Playing Along With Benny Goodman: Javier Grillo-Marxuach on Plagiarism
December 17, 2015 11:06 AM Subscribe
I am a Fucking Plagiarist -- Javier Grillo-Marxuach, creator of The Middleman (previously), a writer for two seasons on Lost, and co-host of the Children of Tendu podcast, riffs (extensively, and entertainingly) on the nature of plagiarism in the lives of aspiring and professional entertainers.
"We’re not the thieves. We are the ones who are self-aware and self-referential. We’re the ones who excoriate the thieves and occasionally bear with gritted teeth the stark and unpleasant necessities of our trade. We are the ones who say clever things in the writers room like “yes, you’ve seen it before, but not with these actors” and “that idea is so brilliant I have NO choice but to steal it and claim it for my own” while we bide our time until we can call the shots and chisel True Original Stories from the living rock of our beloved medium."
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"More than once I have heard a younger writer say, “Do you remember that old episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation where Riker passes out in the teaser and wakes up 16 years later as captain of the Enterprise, but he can’t remember anything … and he cleverly realizes that his amnesia is really a Romulan ruse to get him to give up sensitive information?” only to be shocked when told, “Yeah, it was a takeoff from an even older James Garner movie — based on a Roald Dahl short story — where he’s an Allied spy who passes out before the D-Day invasion, wakes up in a U.S. Army Hospital six years later, and can’t remember anything, then cleverly realizes that his amnesia is a German ruse to extract from him the location of the invasion.”
[And though you didn't ask, the Dahl story is Beware of the Dog, and the Garner movie is 36 Hours.]
"We’re not the thieves. We are the ones who are self-aware and self-referential. We’re the ones who excoriate the thieves and occasionally bear with gritted teeth the stark and unpleasant necessities of our trade. We are the ones who say clever things in the writers room like “yes, you’ve seen it before, but not with these actors” and “that idea is so brilliant I have NO choice but to steal it and claim it for my own” while we bide our time until we can call the shots and chisel True Original Stories from the living rock of our beloved medium."
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"More than once I have heard a younger writer say, “Do you remember that old episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation where Riker passes out in the teaser and wakes up 16 years later as captain of the Enterprise, but he can’t remember anything … and he cleverly realizes that his amnesia is really a Romulan ruse to get him to give up sensitive information?” only to be shocked when told, “Yeah, it was a takeoff from an even older James Garner movie — based on a Roald Dahl short story — where he’s an Allied spy who passes out before the D-Day invasion, wakes up in a U.S. Army Hospital six years later, and can’t remember anything, then cleverly realizes that his amnesia is a German ruse to extract from him the location of the invasion.”
[And though you didn't ask, the Dahl story is Beware of the Dog, and the Garner movie is 36 Hours.]
I love Javi. I was reading Shoot This! on a plane last week because I figured it would be relatively benign, but I got the giggles several times.
posted by Lyn Never at 12:18 PM on December 17, 2015 [2 favorites]
posted by Lyn Never at 12:18 PM on December 17, 2015 [2 favorites]
Read the essay all the way to the end: the last bit is a zinger.
(However, he got the Cassie Clare controversy wrong: it wasn't homage or inspiration, she lifted entire paragraphs verbatim.)
posted by suelac at 1:04 PM on December 17, 2015 [5 favorites]
(However, he got the Cassie Clare controversy wrong: it wasn't homage or inspiration, she lifted entire paragraphs verbatim.)
posted by suelac at 1:04 PM on December 17, 2015 [5 favorites]
I doubt there is a mefite among us who hasn't yet seen it, but just in case: Everything is a Remix.
posted by Hot Pastrami! at 1:46 PM on December 17, 2015
posted by Hot Pastrami! at 1:46 PM on December 17, 2015
> However, he got the Cassie Clare controversy wrong: it wasn't homage or inspiration, she lifted entire paragraphs verbatim.
This is the essential point that always gets glossed over in these interminable pieces of lint-gathering on the topic (which creative people are understandably obsessed by). There's an obvious difference between "ripping off" the idea for a plot or character—something that's been done since the first Gilgamesh fanfic was done a few millennia ago (and who knows, Gilgamesh was probably a ripoff of some earlier epic tale)—and using verbatim chunks of text. The latter is the crime, and it shouldn't be conflated with the former, which is just culture at work. These pieces always recycle the usual Famous Writer quotes ("If I could give an account of all that I owe to great predecessors and contemporaries, there would be but a small balance in my favor. — Goethe"), but those are about the former, about cultural appropriation in some larger sense. That has nothing to do with copying out line after line, word for word, and calling it your own work. I cite this passage from Grillo-Marxuach's essay as particularly odd/disingenuous:
Frankly, I'm a lot more disturbed that he doesn't seem to know what "munificent" means ("Few are hated more than the young, gifted, and perceived as unfairly munificent") than by his ripping off a SNL sketch for his college skit. And he should be too.
