What Happened to Imagination?
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By L Ralliford
Sitting cross-legged on the floor as close as my mother would let me get to the television, I watched Bastian experience his fantasies come to life, as he followed Atreyu through his adventures in Fantasia. Every time the theme song of Never-ending Story would play, I found myself instantly singing along. I remember how I wished that I could experience a Never-ending Story of my own.
There is a saying that states: Wishes that come true do not come out exactly as we may expect. While I imagined that my own version of the never-ending would be filled with fresh new adventures at every turn, the reality was that these never-ending remakes rarely seem to enhance the experience of the story but would rather dial down the wonder.
We are in a world where Computer-Generated Imagery (CGI) can bring the images in our imagination to life. Our stories are no longer bound to the limits of Costumes, 2D Animation, Stop Animation, and Puppetry. Now, dragons can really breathe fire and darken the skies. And we can now experience a world that only Tolkien could have imagined. While technology has opened the door to expand on bringing colorful tales to the big screen, this has also been the justification for normalizing plagiarism. Social media is filled with gimmicks and plagiarized content, from the News to Memes, Deepfakes, and Tik Tok videos – yes, duetting your face on someone else’s video is a form of plagiarism. If the content hasn't been copied and then reposted with the thieves’ hashtag pasted on top; then the content becomes over-analyzed with an infinite number of amateur video hosts who portray the illusion that they are the experts on the subject.
Who knew the 21st Century would consist of being trapped scrolling through millions of hours of know-it-alls who truly know nothing.
It’s not too long before celebrities will need to copyright their faces because they are being recreated in deepfake videos without the permission of the celebrity. I cannot even imagine having a digital imposture making it seem like I am saying things that I would never say. We have reached a new level of identity theft. This era of a constant sense of uncertainty of content legitimacy is bizarre and unique to this period. Preceding eras and lifestyles were not faced with this constant question of reality. The question about legitimacy is so bad, that sources that were once viewed as credible, like News Studios, have become unreliable. News reports vary from the opinions of one studio to another. This mass amount of inconsistency makes it unsurprising that the response to surviving the COVID-19 pandemic was so divided and chaotic. As we are plagued with questioning the credibility of news reports, the entertainment world has become a plethora of sequels and revamps.
With that said, there is nothing wrong with sequels and revamps, and there is nothing new about the practice of recreating or adding on to stories. Some of the greatest movies in Film History, were spinoffs, like Terminator 2. On the other hand, there are many sequels and revamps that are considered the worst films in Film history, while some are even considered culturally inappropriate, like Scarlett Johansson’s Ghost in the Shell. The concern about revamps is the disappearance of the original content. Original works are strategically buried by Big businesses’ manipulation of algorithms. If you have enough money, your version will be what shows up in search engine results. A user could spend hours, sifting through pages before finding results about the original content. In some cases, unless you know what to look for, the original content won’t show up, at all. For example, while Jack Black’s Gulliver’s Travel was entertaining, it followed nothing in actual Gulliver’s Travel, written by Johnathan Swift. Jack Black’s version only stole the name of Swift’s miniature society and Swift’s book title. There have been television-based movies that accurately follow the real adventure of Gulliver, but finding these classic stories is like searching for a needle in a haystack.
Another example of a corporate steal is Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland and Alice Through the Looking Glass. While Disney, and then Disney with Tim Burton, try to claim full ownership of the imaginations of Lewis Caroll, both versions of this classic story follow a different storyline, while using Caroll’s characters, setting, and book title. If a person didn’t know what to look for, they would never question the true premise behind the story of Alice. Another cash grab move for Disney was when they discovered that they could capitalize on The Grimm Brother’s stories. Disney quickly swooped up the rights to tell the story of Snow White and Cinderella. Meanwhile, other visionaries of these tales were buried. Cinderella’s story, for example, was told in Silent Pictures by Géorge Miéles in the 1920s. While Disney’s version may have been more fantastical, it wasn’t as historically significant as Miéles’ version.
