Samantha Rhynard: First Blog Post
Media is inescapable—for no other reason than it encompasses so much. It ranges from news, and social media applications—which are the most common things people's minds jump to when they hear media—to things like movies, music; even books can be considered media. Media is something we absorb and gather information from, and people have a lot of different opinions about media. Some people think that all media is reused, or in some way come from other media before it. Other people hold the belief that everything comes from your brain and is original and unique to you. Personally, I think that the reality is a balance of somewhere between these two extremes.
One video called Everything is a Remix holds onto the belief that, quite simply, everything is a remix—or a different version stolen from something else. It provides very compelling arguments for the case in the form of side by side comparisons. It talks about music like Led Zeppelin, movies like Star Wars, and even enlightened thinkers like Isaac Newton. But the parallels between the media we are shown are convincingly close together. It even talks about how the music industry has cracked down on copyright law violations, because of infringement on "intellectual property"(each person who creates things has rights to their ideas). One of the things I found interesting though was while it talked in depth about how there are many visual similarities Star Wars has to other movies—as well as talking about the reuse of melodies and bass-lines in music—but it didn't talk about how while John Williams writes amazing music, he stole most of his ideas that are in popular themes he is known for from Gustav Holst's The Planets.
In contrast to this, an article by Donald Murray entitled "All Writing is Autobiography" talks about Murray's writing process and uses some of his work as a sample to prove that all writing is indeed autobiography. I think a more accurate translation of this statement is that all writing comes from within you and tells something about yourself. Murray goes on to talk about how things he writes about character hold true for him as well, and some of the details in the stories he puts down are things he doesn't even realize are true about himself until he puts them out there, and then he sees that they are true. His main focus in relation to the topic of where media comes from is that all writing comes from the writer's mind and tells them about themselves.
The contrasting ideas of whether or not everything is original in my opinion should be taken with a grain of salt. Yes, some media is definitely reused and copied, but I don't believe all of it is. If it was, then couldn't it be said that if there is no original music, because where did the first song come from? Or was there a transition at some point, to where after a said date, nothing was original? Another important point in all this is how much of the copying and reusing is intentional; how much is subconscious? I don't know if you've ever tried to write music, but on the infrequent occasions that I do, it usually ends up just being a (bad) amalgamation of songs that are currently stuck in my head.
One video called Everything is a Remix holds onto the belief that, quite simply, everything is a remix—or a different version stolen from something else. It provides very compelling arguments for the case in the form of side by side comparisons. It talks about music like Led Zeppelin, movies like Star Wars, and even enlightened thinkers like Isaac Newton. But the parallels between the media we are shown are convincingly close together. It even talks about how the music industry has cracked down on copyright law violations, because of infringement on "intellectual property"(each person who creates things has rights to their ideas). One of the things I found interesting though was while it talked in depth about how there are many visual similarities Star Wars has to other movies—as well as talking about the reuse of melodies and bass-lines in music—but it didn't talk about how while John Williams writes amazing music, he stole most of his ideas that are in popular themes he is known for from Gustav Holst's The Planets.
In contrast to this, an article by Donald Murray entitled "All Writing is Autobiography" talks about Murray's writing process and uses some of his work as a sample to prove that all writing is indeed autobiography. I think a more accurate translation of this statement is that all writing comes from within you and tells something about yourself. Murray goes on to talk about how things he writes about character hold true for him as well, and some of the details in the stories he puts down are things he doesn't even realize are true about himself until he puts them out there, and then he sees that they are true. His main focus in relation to the topic of where media comes from is that all writing comes from the writer's mind and tells them about themselves.
The contrasting ideas of whether or not everything is original in my opinion should be taken with a grain of salt. Yes, some media is definitely reused and copied, but I don't believe all of it is. If it was, then couldn't it be said that if there is no original music, because where did the first song come from? Or was there a transition at some point, to where after a said date, nothing was original? Another important point in all this is how much of the copying and reusing is intentional; how much is subconscious? I don't know if you've ever tried to write music, but on the infrequent occasions that I do, it usually ends up just being a (bad) amalgamation of songs that are currently stuck in my head.
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