The Ecstasy Of Influence : Plagiarism

“To appropriate is to borrow. Appropriation is the practice of creating a new work by taking a pre-existing image from another context—art history, advertising, the media—and combining that appropriated image with new ones. Or, a well-known artwork by someone else may be represented as the appropriator’s own. Such borrowings can be regarded as the two-dimensional equivalent of the found object. But instead of, say, incorporating that “found” image into a new collage, the postmodern appropriator redraws, repaints, or rephotographs it.”

Many types of paintings exist in the world. While many are old, others are relatively new and therefore are less famous. An original piece is the sum of an artist’s life’s work, often containing a story unique to the viewer. Art is a language, a snapshot of history, created by the artist. In a sense, the artist is an author, who makes a point, or showcases certain hardships and tragedies. The author has built a various network of roads, and the viewer is following the roads that suit their own journey through the artwork. Where these paintings are original and unique, many artists make copies of these paintings, known as reproductions. In John Berger's Ways of Seeing, Berger states that reproductions detract from the value of the paintings

Conflict occurs when there are opposing views with those of higher authority, the oppressor, and those beneath them, the oppressed. In “Project Classroom Makeover,” Cathy Davidson explores the struggle between the current state of the American education system and the necessity of an improved one. Correspondingly, in “The Ecstasy of Influence: A Plagiarism,” Johnathan Lethem highlights the problems individuals encounter dealing with the premises of governmental limits on intellectual property. Comparably, in “Selections from Reading Lolita in Tehran,” Azar Nafisi examines the strife between the Iranian citizens and the authoritarian Iranian regime. Overall, people create conflict with the authority of their larger social group because

Ideas are neither created nor destroyed, therefore the notion of originality is false. Originality cannot exist if every thought and idea are preexisting, because it is proven that as human beings we are naturally inclined to copy one another. In art specifically, it comes to no surprise that artists can become heavily influenced by another’s artwork and unconsciously copy them. In some instances, this would be considered plagiarism and copyright infringement, but to Jonathan Lethem, it is a gift. In his piece, “The Ecstasy of Influence: A Plagiarism” he discusses the obscenities of privatizing ideas and opinions, because it restricts creativity. By forming false entitlement on something that was never truly yours, other individuals suffer

Once more people could hear more types of music, some became inspired, and some began to copy. There are many examples of how musicians have blatantly ripped each other off, ranging from Led Zeppelin stealing “Dazed and Confused”, to members of ZZ Top literally claiming to be another band. Many of these cases go to court, and change the way music is created, and written. One landmark case is De la Soul vs. the Turtles. In this case De la Soul, an entirely Black rap group, ripped off a song by the Turtles, an entirely White pop band. This case changed the way rap music is created, due to the heavy use of samples. Now rappers had to pay attention to the samples they used, and pay artists who made them. The verdict was so influential, De la Soul went as far as to argue that this verdict could end rap music as a whole (Runtagh, 2016). This case just shows one way the court system has tried to draw a line between blatant thievery and inspiration, and the compensation involved. There are many other cases that also attempt to create a legal distinction, but it is difficult for a court to make an exact line. There are only so many melodies, and notes, and some happen to sound similar, and sometimes songs are made to sound similar. Courts must go on a case by case basis in order to determine what exactly is and isn’t plagiarized. After the

When anyone listens to music, they need to be aware of their own preconceptions about what constitutes as art. This is even more important when scholars look the artistic expression of another

Humans love to consider that they are the only intelligent beings on earth. They hold their accomplishments in engineering and art as evidence that each human is an intelligent, complex creature, somehow more advanced than any other species on earth, and yet, supposedly unintelligent organisms, like ants, can create very complex structures that would seem to require intelligence. This concept is explored in Steven Johnson’s essay “The Myth of the Ant Queen,” where he presents the idea that intelligence is not a property of the individual, but is instead a property of groups. There are also however many examples of individuals creating things that appear to require individual intelligence. In Thomas Lethem’s

Both America and Korea schools are famous for education systems, so problems related to plagiarism are frequently encountered issues. For this reason, questions of consequences of plagiarism have been often come to the fore, so I want to compare and contrast similarities and differences of two countries’ outcomes of plagiarism. Both of two countries have strict outcomes for plagiarism, but America has more proper and structured consequences of plagiarism. Even though schools in Korea have policies giving punishment of plagiarism, they do not really examine students’ assignments or works, however, schools in America carry out policies by trying to catch plagiarism in practice, which means that schools in America has more rigorous disciplines

A prevalent dispute on social media today is whether cultural appropriation exists or not. However, imagine a group of students discussing ideas for a school carnival. Person A shares their ideas, but because they are the quiet student no one agrees. Person B, the popular student, restate Person As ideas and everyone approves. Person B takes pride in their plagiarized work while Person A is not credited. This is the concept of cultural appropriation. As a society, we can avoid this type of exploitation by acknowledging that cultural appropriation exists.

Introduction: To discuss plagiarism, one must first define this term which all college students so deeply fear. In short, it is the taking of another person’s words, thoughts, or ideas and presenting them as one’s own by not crediting the original author. Laws against plagiarism are instituted to protect the expressive and intellectual creativity of original artists. But in the visual arts, there is a fine line between plagiarism and allusion, between stealing someone’s work and incorporating it. In this paper, I will look at three artists; Andy Warhol, Roy Lichtenstein, and Louise Nevelson, to evaluate whether or not some of their famous works of art are plagiarized.

In his first essay of Ways of Seeing, John Berger claims that all power, authority, and meaning that was once held by an original work of art has been lost through the mass reproduction of these works that has occurred in recent years. He writes of an entirely bogus religiosity (116-117) that surrounds these art objects and that the meaning of the original work no longer lies in what it uniquely says but in what it uniquely is (117). He claims that because of reproduction, the art of the past no longer exists as it once did (127). Obviously, something created hundreds of years ago is not the same as it once was, but the distribution of art and music to the general public has had a positive effect on society rather than a negative one.

Roy Lichtenstein was considered controversial because his critics accused him of the only thing that can destroy you as an artist: plagiarism. Many believed that Lichtenstein’s work was far too similar to the advertisements and comics he was inspired by to pass it off as his own, or at least not without some sort of attribution to the original artist. Lichtenstein was often accused of profiting off of the creativity of others, which poses a question still prevalent in art today: At what point is the work manipulated enough to be considered an original creation?

Artists often reproduce and uphold the values valorized by their individual cultures, often without meaning to simply because they are the conventions of the contemporary era. This has been a historical fact not only through lyrical and poetic writing, but

In my opinion, Ruiz’s idea that culture appropriation doesn’t exist is completely untrue. As stated before, he focuses on cultures colliding together. He does not point out cultures getting ridiculed for their way of doing things, then the ridiculers take the ideas and rename it as

In his essay, Shields unleashes his frustrations regarding the country’s negative attitude towards appropriation and borrowing. He asserts that “there’s no such thing as originality”, that “all life on earth…is built upon appropriation and reuse of the pre-existing” (Shields 736). Shields utilizes a multitude of examples to illustrate and support his points. Musicians from Mozart to Bob Dylan have utilized content or taken inspiration from other artists. Shields shows that “borrowing has been with us from the beginning”, citing the New Testament and Shakespeare’s Antony and Cleopatra as “composites of numerous sources” (740). His essay demonstrates that borrowing is prevalent in music and writing, as artists take inspiration from preceding artists and from their