Busytown: A good read
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Earlier today I put to you the first example that came to mind - De Palma referring to the puschair scene in Battleship Potemkin during a shootout in The Untouchables. But this is the equivalent of a literary allusion, not of a direct quotation, of the lifting verbatim of a whole sentence - that would be De Palma splicing in the film the sequence from Potemkin (and when that happens, you most certainly have to state it), or working off the same script for a significant enough length of time.
It's actually a question of definition. Some have called this use of the Potemkin scene in The Untouchables, and De Palma's extensive use of Hitchcock throughout his career, plagiarism. I wouldn't -- citing Robin Wood above -- and it seems that you wouldn't either. What that tells us is that there are ways in which plagiarism is subjective.
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(The tendency to take a naive definition of a concept, prove the naive definition is incapable of dealing with a pathological case, and then announce that the concept is bankrupt isn't particularly impressive.)
No idea what this means, sorry.
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Some have called this use of the Potemkin scene in The Untouchables, and De Palma's extensive use of Hitchcock throughout his career, plagiarism. I wouldn't -- citing Robin Wood above -- and it seems that you wouldn't either.
No, of course I wouldn't. But I also struggle to see how it correlates with the unintended 'correspondences' - to use Ihimaera's own definition - that Jolisa spotted in The Trowenna Sea. Your analogy seems weak to me. And to suggest that the world of literary criticism and fiction is behind other media in its reflections on what constitutes originality and authorship ignores a staggering number of critics and authors - Joyce, Borges, Barthes, Foucault, to name but four - who spent much of the last century banging on about these very things. I hardly think that any of them would find the Ihimaera example especially interesting because it doesn't offer any sort of critique, implicit or explicit, of the status quo accepted by the publishing industry and academia.
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Well, it means this:
What that tells us is that there are ways in which plagiarism is subjective.
I would say that's blindingly obvious personally, and blindingly pointless. Yes, plagiarism is subjective, and you have successfully proven that the chap who has a mathematical formula for this is wasting his time. So what?
A great many useful and coherent concepts are subjective --- handball in football, as opposed to, say, who has the throw-in, is subjective. Yet we can use the concept of handball very well in general.
You have to go on to prove that this subjectivity fatally undermines the concept of plagiarism, you can't just stop there. But you and David do this all the time: look, here, we have proven a naive notion of authorship is in some ways problematic! Authors don't exist.
Well, no, that's not really true.
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And to suggest that the world of literary criticism and fiction is behind other media in its reflections on what constitutes originality and authorship ignores a staggering number of critics and authors - Joyce, Borges, Barthes, Foucault, to name but four - who spent much of the last century banging on about these very things. I hardly think that any of them would find the Ihimaera example especially interesting because it doesn't offer any sort of critique, implicit or explicit, of the status quo accepted by the publishing industry and academia.
So if Ihimaera had been able to argue that his use of what he called "correspondences" was a strategy intended to critique the status quo of the publishing industry and academia, to challenge ideas of authorship, ownership and originality, would your view of his new book be different? This is one of the questions I've wondered about these past few days.
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Ihimaera is not a privately funded movie maker or film reviewer.
He works at a public university that is part of an international academic community of practice with expectations and conventions about handling the usage of other people's works (and in this case, words).
Admittedly that appears to count less in practice than if he were a student like Cauchi.
And yes, there's a difference between continuing a conversation with previous creators and just playing back their words.
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But I also struggle to see how it correlates with the unintended 'correspondences' - to use Ihimaera's own definition - that Jolisa spotted in The Trowenna Sea.
The correlation is that both David Cauchi and myself came into this discussion interested in talking about the ways in which originality and appropriation in contemporary art and originality and appropriation in film are perceived differently to originality and appropriation in writing. That a possible case of plagiarism in a film is much more nebulous than a case of plagiarism in a book is that basic point.
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the ways in which originality and appropriation in contemporary art and originality and appropriation in film are perceived differently to originality and appropriation in writing
That sounds like an interesting topic for a broader conversation. But isn't "plagiarism" a more narrowly literary rather than artistic or filmic concept? That seems to be the discussion you walked into so I'm not surprised it didn't open up as fast as you might have wanted.
