"WUSSIES AND PUSSIES"

There's been a bit of a furore recently involving Bob Dylan and plagiarism. It is claimed that he 'misappropriated' lines from other sources in some of his songs and did not credit his sources. Dylan's response is to call his critics 'wussies and pussies' and to say that all he did was simply part of the tradition of song-writing.

These charges against Dylan have affected some of his fans who have turned their backs against the star whispering 'for shame'. Others remain doggedly loyal and dismiss the attacks on Dylan as just so much rubbish. I think neither response shows any real sense. These charges have to be aired and discussed and debated. For me, they are at the centre of a much bigger debate about art and creativity and the process.

I am reading a book just now by Caroline Alexander called 'The Way To Xanadu'. I am reading it because I am fascinated with where Samuel T. Coleridge got his 'stuff' from. Coleridge was an avid and intense reader, literally devouring everything he could get his hands on, particularly relishing accounts of foreign travel. This is important, for without his readings he could not and would not have created two of the greatest poems in English literature: 'Xanadu' and 'The Rime of the Ancient Mariner'. Everything he read fed into his creative subconscious and then spilled out into his work. He is a perfect example of how we do not create in a vacuum, that creativity relies on being nourished by what we experience and read and see - everything. That being so, how can we talk of plagiarism of ideas? It doesn't make sense. Taking ideas consciously or unconsciously is what art does - making something new out of what is taken. This cannot be stopped, nor should it be, not if we value art in all its many clothes.

But taking whole lines and recycling them wholesale is a little different and the debate goes in a different direction then. For some of you it does. But reading an essay by Malcolm Gladwell on the subject of plagiarism suggests that even here to talk of 'theft' doesn't really make sense. Then somewhere else I read this:

"Musical appropriation - using familiar cultural references or language in a new context - is different from non-fiction writing or journalism, said Sean Wilentz, a Princeton University professor of American history who has written extensively about Dylan.

"Of course it's legitimate," Wilentz said of Dylan's use of others' material. "Dylan's frame of reference is so much larger than most songwriters' - more literary, historical and philosophical."

Wilentz said crediting bits and pieces of another's work is scholarly tradition, not an artistic tradition.

"Creating art is different, and always has been, especially the kind Dylan creates," he said.'

(Read more: http://www.theage.com.au/entertainment/music/wussies-and-pussies-dylan-hits-out-at-plagiarism-accusers-20120913-25txt.html#ixzz27xmvKjvp)

That's something I have said here on this blog, not so succinctly perhaps, but said nevertheless. I was talking about writing, but the message of Wilentz is just as apt.

At the very least, having intellectuals divided on the matter illustrates the need for further debate. I have always been prepared to be shown to be wrong in my views on the subject. I have always invited others to argue a different view here on this blog. No-one to date has taken up this challenge. Could that be because those who think of plagiarism as a bad thing are responding emotionally rather than intellectually? 

I also read somewhere else that someone thinks of plagiarism as PLAY-giarism and that then gives that person the licencse to 'play' with others' stuff without any idea that what they are doing is wrong. Whatever you think of that, it does perhaps speak to a shift in the word that warrants examination. And all those critics with their words, sharp as stones and thrown at Dylan, would do well to take a more human and humanist approach: people are not made bad people by creative borrowings. That's how our greatest and most revered artists have worked. It is how creativity itself works. What makes these artists bad is that a vocal minority who may or may not have examined the issue and may or may not fully understand how the creative mind operates, call the artists bad. Dylan is not bad. Even if you come to the conclusion that you don't like his borrowing, even if you come to the conclusion that that is wrong, that does not make him bad. At most all you can conclude is that the act is bad.

And who is there among us who has not been bad at some time or another? And who among those who consider themselves artists or writers or makers of things, has not borrowed at some time or another? (And you would be lieing if you said that you are one who is original and whose work owes not a debt to everything you have ever read, seen, done, experienced.)