But wait, what if I feel that these new versions are better than the originals? I hear you say.
If a storyline has been completely changed, can you consider it to be the same story? No, you can’t. It is considered a completely different story and the original morals tied to the original creations are lost. Johnathan Swift did an excellent job of creatively depicting the different passions and weaknesses of the western world, by emphasizing these failings as the main characteristics of the colorful societies Gulliver came across. In Jack Black’s version, this powerful moral was not highlighted. Instead, Jack Black was merely being Jack Black in a setting created by Swift. Lewis Caroll’s depiction of a young girl struggling to face maturity through the wonderment of imagination was lost in the shenanigans of Futterwacken and morbid pale characters. While we are gifted with the privilege of seeing fictional characters come to life, must the important moral of the story be lost? Why not give these remakes a different name? It doesn’t have to be called Alice in Wonderland. It could be Betty’s Independence. Organizations use the original name because it has a legacy, and it is the easiest way to attract followers and fans. It doesn’t matter if the story is nothing like the original, all that matters is those key elements of content that draw interest based on nostalgia.
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Let’s face it, one of the reasons Stranger Things was so enticing was that it was pulling on nostalgia heartstrings. I am not one to be following the bizarre obsession with trying to figure out the backstory of a blue scrunchy – I am sure it was just the Stylist era. I cannot deny my delight to hear Kate Bush or see my old stereo and Walkman and BMX bike. These elements found in the Stranger Things story, make the story relatable. An example of nostalgia building a powerful fan base in fiction can be found in Beatrix Potter’s creation of Peter Rabbit, which is based in the setting of an English countryside of the early 1900s. The readers of that period could relate to the images of foxes, rabbits, and badgers, as well as to the traditional English teatime customs. These real-life references were embedded into fantasy and drew a fanbase. Nostalgia and personal relevance are wonderful items that can be used to enrich stories but can also become an obsession.
So, where do we draw the line between obsession, plagiarism, nostalgia, and imagination?
In many Creative Fields,’ the battle for the ownership of originality comes down to how much of the original content matches the new version. Plagiarism is determined by the new version of content matching over 25% of the original content. At least, that is the case in written content. In the music industry, if sampled content is even slightly recognizable, the individual who used the sample may face legal battles connected to copyright infringement. While the strict rules surrounding music sampling appear to protect the original creators’ work, a lot of these copyrights are owned by the music agency, not the artist. This means that the artist may not receive royalties, but Big Business is guaranteed continuous compensation. In addition to a constant revenue of royalties, Big Business can selectively sell-out music samples to projects that may ruin the legacy of the original artists. Recently, there has been a trend of new music sampling the first 30-seconds of an older song. In other words, when the song starts there is no defining factor that identifies the song as the original or the remake. To make things worse, the original artists aren’t even listed as being featured on the song. New performers are essentially tailgating the legacy of the original content.
Legacies are being butchered while the living creators watch in horror and the deceased creators turnover in their graves. The Grimm Brothers, Lewis Caroll, Jonathan Swift, or Tolkien are not able to fight for the quality of their stories nor are they able their descendants to not sell out their visions. And yet the spark of their inspiration is being dissected for profit.
I could spend eons showcasing the evidence of Big Business scandalous practices, the question that remains to be analyzed is: what happened to imagination?
As an artist and author, I can tell you that imagination is still very much alive but lives underground. Quality is not going to be easily obtained, anymore. You must search even harder for answers, and maybe even further for originality. While the creative underground is filled with passionate artists who could be careless about going viral on social media, the surface world is bombarding people with junk. Unfortunately, there are many people, who happen to speak the loudest, who have no imagination. They love this trend of endless shenanigans because it is easy to replicate. This group also loves the repetitiveness of stories and music, because it doesn’t require them to think outside the box. With everything mapped out and predictable, there is no need to worry about having talent. This may be the most important time to go outside your box to find originality, and when popular content pops up take the time to ask yourself what its source of origin is.