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That a possible case of plagiarism in a film is much more nebulous than a case of plagiarism in a book is that basic point..
Could it be that it's a great deal easier to match words than images? And that's what some commenters took exception to I think, the blindness to the obvious differences in the media. The crushing arrogance of David's post can't have helped much either.
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3410,
the ways in which originality and appropriation in contemporary art and originality and appropriation in film are perceived differently to originality and appropriation in writing
This is an interesting question, but De Palma's allusions to Hitchcock's works are a red herring. A more apposite example might be something like Voyage to the Prehistoric Planet a 1965 Corman production which consists largely of sequences from the 1962 Russian film Planeta Bur (Planet of Storms), the rights to which Corman had purchased.
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So if Ihimaera had been able to argue that his use of what he called "correspondences" was a strategy intended to critique the status quo of the publishing industry and academia, to challenge ideas of authorship, ownership and originality, would your view of his new book be different?
The nature of the book and of the correspondences surely would have to have been quite radically different for that argument to have been even possible, but I guess that sure, if there had been some sort of rationale for employing what some would construe as plagiarism to critique these notions, then one would appraise the book accordingly. Clearly Ihimaera isn't remotely interested in arguing anything of the sort, though, so the point is entirely moot.
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Could it be that it's a great deal easier to match words than images? And that's what some commenters took exception to I think, the blindness to the obvious differences in the media.
I don't think "blindness" is fair, personally. As someone who's made a living at times writing about books and films I'm reasonably alert to "obvious differences in the media". One is words on a page and the other is pictures on a screen, right?
That sounds like an interesting topic for a broader conversation.
I guess I naively thought I might be able to get one going.
But isn't "plagiarism" a more narrowly literary rather than artistic or filmic concept?
That was the thing. We talk about plagiarism over here but, by and large, not over there. I've said versions of that about 20 times now.
The nature of the book and of the correspondences surely would have to have been quite radically different for that argument to have been even possible, but I guess that sure, if there had been some sort of rationale for employing what some would construe as plagiarism to critique these notions, then one would appraise the book accordingly. Clearly Ihimaera isn't remotely interested in arguing anything of the sort, though, so the point is entirely moot.
Interesting. I take it from the first sentence you've read the book?
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A more apposite example might be something like Voyage to the Prehistoric Planet a 1965 Corman production which consists largely of sequences from the 1962 Russian film Planeta Bur (Planet of Storms), the rights to which Corman had purchased.
Well, if he bought the rights it isn't really a comparison, is it? Much more apposite are the Craig Baldwin films like Spectres of the Spectrum that Cauchi alluded to -- constructed from "found" footage from Baldwin's archive of old SF and documentary film.
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The Baldwin example seems likely to breach copyright, but not be plagiarism per se- he's not claiming to have created the original images.
And even then, the way meaning is created with images in film is- like words- importantly about the way they are ordered. I'm imagining Baldwin to be original in his sequencing.
Perhaps the clearest corelation would be using the same script- copying lines verbatim. You allude to this happening in one very brief exchange in Taxi Driver. I think if the example were longer, it might fit the case- but that breifly, it seems more a passing reference. -
Interesting. I take it from the first sentence you've read the book?
Oh Philip don't be a dick for God's sake. It's a historical novel that has been described to me by more than one able reviewer with three pages of stated sources that yet fails to reference a number of specific quotations. Quite aside from the fact that Ihimaera immediately apologised and set about contacting all his living quotees, whilst offering no criticism whatsoever of the accepted definition of what constitutes plagiarism in his line of work, I really struggle to see how you could take this book - that I haven't read - as a subervsive treatise on authorship.
I don't think "blindness" is fair, personally. As someone who's made a living at times writing about books and films I'm reasonably alert to "obvious differences in the media". One is words on a page and the other is pictures on a screen, right?
