Jonathan Lethem's "The ecstasy of influence" part 2

In his work, "The ecstacy of influence", Jonathan Lethem points out the staggering amount of artistic borrowing that is present in today's world. He opens the mind of an oblivious audience to the reality which is modern day art, and mentions countless respected and well known works which are nothing more than a blatant act of plagiarism. This realization is very disturbing to me. Its troubling that the great minds of today are nothing more than the great minds of yesterday, casting originality to the wind and abandoning all hopes of creativity. Why do artists no longer take pride in an original idea or work? Do they not feel that it is a necessity for those words, stories, or clips of music to belong to the artist who had given these things life?

When Lethem says, "Art is sourced. Apprentices graze in the field of culture." it may seem as though he is encouraging the act of plagiarism. I do not believe that this is his intention. Artist should graze in the field of culture, they should take inspiration from anything and everything around them. However, a very thin line is drawn between being influenced and stealing another's words. Influence is something that makes an impact and affects the way your art looks, sounds, feels, etc. Plagiarism is when an artist steals whole pieces of another's work in order to better themselves and achieve popularity, without granting the original creator credit. To me, this process which our modern day artists are all too familiar with is repulsive and disappointing. Theft should never be accepted by a society, whether it be material objects, or words off of a page. These supposed artists are doing nothing but stealing from the creations which others worked on for countless hours which will never be regained, instead of taking the time to create beauty and meaningfulness on their own.

Lethem believes that this obsession with plagiarism is a crippling act which is causing artists everywhere a disadvantage. I believe this is because it is starving our culture or originality, and encourage artists in our present day culture to do the same. It is crippling the creative minds in our world because those who borrow often find more success riding on the coattails of those before them. This acceptance of plagiarism is causing the great and fresh ideas in our society to starve and die, falling secondhand to those who take the easy way out. When Lethem concludes his work he states "But the truth is that with artists pulling on one side and corporations pulling on the other, the loser is the collective public imagination from which we were nourished in the first place, and whose existence as the ultimate repository of our offerings makes the work worth doing in the first place." I believe he has reached the decision that while many artists who borrow are publicly sucessful and are supported due to the money they bring in to their economic backers, this support is crippling our society. We are creating a society which is starved of fresh ideas and creativity. The people of today's world have accepted imagination as nothing more but the reuse of great ideas. But, unfortunately, through this unoriginality and borrowing of ideas the public has supported these theives in their quest for money and fame. But we must begin urging these artists to create, believe, and be original, before our culture becomes starved of originality and true artistic genious.