the ecstasy of influence: a plagiarism

The passage I chose to look at was the 4th paragraph of the section “Contamination Anxiety” on p. 214. I thought it was interesting how they talked about the value of plagiarism as a source of inspiration to create other works. In the passage, Lethem even says, “if these are examples of plagiarism, then we want more plagiarism,” after reviewing a number of hit TV shows, movies, and books that wouldn’t be around had their producers and authors not been inspired by a similar work. For example, he notes that without the Charlie Brown cartoons, South Park would likely cease to exist, at least in the form that it does today. By putting such a positive spin on plagiarism, it changes the idea of Lethem’s entire essay; the reader now is able to see plagiarism not as an act of theft, but instead as the use of a source of inspiration, in each case Lethem presents. This passage clearly demonstrates the ways in which plagiarism can be considered a good thing; even appropriation, which highlights the idea that the plagiarism was not approved of, can be seen as a benefit to a fan of TV, books, movies, or other forms of entertainment (but maybe not the producer of the original work).

Lethem discusses the positive impacts of plagiarism on the media (namely TV, books, and movies). The topic of plagiarism in music just happens to be something that my friend and I have spent a lot of time arguing about (whether or not plagiarism is inspiration or theft, specifically). So I googled “hit songs with stolen beats” and I got a number of results of some of the biggest songs from the past few years, that all used a unique beat that was really similar to another older song. Some of these included Yeah 3x by Chris Brown, Blurred Lines by Robin Thicke, Viva la Vida by Coldplay, Roar by Katy Perry, and Uptown Funk by Bruno Mars. Those were all chart-topping hits, and one might argue that it’s a good thing that their influencing beats were there to inspire these hit songs to be written. Also, it’s very common in hip-hop and R&B music for artists to take a popular song and remix it, where the remix becomes more popular than the original. Some songs that I’ve noticed this in include All of the Lights by Kanye West, Hold You Down by DJ Khaled, and Back to Sleep by Chris Brown; these songs are commonly played on hip-hop/R&B radio stations instead of the original song. In fact, in most of Lil Wayne’s mixtapes there will be at least one or two songs where it’s just Wayne rapping over a beat of a popular song of that time.