You still haven't offered a single example that is analogous with Ihimaera's case, which happens to be the topic of this thread. If you want to have a broader conversation, you might have to make a greater effort than just saying that in film it ain't like that - you haven't shown it at all. You keep citing examples of allusions and references to the great masters that are rife in literature and not considered plagiarism at all there either. And in fact, on that very broad general point, you got some broad general agreement along the lines of "yeah, intertextuality, we dig that". If you insist that the conversation must be derailed, you might have to come up with something that at least ties in with poor Jolisa's post I would think.
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I guess I naively thought I might be able to get one going.
We've tried that conversation a few times hereabouts and it has only got so far.
"yeah, intertextuality, we dig that"
We do, to be fair.
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3410,
Well, if he bought the rights it isn't really a comparison, is it?
to what?
I actually never saw much of a problem with Baldwin's films, for much the same reasons as Rob Stowell elucidates above (in fact I love the idea.)
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Adrian Johns argues that early-modern print culture did not spring fully formed from the press of Gutenburg. The qualities that we normally associate with the printed word -- reproducibility, broad distribution, fidelity to the source, and authorship -- were absent from printing for the first three centuries of its existence in Europe. Rather, printing was a craft, printers were as involved in the construction of meaning on the page as authors were, and piracy was rife.
Piracy is particularly pertinent to this discussion, because, in the 17th Century, it had a much broader range of meanings than the copying and distributing works wholesale which we have today. It could also mean the practice of attributing a text to an author that didn't write it (in order to increase sales), attaching new sections to works and claiming that they were 'new additions', thus increasing sales, as well as libel and inserting chunks of one text into another. And that's just a start. They were scurrilous, these printers.
Over the seventeenth and early-eighteenth century, one of the first things readers had to do was determine whether or not the work was pirated. So, alongside the commercial sinews of distribution, the men and women of the printing culture developed a system of 'credit'. Is the printer well-regarded? What do we know about the author? Who are their authorities? Is it a quality binding? By determining the answers to these kinds of questions, readers would decide just how seriously to take the book, whether or not to 'credit' it with any kind of authority. We still use the idea of credit -- the word is used several times in this thread, in fact -- and the assumptions is brings with it are very much embedded in our reading and writing practices.
One of the bi-products of this system was the notion of the author as the sole authority on the fidelity of the text, and some fairly rigorous ideas about what practices are valid, and what practices are not. One that is not is plagiarism.
So (and I know you were being facetious, Philip), the differences between the printed word and the film is not just the material characteristics (one is words on a page and the other is pictures on a screen), but also a host of cultural practices and assumptions to do with the history of the different media's development. The two media are emphatically not analagous, and although a comparison of both could be an interesting exercise, it must be undertaken with an understanding of both contexts, and not in the frankly cack-handed manner that people have gone about it here. Literature is 'behind' film? Go tell it to Laurence Sterne.
BUT, just because these are cultural practices not determined by the 'nature' of the media, doesn't mean they should be ignored, or contravened with impunity. If you're going to do something like that, there has to be a point to it. I agree that if Ihimaera had set about exploring the ideas of publishing and plagiarism and the history of print and history in New Zealand it would have been fascinating and adventurous (here's a good place to start). I want to read that book. But, as Giovanni points out, his actions after getting busted suggest that he didn't, and anyway, he's not that kind of writer.
TL;DR Film, a modern art, developed in the age of mass production and mass democracy, massive state apparatuses, and global distribution, has a different set of cultural practices to writing, the history of which stretches back thousands of years, and has gone through many incarnations as societies have changed. We can explore those practices, of course, and many have (Giovanni listed four who did a pretty good job of it above), but we also have to acknowledge them.
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One of the bi-products of this system
Heh. Thread-merge. (If you say Emma's name three times backwards she will appear and furnish a list of famous bi authors, which is to say, all the great ones. Shakespeare in the house!).
I would chime in at length but am stuck in weekend mode, supervising terrifying pillow fights between an enormous 8 year old and a wily 3.5 who is willing to play dirty, if bringing a sword to a pillow fight with somebody twice your size counts as playing dirty. So, uh, nothing deep or on topic to offer here at the moment. (Except to say that we were inspired by that minor intertextual masterpiece, The Princess Bride.)
