Appropriation is Contemporary

Pablo Picasso once summarized Modernism as “Bad artists copy. Good artists steal.” But is an original idea considered a bad decision on behalf of an artist or is it a breakthrough for the success of other artists? Looking at Post-Modernism as a transition of Modern art in the 20th Century one can begin to see this trend affecting original thought in the media with the unparalleled success of literal thoughts. Take a comic book character for example; if the first story is a success it leads to multiple adventures, creates spin-off stories of this character’s sidekicks and villains, and as this audience grows the story has the potential to get adapted into a film, which in turn becomes a franchise series on its own. The American film industry is a great example of this because it has become a conglomerate of major studios that compete for audiences with similar franchise stories. Copying each other’s opulence and creating multiple over excessive sequels, prequels, and ‘based on’ franchises these studios have created niches in the market with pre-existing audiences. This all comes at the expense of the creative writers, actors, and directors; because through this replication process original ideas in film have to compete with these already successful ideas that currently have a fan base. But when did this trend of copying the success of others in the film industry supersede these original ideas?

Look at the film industry and how much has changed since the idea of a blockbuster, defined by the American Heritage Dictionary as ‘…a film that sustains widespread popularity and achieves enormous sales.’ Arguably “Jaws” (1975, dir. Steven Spielberg) was the beginning of this trend, and film studios looked at its success as a number rather than a movie, observing the specifics behind why it garnered so much attention. Three factors came into play with the film; one, “Jaws” was released in the summer when high school and college students were on break and looking for cheap entertainment. Two, with its action/suspense plot line the film proved to work almost like a drug, compelling and captivating audiences back for multiple viewings to clarify what was so captivating the first time around. Three, it garnered a lot of attention because of word of mouth advertising. All of these points led to its commercial success, and opposing film studios attempted to copy these factors in an effort to make this formula a commodity for their future.

Through this replication of the action/suspense plot line film studios started investing heavily into these blockbuster ideas, with the hope of turning them into a franchise for the studio. Look at how long James Bond, Superman, and Friday the 13th have been around. All of these franchises followed this formula for success during their inception to the screen in the 1960’s to 1980’s and still are in successful operation today. This is what studios strive for because franchises like these are as close to a guarantee for a big return as they could hope for. However, as this formula became a success audiences began losing choices when going to the movies because film studios established multiple franchises and began releasing these films competitively year round. Yet the desire to see movies kept growing, and through these franchises audiences were getting hooked to the idea of recurring characters and stories.

Now there is an outbreak of technology that allows film studios to boast who has the newest mainframe or best computer generated imagery (CGI) in addition to advertising with big name actors, directors, and producers as their marquee of the franchise. The storylines are all very similar, based on a regular person that leads a regular life who through dramatic change or fantastical metamorphosis becomes the hero, savior, messiah, or possibly all three at once through self sacrifice, preservation, and determination. And when these franchises seem to bottom out or prove to be too much of an investment film studios go back to the source, finding another book or story that already carries a pre-existing audience and adapt it to the screen as the new franchise to obsess over.

Through this process comes the recurring stereotype of secondary characters such as villains, friends, and female interests to the main character. In her gender studies essay “Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema” Laura Mulvey discusses some of these trends in cinema that draw audiences to the screen, and she attempts to bring these hidden messages through recurring themes and stereotypes to the surface. She uses psychoanalysis to deconstruct the common themes and storylines prevalent in films throughout history, centering on the male as the protagonist who the audience identifies with through point-of-view, and the female as his and the audience’s object of desire. Mulvey scales down these stereotypes as stage props designed to project an image on the screen for audiences to identify with as if it resembled a mirror. This reflection process is a compulsion, and it is what draws audiences back to see films from a franchise while at the same time it pushes them away from anything that does not conform to these trends because of this repetition process.

But what about the other writers, actors, and directors that do not conform to this big risk big return strategy of copying what is successful and tweaking the idea so it seems like something new? They were recently termed “Neo-Neo Realism” by A.O. Scott of the New York Times, defined as films released independently on slim to modest budgets with little to no technology used aside from the camera to film the movie and the computer to edit and print the movie for viewing. This terminology originally came from the Italian Neo-Realists of the 1950’s who used films to tell stories of what a country really looks and feels like, stripping away the happy endings and romance for separation and guilt. This caught on in the 1950’s as American film studios were losing audiences, and their solution was to adopt the unhappy ending which was a temporary success in Hollywood. This replication of a successful film style reflects what film studios attempted with the blockbuster, and there are various other replications which occurred like this in film history that follow this trend as well. While these ‘Neo-Neo Realist’ films are the last hope of creative thoughts in cinema, they are in essence the lifeblood of potentially the next great idea. Look at Paul Haggis, George Clooney, and Quentin Tarantino in their respective roles in filmmaking. Each has greatly succeeded in branding themselves as the independent and succeeded at doing so while moving forward, and film studios have begun to take notice by offering them creative freedom because of their success. It is through the films of the Neo-Neo-Realists that creativity stands a chance in film, and it will hopefully carve a niche in the market as well.

Creativity does not matter anymore to film studios, they copied the action formula in “Jaws” during the summer to create what is known as the blockbuster, and it reinvented going to the movies. The idea that an original thought exists in films today is becoming more of a myth with each new blockbuster/franchise prevailing over society. In films this appropriation makes us farther removed from the things we do and say because now an audience sits as a distracted mass absorbing the film. (Benjamin, 32). There is no longer an interpretation process present, the audience is taught to experience their emotions collectively and return to do so once again. The reason this is made possible is because boundaries were never defined for film, which makes it easy for major film studios to scan what is already popular and make a movie about it rather than invest in something new and hope it catches on. I truly believe we are currently living in a society that all films, big and small, are made with the intention of becoming a copy of themselves. If the film is a success someone will try to copy what made the film so appealing, and if the film is not a success people will observe why it didn’t work when trying to make something creative. This is creating a lot of clutter on the horizon, and this mass of franchises is beginning to take up more space than it can hold. It is only a matter of time before this growing precipice breaks from the weight it is trying to support, and this is when something like “Neo-Neo-Realism” will be the only hope left to save film studios from falling permanently.



Bibliography


Benjamin, W. (1935, trans. 1969) The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction. In Durham, M. G., & Kellner, D. M (rev. Ed). Media and Cultural Studies: Keywords. (pp 18-40). Blackwell Publishing Ltd: Malden, MA.

Mulvey, L. (1992). “Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema”. In Durham, M. G., & Kellner, D. M (rev. Ed). Media and Cultural Studies: Keywords. (pp 342-52). Blackwell Publishing Ltd: Malden, MA.

Scott, A.O. (March 17,2009). “Neo-Neo Realism”. New York Times. Retrieved March 23, 2010, from the World Wide Web: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/22/magazine/22neorealism-t.html?scp=10&sq=blockbuster&st=nyt

American Heritage Dictionary. (4th Ed. 2000). Houghton Mifflin Company. Retrieved March 23, 2010, from the World Wide Web: http://www.thefreedictionary.com/blockbuster