Paper 5 Final - Grade: B+ PDF

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“The Ecstasy of Influence: A Plagiarism”, Jonathan Lethem; “Great to Watch”, Maggie Nelson; “Immune to Reality”, Daniel Gilbert...

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Chen 1 Jiayuan Chen Professor Joshua Eaise Expository Writing Section KN Paper 5—Rough Draft 04/22/2018

Freedom, Creativity, and Plagiarism As a matter of fact, people are surrounding by arts every day. The clothes people wear, a picture that is taken, or just a building on the street side—all can be considered as art pieces. Arts play a significant role in people’s daily life and influence people’s thinking and behaviors a lot. Moreover, art is closely linked with creativity. On one hand, creativity helps people create arts, since this is how inspiration comes from. On the other hand, art inspires creativity. Most art works are based on what is already existed that comes from other’s creativity. Thus, art and creativity inspires each other, and both of them have significant impact on people’s daily life. In Jonathan Lethem’s “The Ecstasy of Influence: A Plagiarism”, the author talks about plagiarism and how it has influenced current society. Lethem states his view that lots of art pieces are created by the influence of master’s artworks that are already existed. Thus, it is hard to define what should be regarded as “original”. Also, plagiarism and copyrights prevent people from getting inspired by other people’s work, thus generate negative consequence. In the passage “Great to Watch”, Maggie Nelson discusses how the reveal of brutal images may have negative effect on people’s life and make the cruel society even more ruthless. In “Immune to Reality”, Daniel Gilbert talks about how unconscious behaviors play a significant role in creating happiness and how psychology immune system has helped people prevent unpleasant experiences. Happiness, as an important factor in people’s life, can be considered as a “worthwhile sense of human freedom”, along with some other factors. Arts and creativity actually influence human freedom by constraining people

Chen 2 with limited rights to view art works with copyrights and worrying about the side-effects brought by brutal photographs. In some ways, people should be able to access to art pieces as long as it is not for malicious use. Lots of artworks are privately owned, or even cannot be viewed without permission—no matter for a piece of picture, an essay, or a photograph. Lethem writes, “Most artists are brought to their vocation when their own nascent gifts are awakened by the work of a master. That is to say, most artists are converted to art by art itself” (214). Lethem argues that even though artists create their own art pieces, but this process is under the influence of other artists’ artworks. These artworks can be considered as inspirations that encourage others to create new art pieces. Without the access to prior artworks, people might be blocked from creating new things. Thus, people should have be free to access different artworks, as long as it is not for malicious use. Nelson also argues about the freedom that people own, “Of the I’ll-do-anything-for-fame-or-money variety, not the I-do-this-because-itgives-me-pleasure variety: outing one’s pleasures, it seems, remains more taboo than outing one’s ambition or avarice” (301). Nelson believes that it is unfair for certain people being tortured, and others are watching them being tortured and enjoying the process. However, these people, who participate in cruel reality shows, choose to do show for fame and money. Since they think these reality shows can bring them what they want, they have the freedom to choose to do so, as long as they are people who want to watch cruel reality shows. Being able to view are works and participating in reality shows seem to be very different from each other, but they both involve with freedom. If people have the freedom to choose to be part of brutal reality shows for money, they should be able to view artists’ art pieces for inspiration. On the other hand, it is because that there are people willing to join the brutal reality shows, the creation of reality shows becomes another entertainment for people to enjoy. Even though these reality shows are cruel, this can be considered as a creation, or brutal arts, since there

