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Does creativity and originality still exist in the entertainment world?
Results so far:
| Yes | 57% | 24 votes | Total: 42 votes | |
| No | 43% | 18 votes |
Yes
by Ryan Vogler
Created on: December 09, 2010
With advances in digital effects and reality TV becoming more scripted than your average sitcom, art in entertainment seems to be a thing of the past. If you sift your way through all the garbage, though, the amount of golden nuggets you can find will surprise you.
The last decade has been responsible for some of the most innovative shows in the history of television. Curb Your Enthusiasm, Flight of the Concords, The Office (UK version), South Park, Entourage, Dexter, Weeds, and the list goes on. These shows, just twenty years ago, most networks would have been afraid to go near. The decline of prime time TV has made people seek originality more than ever and paved the way for these shows to be given a chance. People who say that reality shows have ruined television should instead be thanking them, for without them, these groundbreaking shows may have never known the light of day.
I agree that the majority of music, movies, and television these days is nothing but commercial nonsense that holds no artistic merit whatsoever. But the fact of the matter is that, hidden amongst all this, are people striving to be creatively unique. Just because the money-driven side of music and television is thrown in our faces doesn’t mean that amazing stuff isn’t happening in the entertainment world; we just have to look harder.
People who say that music today has lost its soul need to look beyond the mainstream. They will find that the state of the music industry isn’t something to worry about. I love the old days of music more than anyone. We will never see the likes of the breakthrough performers from the 60s and the 70s again, but that doesn’t mean that music today has lost its soul. The problem is that our options are much greater. With every artist who sells out to make a number one hit, there’s someone out there fighting for their musical independence. What we have to learn to do is ignore the commercial rubbish and look deeper.
The shows and the music that will survive the test of time are the ones being ignored today. Just take a look at Led Zeppelin back when they first broke on the scene. They were one of the worst-reviewed bands of their era, Rolling Stone hated them. Today, though, they are legends of Rock ‘n’ Roll who have inspired countless musicians to reach beyond the boundaries that the commercial world has set for them.
So don’t give up - originality isn’t dead, it’s just hiding patiently in the dark for those who are ready to break from normality and discover a world of creative heroes who still fight for ideals that we‘ve long forgotten. Art in entertainment does still exist. You just have to know where to look.
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No
by Mindy Horton
Created on: May 27, 2011
The originality and creativity of the entertainment industry is slowly being replaced with a form of plagiarism that hides under the term “remake”. Producers are coming out with remakes of older movies under the guise of improving or breathing more life into them without really changing much about the movie. Students are told that using someone else’s words or ideas as their own is wrong and has serious consequences, yet this does not seem to apply at the box office.
Merriam Webster defines to plagiarize as “to steal and pass off (the ideas or words of another) as ones own without crediting the source” and: “to commit literary theft : present as new and original an idea or product derived from an existing source”
Cinema laws, however, change the definition above by saying that ideas are free and not copyrighted. This changes only if you write down or express how you want the idea to be used.
Keeping those definitions in mind, there are several ways that indicate plagiarism is taking place when a movie is remade. Some movie remakes can use a few details from the original movie, but then take off in different directions, which would not be considered plagiarism. There are more than 202 movies listed as remakes since 1929, with 48 of those having come out since 2000. This shows a severe lessening of the creativity that people have become accustomed to when wanting to see movies. There are still producers making movies that are fresh and new, but there are also just as many that are trying to turn old cartoons and television shows into live action movies rather than coming up with their own ideas.
Many other remakes however, end up being extremely similar to its earlier production. This shows a severe lack of creativity and originality in the entertainment industry, and blurs the strictly drawn lines of exactly what plagiarism is. Granted, the new movies may mention being based on the originals, but the equivalent to that in writing would be a student using quotation marks around the entire paper, changing a few lines, and citing it to whomever they copied the idea from. Obviously, this is not acceptable in the written form, so this should not be allowed in the movie context as well. There are literally millions of creative people in this world, perhaps some of the movie producers should start trying to find a few of these people rather than repeating the same things over and over. A bit of creativity will win out over another computer generated "live action" cartoon any day!
Learn more about this author, Mindy Horton.
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