Yzabella Sielaff

Professor Wernick 

English 110

16 September 2021

Response to “The Ecstasy of Influence”

    “The Ecstasy of Influence” by Jonathan Lethem is an article from 2007 on the true meaning of plagiarism and its significance throughout human history, even claiming it to be the most important aspect for human evolution. Watch out college professors..

    Lethem begins by introducing his thesis in a way that grabs the audience’s attention—arguably in the most controversial way possible. Lethem starts with a quote by John Donne that encompasses his main points nicely, but then discusses his first example, Lolita, a story featuring and romanticisizing pedophelia.  He continues on to provide examples of his theme in other forms of media, such as movies and music, making sure to use specific references to popular artists in order to relate to the audience. This points out how common these occurrences actually are so as to break the ice even further. Then, he calls attention to the fact that he, himself, had made a reference to another reference, reinforcing this prevalence. Personally, this was a bit too controversial for my taste with such a strange choice for a first example, but the overall unity in the use of references to further reinforce his thesis was elegantly accomplished. 

    The next section of this article sort of answers the question, “how did we get here?”. Lethem explains that the advancements in technology have allowed people to literally copy or duplicate things without human error. This led to the underlying idea of the most popular art movements in the twentieth century as being a collage— copying and pasting in a tasteful way, as well as the idea of “versions” or remixes of songs in the music world. With technology came accessibility and the rise of capitalism and consumerism. Lethem explains that the demand for product and property encouraged copy/pasting, but also it encouraged the penalties for plagiarism with copyrights. The connection he made between human advances and the effect they had on creative expression was extremely interesting and a thought that has passed through my mind a few times. 

    This last portion of the article, my favorite portion, focuses on the author’s personal perspective on how we could improve our definition of copyright and art itself to better society and human creations. Lethem states that America takes copyright and plagiarism laws too far because we don’t have a concise, updated definition of copyright. Our current definition doesn’t take into account the improved production rates given to us by technology, so, essentially anyone could sue anyone else for copyright infringement. Lethem believes that art is public commons and should be considered as a separate economy he calls, “gift economy”, due to the personal connection and emotional value from the seller to the buyer. When thought of like this, other aspects of human culture and information can be considered public commons and treated as such until eventually, you realize that all knowledge we know could be cross referenced to solve questions we’ve been asking for years. Now this is something that I think about all the time. There is so much information overlap in every subject that no one notices. I love the solution that Lethem came up with because it is clearly well thought out and extremely thought provoking. 

    This article ends, as most articles do, with an inspiring message for all creators to remember why they create and who they create for, so that they know how to work their way out of the corporate webs, and truly create.