Is There Really Such a Thing As Originality?
A few days ago, my mother remembered a little song she had made up about my childhood dogs back in the 2000s. It was to the tune of Nickelback's “Rockstar”, but it was about living the dream life of a dog instead of living like a rock star.
I bring this up because my mother was talking about it with me and my older sister, wondering if she had misplaced the lyrics she had written. She also found a post on Reddit asking if people sang songs to their pets. My mother commented that she made up a whole song about being a puppy dog to the tune of Nickelback’s “Rockstar”. To her surprise, many others replied saying they had made up songs for their pets to the tune of that very same song!
Have you ever had a thought you came up with all by yourself, but you realized later that many other people have come up with the same thought as you? Don’t you hate when that happens?
If it makes you feel any better, I’ve gone through the exact same thing. In fact, I can name several people who have gone through what you and I have gone through. This begs the question:
Is there really such a thing as originality?
Let’s face it: There’s almost eight billion people on this planet. Someone’s had to come up with at least one idea that’s similar or the exact same as another person’s idea. Here’s a quote from the famous author Mark Twain:
“There is no such thing as a new idea. It is impossible. We simply take a lot of old ideas and put them into a sort of mental kaleidoscope. We give them a turn and they make new and curious combinations. We keep on turning and making new combinations indefinitely; but they are the same old pieces of colored glass that have been in use through all the ages.”
In a way, there’s a lot of truth to what Mark Twain is saying. I’ve mentioned this a long time ago, but I get inspiration from various forms of media like books, TV shows, songs, and so much more. And I know I’m not the only one who has taken inspiration from other forms of media to create my own works.
Take Hideaki Anno for example. He’s the person behind one of the most popular anime of all time Neon Genesis Evangelion. When it was released in 1995, it was considered a breath of fresh air in the mecha genre, so surely that must mean that Anno had this idea pop into his head out of thin air, right?
Actually, no. Anno was heavily inspired by many other mecha anime before Neon Genesis Evangelion’s release. One big inspiration was the 1979 anime Mobile Suit Gundam. Many people also consider this series a breath of fresh air in the mecha genre.
However, much like Hideaki Anno, Mobile Suit Gundam’s creator Yoshiyuki Tomino was also inspired by mecha anime of the past. Right before Mobile Suit Gundam was released, the super robot genre had become super commercialized and therefore stagnant, especially in the 1970s. Most mecha shows were often formulaic and simple with their stories and characters, particularly their antagonists.
Tomino didn’t care for the simplistic formula or the over commercialization of the mecha genre. Instead, he took inspiration from 1970s mecha franchises and subverted it, making his series more gritty and realistic. Instead of aliens, humans were the villains.
Tomino didn’t want to write a simple story; he wanted to tell a complex story about war and how it affects people. He wanted the audience (mainly the Japanese audience) face the tragic realities of what war is capable of. Thus, Mobile Suit Gundam was born, and the rest (including Hideaki Anno’s Neon Genesis Evangelion) is history.
Many people think subverting something (like what Tomino did to the mecha genre with Mobile Suit Gundam) makes a work original, but does it? How original can a subversion be if it’s based on something else?
For example, I did a subversion of Little Red Riding Hood and Goldilocks a long time ago. You know about Little Red Riding Hood and Goldilocks, right? They’re classic fairytales that have stood the test of time. I bring these two stories up because not only did I subvert them, but so did millions of others. What makes me stand out from all the others?
What made Hideaki Anno or Yoshiyuki Tomino stand out from the hundreds of other mecha anime? After all, both Anno and Tomino were inspired by other products, so their ideas can’t 100% be original. Is it what these two did that made them stand out, or is it the amount of times we’ve previously seen the ideas they’ve presented?
I personally think it’s the amount of times we as an audience has previously seen any presented ideas. Remember, back when Anno and Tomino released their series, nobody had really seen those ideas being presented in the mainstream. Nobody had really seen a psychological analysis of the main characters in the 1990s just like nobody had really seen a deep analysis of how devastating war can be in the 1970s.
I’ll also go back to my fairytale spoofs. Back when I wrote those stories, I hadn’t seen Little Red Riding Hood or Goldilocks interpreted in the ways that I’ve interpreted them… at least, I had never looked to see. I had never seen anyone interpreting the protagonist as someone who would mistake her grandmother’s house as the Big, Bad Wolf’s grandmother’s house, and I had never seen anyone interpret Goldilocks as a homeless girl breaking into an innocent bear family’s house.
I’m sure there are plenty of people who have had these same ideas as Anno, Tomino, and I have had, but maybe those people hadn’t put their ideas out before we did. But who knows? Maybe they have put their ideas out there before the popular ones, but they didn’t get much traction from people.
Or, maybe they have, but it’s been spread around so many times that people don’t really know who originally made that idea up. When I was a kid in the 2000s, there used to be a song we would sing to the tune of R. Kelly’s “I Believe I Can Fly”. The first few lyrics went like this:
I believe I can fly.
I got shot by the FBI.
All I wanted was a chicken wing.
But they shot me in the dingaling.
It’s silly kid’s stuff, but that version used to be sung everywhere I went. Kids would sing it at school, at Chuck E Cheese’s, at the park. Even my sister and cousins would sometimes sing this song. There’s a 1970s version my mother would sing when she was a kid. It was to the tune of “Jingle Bells”, and it went like this:
Jingle Bells!
Batman smells!
Robin laid an egg!
Batmobile lost a wheel,
and the Joker got away!
Where did these versions come from, and they did they get so popular with children? From what I’ve researched so far, I haven’t really learned anything about their origins. All I know is that they’re now considered timeless classics among adults and children alike. I wonder how the people who did originally make these songs up feel about millions of children singing these versions without knowing who made them in the first place.
Will I become like the people who have originally made those versions of “I Believe I Can Fly” and “Jingle Bells”? Will I make something that spreads around so much that most people won’t even know that I was the one who originally made that idea? Will I make something that spreads so much that someone else think they may have made it up only for them to realize that many others have had that same thought?
Who knows? There probably isn’t such a thing as true originality anyways. After all, there’s almost eight billion people on this planet, so there’s only a finite resource of fresh things to come up with. I guess what really matters is who publishes their take first or how many people recognize a “new” take on something. All we creatives can do, meanwhile, is keep trying, creating, and never giving up.