posted by languagehat at 1:53 PM on December 17, 2015 [7 favorites]
This is the essential point that always gets glossed over in these interminable pieces of lint-gathering on the topic (which creative people are understandably obsessed by). There's an obvious difference between "ripping off" the idea for a plot or character—something that's been done since the first Gilgamesh fanfic was done a few millennia ago (and who knows, Gilgamesh was probably a ripoff of some earlier epic tale)—and using verbatim chunks of text. The latter is the crime, and it shouldn't be conflated with the former, which is just culture at work. These pieces always recycle the usual Famous Writer quotes ("If I could give an account of all that I owe to great predecessors and contemporaries, there would be but a small balance in my favor. — Goethe"), but those are about the former, about cultural appropriation in some larger sense. That has nothing to do with copying out line after line, word for word, and calling it your own work. I cite this passage from Grillo-Marxuach's essay as particularly odd/disingenuous:
In her own defense, Viswanathan claimed that, yes, she had read those books, but that as she wrote her novel, she truly believed that she was writing her own voice and experience. Further along the line, she also explained that — because she does in fact have a photographic memory — it was quite possible that, in the rush of creation, her prodigious mental capacity did too good a job of transposing her experience of reading into those places where the words corresponded to her experience of life.Of course it's entirely implausible. Of course it's bullshit. Every fucking plagiarist who gets caught gives the same ridiculous story about how they must have read the passage and totally unconsciously soaked it up and replicated it; it's like listening to convicted thieves whine about how they were railroaded and the judge had it in for them. Grillo-Marxuach must know this, but he's according her some provisional degree of pseudo-credibility in order to blur the lines and justify his paranoia about his stupid college sketch which nobody else gives a shit about in order to sell a lint-gathering piece about plagiarism to the LARB. I say it's spinach, and I say the hell with it. (That's a Thurber line.)
While calling “bullshit” may seem to be the only reasonable response to Viswanathan’s protestation — followed by a snide comment about how, even in contrition, Viswanathan just couldn’t stop herself from bragging about her prodigious gifts — I must admit I don’t find it entirely implausible. [...]
As the Collective Detective pulled apart Viswanathan’s novel, finding all of her legitimate lifts from other authors, I couldn’t help but ask myself a question. What young person’s creative work — even one without such flagrant steals — could possibly hide its influences against that level of fine-toothed scrutiny?
Frankly, I'm a lot more disturbed that he doesn't seem to know what "munificent" means ("Few are hated more than the young, gifted, and perceived as unfairly munificent") than by his ripping off a SNL sketch for his college skit. And he should be too.
posted by languagehat at 1:53 PM on December 17, 2015 [7 favorites]
languagehat: "Every fucking plagiarist who gets caught gives the same ridiculous story about how they must have read the passage and totally unconsciously soaked it up and replicated it"
...apart from those who plagiarize non-fiction word-for-word, then defend it with "you can't copyright facts."
posted by Hot Pastrami! at 2:00 PM on December 17, 2015
...apart from those who plagiarize non-fiction word-for-word, then defend it with "you can't copyright facts."
posted by Hot Pastrami! at 2:00 PM on December 17, 2015
There's an obvious difference between "ripping off" the idea for a plot or character—something that's been done since the first Gilgamesh fanfic was done a few millennia ago (and who knows, Gilgamesh was probably a ripoff of some earlier epic tale)—and using verbatim chunks of text.
Yeah, I meant to come back and expound on this, but work interfered. I have no complaints about anyone swiping the plot of an old movie and using it for a new movie, especially if they acknowledge they did so. (I better not: I rewrote Casablanca in the Farscape universe, and cast Crichton as Ilsa.)
But taking the exact words and using them without acknowledging that? That's worse than lying about what you did, it's stealing someone else's credit. It's particularly common, and I think particularly venal, in the fanfiction community, where the only benefit of doing so is getting accolades from your peers. If all you get in return for writing fanfiction is someone saying, "Good job!", I have never understood why you'd want to steal someone else's work, since you would know you weren't the one who did a good job. It's like bringing a store-bought cake to an office potluck and pretending you made it at home: what's the point?
posted by suelac at 3:37 PM on December 17, 2015 [4 favorites]
Yeah, I meant to come back and expound on this, but work interfered. I have no complaints about anyone swiping the plot of an old movie and using it for a new movie, especially if they acknowledge they did so. (I better not: I rewrote Casablanca in the Farscape universe, and cast Crichton as Ilsa.)
But taking the exact words and using them without acknowledging that? That's worse than lying about what you did, it's stealing someone else's credit. It's particularly common, and I think particularly venal, in the fanfiction community, where the only benefit of doing so is getting accolades from your peers. If all you get in return for writing fanfiction is someone saying, "Good job!", I have never understood why you'd want to steal someone else's work, since you would know you weren't the one who did a good job. It's like bringing a store-bought cake to an office potluck and pretending you made it at home: what's the point?
posted by suelac at 3:37 PM on December 17, 2015 [4 favorites]
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posted by asperity at 11:41 AM on December 17, 2015 [2 favorites]