Chen 3 are people willing to participate. Since brutal images can become inspirations of the creation of reality shows, people should be more able to view different artists’ art works as they wish. The limitations of accessing artworks constrain people’s creation of constructing new art pieces. Therefore, people should have the rights to access artworks without permission, as long as it is for the right purpose. On the other hand, there are some images that might not bring positive effects to people’s daily life, but since they worth something, people should be able to view them. As nelson discusses, if the brutal images of people being tortured become public, the society may response negatively, thus create bigger mass. Nelson mentions, “ ‘Is it possible for a photograph to change the world?’ But what could the answer to this question—be it in the negative or the affirmative—really mean? ” (304). Nelson is arguing that photograph is able to change the world, but perhaps in a positive way, or in a negative way. Especially for the brutal pictures of people being abused, people might response to them with sadness and anger, thus generates bigger problems. However, human beings will have their own ways to eliminate these pessimistic emotions. As Gilbert saying, psychology immune system prevents people from being unpleasant and helps to construct happiness. Gilbert discusses, “As we have seen, when experiences are unpleasant, we quickly move to explain them in ways that make us feel better” (140). Gilbert explains that whenever unpleasant experiences happen, people will pass to the process of finding external explanations. Once the undesirable experiences can be explained by the psychological immune system, people become happy again. Therefore, the same thing might happen when people view cruel images. People will try to find the reasons that why these people in the images are being abused, thus unpleasant emotions start to be eliminated with more explanations. This can be both good and bad. People will not response so strongly, but sympathy is disappearing at the same time. As Lethem writes, all of these images and photographs are artworks that everyone should be able

Chen 4 to view it. No matter what, these images can be considered as a kind of arts and creations that is worthwhile. Negative responses might appear, but people will eliminate the negative emotions as well. On the other hand, these images involve with certain kinds of people’s daily life closely, thus they should not be copyrighted. Also, people are supposed to view it and let others know them as well, and this process should not be considered as “paralyzed”. Therefore, although the image is cruel and negative influence might happen, people have the right to view these images, and this is one of the freedoms as well. It is difficult to define what is plagiarism and what is original. In today’s society, people pay more and more attention to copyrights and plagiarism. As Lethem states, “It becomes apparent that appropriation, mimicry, quotation, allusion, and sublimated collaboration consist of a kind of sine qua non of the creative art, cutting across all forms and genres in the realm of cultural production” (214). People’s creation is formed based on prior artworks as foundations. Copyrights keeps people away from viewing art pieces as an inspiration, thus constrain people’s creation. With less and less inspiration and encourages, it is hard for people to construct new art pieces that are creative and attractive. Since everything is considered to be private, fewer creations “make the world smaller” (Lethem). Gilbert mentions how important psychology immune system is in people’s daily life. In some ways, copyright is working like psychology immune system, filtering things out of people’s life. However, when psychology immune system prevents unpleasant experiences influence people’s happiness, copyrights avoid people from viewing other’s work. In another way, one kind of people’s freedom of accessing information is taken away. Gilbert writes, “In short, we do not realize that our views will change because we are normally unaware of the processes that change them” (132). Generally, people are unaware of the existence of psychology immune system that helps them create happiness, the same as how people ignore the negative effects bringing by copyrights and plagiarism. Copyrights and plagiarism let people have

Chen 5 strong desire to own what they have and produce the sense of extreme privacy of creations, thus make people create for other external reasons—patents, profits, and fame. Also, people’s art pieces are sometimes created from the inspiration of others’ art works and creations. Thus, it is almost impossible to define what is original and what is plagiarism. Furthermore, since art is a broad topic that contains lots of different topics, thus copyrights and limited access will influence lots of areas. Novels, books, music pieces, sculptures, paintings, with limited access, people cannot be inspired to create new works. Therefore, these limitations “make the world smaller”. Human freedom is a very broad topic. It includes happiness, free access to desired topics, and free creations. For one hand, people should have free access to what they want to see and view as an artwork, as long as it is not for commercial use or malicious use. Also, for now, people pay more and more attention on privacy and copyrights, thus constrain people from creating more new stuffs. Moreover, it is hard to decide whether an art piece is original or not, since some creations is composed from the inspiration of other works instead of a flash in mind. On the other hand, people should not be worried about the negative effects brought from brutal pictures, since psychological immune system will help people eliminate the pessimistic emotions. The same as the consequence of psychological immune system, people might be ignoring the negative influences brought by copyrights—constraining people from creating new things. Thus, people should be more tolerant about arts and let other people have fair rights to see and view it in order to create more artworks and “plagiarism” should be redefined....