the ordinary bother him. He takes it in stride and doesn’t call the closest lawyer to defend his intellectual property. As the terrible awful putrid artist, Picasso once said “bad artists copy, great artists steal.”
ReplyDeleteWow some of those court cases were ridiculous! I agree with Oliver that Gladwell's approach to plagiarism is really interesting. He is able to bounce off of someone else's work (though it was taken from him in the first place) in order to make something new out of it. There is a thin line between "original plagiarism" what Harris talked about and actually stealing work.
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