But Philip, your points about film are, as always, golden. And Jake, Giovanni, Danielle & Keir have articulated everything I might have said about why they're tangential at best to current discussion.
"If the novel had taken a knowing and artful spin along the lines of
"who owns history", I'd have loved it, whether it was a roaring success or beautiful failure. Alas, for all our purposes here, Bridget Jones's Diary it was not. The afterword, rather than saying "you'll know where to find more if you're looking for it, wink wink," is a very conventional set of nods to other people's ownership of various aspects of the story. Just, not all of them. Which was the problem. Rather than allusion or invocation, this struck me, and still does, as just a drive-by.(Latest find = chunks of online encyclopedia entries. Small chunks, but chunks nonetheless).
So the great NZ hat-tipping, cock-snooking, conventions-of-plagiarism-challenging, pastiche-mash-up-novel-of-collective-genius remains to be written. Perhaps we can have a crack at it here?
[Uh oh, got carried away - pillow fight ends in tears - exit pursued by small enraged bears]
[Just to note: I've edited the above for clarity at Jolisa's request. For some reason she never got the magic moderator privileges -- RB]
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Philip -- looks like you are getting your discussion.
However, I think the reason there was no real definitional debate about plagiarism is that most people would regard David Cauchi's comments as fairly self-evident (and his "po-faced motherfuckers" probably didn't help either, but never mind).
Yes, you are allowed to directly reference other work, yes the standards for visual media seem to be, on the face of them, a lot more permissive than those that apply to text, yes plagiarism is hard to define.
And yes, what do we make of po-mo pastiche and Youtube mashups...
So, yes, there does seem to be an element of "I know it when I see it" in play here. But that is true of almost every abstract concept you try to boil down to a simple litmus test.
Further the situation here does not really seem to call the definition of plagiarism itself into question -- a) Witi Ihimaera teaches courses in which this sort of direct copying would likely land one of his students in substantial trouble, b) the quantity of copying involved is above the level that have landed other writers of literary fiction in controversy, c) he has not chosen to advance an "artistic necessity" justification himself, d) many of the borrowings appear to be the crudest sort of cut and paste copying, e) we have no idea exactly how much or precisely what was copied (to the extent that "more is worse"), and f) the people who might be invested in determining this (Penguin, Auckland University and Ihimaera himself) do not seem particularly interested in doing so.
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So the great NZ hat-tipping, cock-snooking, conventions-of-plagiarism-challenging, pastiche-mash-up-novel-of-collective-genius remains to be written. Perhaps we can have a crack at it here?
Cos, as they almost certainly didn't chant in the Castro during the great authorship-rights rally of 1978: "we're here/ we're intertextual/ get use from it!"
Philip, I haven't read Geoff Dyer's Jeff in Varanasi/Death in Venice, but am I right in supposing that all the allusions he makes are all to Thomas Mann?
Actually, here's Dyer himself, as interviewed on the Amazon page for the book: "Yes, the first part is a version of the Mann novella--the opening sentence is ripped straight out of the opening line of the original."
That's fine, and not at all comparable to what's going on in this case, I'd argue. Explicitly spinning off a classic is one thing. But when one of your borrowed passages (the one on prison design) comes from a <200pp guide to Tasmania that tells you how many sheep were exported in 1973, outlines recent hydroelectric developments, and, in passing, describes the Tasmanian aborigines as having been "somewhat childlike," that's not allusive po-mo/po-co, it's just random.
Of course -- advocatus diabili here -- it may also become a terribly brilliant and/or perfectly acceptable wikipedia-age way to write a Warholian soup-can of a novel* -- just not under the current conventions (or laws), or in a way necessarily likely to win the trust or good will of readers accustomed to the credit system, and who prefer their fiction to bear the tragically old-fashioned imprint of a single author's sensibility, set against the inevitable aura of the entire history of literature.
Honestly, feel free to go ahead and make the argument, anyone, and/or produce a great example. Because it will make novel-writing a helluva lot easier for all of us.
