Allergy to Originality: Mark Twain and the Remix Nature of All Creative Work
FollowWhy why all creative culture is built on “plagiarism, literary debt, appropriation, incorporation, retelling, rewriting, recapitulation, revision, reprise…”
When Helen Keller was accused of plagiarism, her dear friend Mark Twain wrote her a heartfelt and lively letter of support, in which he asserted that “all ideas are second-hand, consciously and unconsciously drawn from a million outside sources” and that “the kernel, the soul … the actual and valuable material of all human utterances [is] plagiarism.” Despite Twain’s characteristically colorful language, the idea that everything is a remix is far from radical — it was pondered by Henry Miller, used by Johannes Gutenberg, abused by Duke Ellington, and championed by Pete Seeger, among countless other instances revealing that all creative work builds on what came before.
Animator Drew Christie brings Twain’s pioneering advocacy of remix culture to life in this delightful illustrated op-doc for The New York Times, titled Allergy to Originality, exploring why all creative culture is built on “plagiarism, literary debt, appropriation, incorporation, retelling, rewriting, recapitulation, revision, reprise, thematic creation, ironic retake, parody, imitation, stylistic debt, pastiches, collages, and deliberate assemblages.”