Same Old Story

Lately, I've been thinking about Everything in the Universe. I find it interesting, and somewhat comforting, that Everything in the Universe has always been here, and will always be here. It has been said in different ways before: There's nothing new under the sun. (Ecclesiastes 1:9-14 NIV), or Matter and energy are neither created nor destroyed, only converted.. If you think one thing ends, and another thing begins, it's just your mind connecting some dots, but not others.

I'm not just talking about physics and the world of scientific observing. Although, how cool is it that the very molecules that comprise your very self right now, were jettisoned from exploding stars, and have been bouncing around the whole universe since it started? Answer: pretty cool.

What got me thinking about this was a few events and interests our family has enjoyed lately. Geza, Henry, Thomas and I recently finished The Hunger Games trilogy, for one. Each night, we'd gather around the laptop and read a new chapter in the adventure of Katniss and Co. as they weathered the abuses of the Capitol. It may not be for everyone, but we found it gave us a lot to talk about.

A trip to Portland to see Spirited Away, at the NW Film Center, was our second escapade in entertainment, and the whole family took part.

 Studio Ghibli productions will always have a special place in the BU DVD collection. As a family, we have enjoyed Ponyo,

  Nausicaa and the Valley of the Wind, Howl's Moving Castle, 

Princess Mononoke, The Secret World of Arietty, The Cat Returns, Pom Poko and a few more.

You get it, we're major fans. Spirited Away is the tale of a young heroine who enters a magical, sometimes confusing, world and must figure out the best way home.

Read that description of Spirited Away one more time, please. A young heroine who enters a magical confusing, blah blah blah, you can read it. It's just right up there, about an inch up. Okay, the reason I wanted to emphasize the description of the plot of Spirited Away is because it is like the plot of many many stories that have all been around for a long long time. Hello? Alice in Wonderland? Which, really, is appealing to people for the same reason the original story of all stories, Homer's Odyssey, will always be required reading. People love a story about someone like themselves, bravely navigating an uncertain future. We get swept up in the saga because we see it in our own lives. This means, as long as there have been people, there have been stories, and they have all pretty much been the same.

Sometimes, we don't want to see the similarities too plainly; we're always on the lookout for something that seems unique. For some reason, the relative age of the influence seems to determine whether someone is inspired, or copying. Suzanne Collins, author of The Hunger Games trilogy, has been criticized and is even being sued, because her work bears some resemblance to the plot of another, earlier book, Battle Royale. The similarity of some of the stories' elements is undeniable. Here's the thing though, Collins claims she did not know about Battle Royale when she wrote her story, but that she did lift the idea for her books from another work, Greek myth, Theseus and the Minotaur.

Who knows what Collins knew and when she knew it? I'm more interested in the fact that those who cry plagarist! over her book resembling a recent work, can't say a word about her admission that she borrowed from something much older. To me, that shows that we are able to understand that all of the stories we tell are going to resemble each other in some way.

Does anyone point out the fact that Battle Royale's premise flows from the time-honored diversion of the gladiator arena? No, because there's no patent on that concept, it's a basic human behavior. Watching people duke it out for sport not only will always be fun to people, but it will produce a visible line between those who are the gladiator and those who are the spectator, and how all of that is determined in a society. The Hunger Games, a little thing known as Reality Television, films like The Running Man and Series 7, nearly every sporting event to take place, ever; they all employ the same device and illustrate truths about who we are.. Does all of that similarity invalidate what they have to say, if anything? Hardly! It's up to you, the reader, or watcher, to sort out how these elements are arranged, in order to see what the artist is trying to impart.  What's the message? Can I use it?  What inspired this? Would I like it too? When it comes down to it, whether a work looks like an homage, or a rip-off, is in the eye of the beholder.

Back to the world of catbuses and soot sprites; if you watch a Studio Ghibli production, you will see plenty of the improbable, find it fecund with the fantastical, and overflowing with oodles of originality. It's interesting that Hayao Miyazaki, a major force at Studio Ghibli, brazenly cops to copycatting. What? Yes!

It's hard for me to fathom, but if one wished, they could sit in the NW Film Center, watching a cantankerous sorceress make life hard for Chichiro, and grumble "I liked her better the first time I saw her, when she was called THE QUEEN OF HEARTS."

*If you do feel the need to do that, please, grumble quietly. Inside voices, hands to yourself, and still feet.


 Maybe Miyazaki gets it too? Ponyo is his take on The Little Mermaid, Spirited Away: Alice in Wonderland, and The Secret World of Arietty, a remake of The Borrowers. Here are his own words on the matter:

 “In our work, the question is, how much you absorb from others. So for me, creativity, is really like a relay race. As children we are handed a baton. Rather than passing it onto the next generation as is, first we need to digest it and make it our own.”

Man, I just love that, but that's just me, and I didn't always feel this way. I used to resent when things resembled other things. Now, I seek out the origins of my favorite books, movies, and music, which were certainly inspired by other stories and songs, and that goes on for as long as we've been here. In discovering what influenced something you find special, you travel through space and time to the minds of all of the people who ever made anything.

I encourage you to take that journey, and to create..I mean, convert  something of your own as well.