* I don't actually believe this, I just thought I'd type it to see how it looks. My analogy doesn't work, because Warhol's soup can is precisely that singular soup can, not a scrap of clip-art here and a smidge of nutritional info there, all photoshopped together into an unconvincing simulacrum of a soup can. Plus, it was nearly a century ago that Modernism and Dada got all excited about collage, and I'm really not convinced that cut-and-paste wiki-novels are the next big thing. But argue away -- my pillow fight has resumed and I'm needed as ref. -
Philip, I haven't read Geoff Dyer's Jeff in Varanasi/Death in Venice, but am I right in supposing that all the allusions he makes are all to Thomas Mann?
Actually, here's Dyer himself, as interviewed on the Amazon page for the book: "Yes, the first part is a version of the Mann novella--the opening sentence is ripped straight out of the opening line of the original."
Jolisa: it's a great read, this and his brilliantly-titled Yoga for People Who Can't Be Bothered to Do It. In his notes and acknowledgements, Dyer says: "There are some unacknowledged quotes in the text, most of which are too obvious to need acknowledging here." He then goes on to list seven quotes from Death in Venice which makes me think the unacknowledged quotes are from elsewhere. He also acknowledges Dean Young, John Lanchester, Nietzsche, Somerset Maugham, the Rig Veda and Gramsci. Good and eclectic.
This exchange early on, when Jeff is getting his hair dyed (very Death in Venice), is probably a signal to be on the lookout for quotes.
"Dyeing is an art like everything else. We do it exceptionally well. We do it so it looks real."
"That's Sylvia Plath, right?"
"Indeed." A hairdresser who quoted poetry. -
Oh Philip don't be a dick for God's sake. It's a historical novel that has been described to me by more than one able reviewer with three pages of stated sources that yet fails to reference a number of specific quotations. Quite aside from the fact that Ihimaera immediately apologised and set about contacting all his living quotees, whilst offering no criticism whatsoever of the accepted definition of what constitutes plagiarism in his line of work, I really struggle to see how you could take this book - that I haven't read - as a subervsive treatise on authorship.
Don't know if we needed the personal abuse. It was a serious question. I did wonder, when the story broke, if Ihimaera could have handled it differently. I figured that with your expertise, you might have a view on whether it could have worked as a po-mo treatise on originality, shared history, authorship, etc, had Ihimaera presented it as such.
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I actually never saw much of a problem with Baldwin's films, for much the same reasons as Rob Stowell elucidates above (in fact I love the idea.)
Craig Baldwin's a genius in my view. The thing about Spectres of the Spectrum and other recent films is that he is now mixing his found footage with dramatic scenes he writes and shoots. Again, not to call him a plagiarist but to say that some may be unaware what is "his" and what is not.
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I figured that with your expertise, you might have a view on whether it could have worked as a po-mo treatise on originality, shared history, authorship, etc, had Ihimaera presented it as such.
If what you wrote seemed provocative to me, it's because flies so directly against what we know about the novel as it was presented to us by Jolisa. As I say, I'm not at all hostile to discussing broader issues of authorship, but if the discussion doesn't start by engaging the topic we are discussing then it's both less interesting and highly derailey (okay, not a word, try Jolisa's tangential). David's post didn't actually do much to engage with Ihimaera's case either, although that's hardly a criticism since he didn't write it here and in fact was a very reluctant participant in this discussion.
Incidentally, I didn't think your post on Second Sight was terribly impressive. Chiding us for not having the conversation you wanted to have seems a little churlish. Start your own comments thread on your blog, you know.
I've just had a look at the final credits of Decasia (I love the smell of nitrate in the morning): no mention of the specific films used, although it acknolwedges a long list of archives and film curators. The problem there of course is that he used mostly footage that is of unknown origin to the archivists themselves (Wikipedia claims only two source films were positively identified), but again we are in different territory because it's a film that consists entirely of fragments of other films and like Baldwin's couldn't possibly be accused of plagiarism. Morrison did however claim directing (beside writing and editing) credits and that I found mildly interesting.
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