Rhetoric, Technology, Culture Spring 2011

Jenna, what an awesome podcast! That was fascinating, and a lot of fun to listen to. I was especially impressed with the music you played—what a great way to blend the power of the podcast (that we _listen_ to it) with the idea of assemblage and “borrowing.”

I was really interested, in particular, in three issues that you raised. One is the question of how to give credit when one uses patterns or ideas or voices in an assemblage – a medium that doesn’t necessarily offer a “natural” way for the author to attribute her inspirations. Another issue that interests me is whether somehow including different voices, but keeping them separate or distinguishable, is a way to avoid simply “plagiarizing.” Finally, I was really compelled by your idea of identity—online or otherwise—as a form of assemblage, or (alternately) of assemblage as a way to understand identity.

All three of these issues made me think immediately of Malcolm Gladwell’s 2004 New Yorker article entitled “Something Borrowed: Should a charge of plagiarism ruin your life?” (reprinted in his recent collection of essays, What the Dog Saw). In it, he tells the complex story behind the play “Frozen,” which playwright Byrony Lavery based on the life of the psychiatrist Dorothy Lewis. The play was extremely successful and received all sorts of acclaim until Lewis herself read its script—and discovered that it was based so closely on her own life that she felt as though the play essentially plagiarized her. Lewis responded as follows: “I was sitting at home reading the play, and I realized that it was I. I felt robbed and violated in some peculiar way. It was as if someone had stolen--I don't believe in the soul, but, if there was such a thing, it was as if someone had stolen my essence” (Gladwell). This makes me think of your question, Jenna, about how identity and assemblage are related. Can Lewis’s identity be “re-assembled” by a playwright like this? Is her new identity slightly different now that the play’s version of her affected the way she is perceived/represented? Is this okay or not okay?

Lewis clearly did not think this was okay. She hired a lawyer and compiled a long list of the play’s violations. In the meantime, Gladwell himself realized that much of the play had been lifted from his own 1997 profile of Lewis, entitled “Damaged.” At first, he was angry—but he soon reconsidered. What made him change his mind was the play itself.

Gladwell read “Frozen” and decided it was truly brilliant—really awesome, something totally new. If his words were being used (even exactly) in the service of this totally new creation, he should feel honored, he decided, rather than offended. He notes that Lavery “used my descriptions of Lewis's work and the outline of Lewis's life as a building block….Isn't that the way creativity is supposed to work? Old words in the service of a new idea aren't the problem. What inhibits creativity is new words in the service of an old idea.” Because the creation re-worked Gladwell’s words for the sake of a new idea, it was legitimate. Or, as Johnson-Eilola and Selber write, we should encourage students to "take what already exists and make something else, something that works to solve problems in new, local contexts. Creativity, in this rearticulation, involves extensive research, filtering, recombining, remixing, the making of assemblages that solve problems" (400). Perhaps that is exactly what this play did: addressed new problems in a real social context, drawing from the materials already existing in the world to do so most effectively.

Still we have to ask ourselves: should Lavery have given credit to Lewis and Gladwell? And (in your words, Jenna) how can we give credit, somehow or another, without “merely hand[ing] over a wad of cash?” You raise a brilliant question—one I’m still thinking about. I want to reiterate before I leave off: excellent job, Jenna. That really got me thinking! Great work.

Heather