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We've all seen it. Sometimes someone comes along who makes a groundbreaking and incredible work of art that makes us look at their medium in a completely different way. Then, before we've even had a chance to enjoy it, thousands of imitators come along and do such tasteless unintentional parodies of their work that it makes us wish the original had never been thought of.
Here's a couple examples.
The Matrix. Everyone thought this was cool until Hollywood produced a million movies with elaborate slo-mo kung fu action sequences and made us sick to death of whatever was exciting about the original.
Brian Eno. His instrumental music and production technique re-defined the way most of the world made and listened to music. But now anyone who doesn't have any good ideas can put together a bunch of repetitive bleeps and effects and call it "ambient".
Jackson Pollock. How many people now think they can throw a couple cans of paint on a canvas and call it modern art? And if we don't like it, we're just closed-minded and conventional.
Posts: 563 | Registered: Feb 2006
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Carrie. Not that it was Stephen King's best by a long shot, but it did start his writing career. But... then came the stage musical, which is considered a classic of badness.
Then there's Robert Heinlein's Starship Troopers and the foulness of the movie. Or Star Trek and the 1st, 5th and 10th movies. <shudder>
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Oh, and what about God's Army? Not that it was the greatest movie of all time, but when I saw that someone had made a movie about Mormonism with a bit of truth and humor, that I didn't have to be ashamed to be associated with, I was ecstatic. If only I'd known about The Home Teachers or Day of Defense or the rest of that deluge of embarassing swill that is still being made in its wake, I'd have destroyed all the prints of God's Army before they made it to the theatre.
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Early Grunge Music, Soundgarden, Nivana, Pearl Jam Turned into all the carbon copy "alternative" bands that I can no longer tell the difference between who have one song and then disappear.
At least it killed the "hair bands" who were all copies of early Def Leopard or someone.
Does it count when someone becomes a parody of themselves. Like Def Leopard, Aerosmith who keep putting out CD's with song that are pale imitations of their earlier work.
Can we count entire genre's of movies or TV. Who doesn't know ahead of time exactly how every romantic comedy is going work out. And the Sitcom has pretty much wiped itself out by producing one really bad comedy after another.
I can't wait for reality TV to run its course. I guess that all started with MTV's Real World. Now we get to see "Mini Me" riding around naked on a scooter.
Posts: 555 | Registered: Jun 2005
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quote:Originally posted by SC Carver: Now we get to see "Mini Me" riding around naked on a scooter.
I'm so glad I don't have cable.
I too wish reality TV would go away. All of it.
Maybe the fact that every other show is a forensics drama in the image of CSI means that the reality show thing is almost over. We can only hope.
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Actually, it's silly. I'm an American of German ancestry (like 5 generations back). My mother just liked the name.
She wanted to name me Anastasia (most notably the name of a Russian princess I think) but my father said no because it was too weird of a name for a kid. Then he wanted to name me Stacey or Sarah but this was the 70's and every third kid was named Stacey or Sarah so she said no because she wanted an unusual name. So they settled on Stasia.
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At least there were a couple good reality TV shows. I have yet to see one episode of CSI that I enjoyed.
Posts: 2437 | Registered: Apr 2005
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I have yet to see a reality show with any redeeming qualities. And yet, occaisionally, I find myself sucked in. It makes me hate them more.
Posts: 2907 | Registered: Nov 2005
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I get sucked in all the time, but really, it makes me hate me more than reality television in general.
Let's face it, I'm a pretty ridiculous person if I can sit through three straight episodes of Flavor of Love. Then again, maybe I was just that desperate to procrastinate.
...kind of like now. I have a macro midterm. Hmm. I should run.
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Star Wars - great movie... but turned Hollywood into a special-effects blockbuster factory. (That would have happened anyway, though.)
Posts: 2432 | Registered: Feb 2001
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In the latest issue if IGMS, there's a story by Ty Frank (known by many here as Slash the Berzerker) in which one of the characters puts forth the idea that the creation of the worst art is responsible for the creation of the best.
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Oooh, good post mph. You've got my interest piqued and I'm off to read it right away! I paid for the new issue but haven't read any of the stories yet.
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Dante or Carrie would be better sources, but my gut tells me that Stasia is a conjugation of the greek isthemi, which means to make stand up. Ana, carrying the sense of back again, or up, and stasia carries the sense of standing, put together as Anastasia is commonly understood as Resurrection, "resurrection" being the Latin rooted equivalent.
Stasia, from now on, I, and the rest of the western world, expect you to be an upright lass, stable and standing even amid the worst storms.
quote: Oh, and what about God's Army? Not that it was the greatest movie of all time, but when I saw that someone had made a movie about Mormonism with a bit of truth and humor, that I didn't have to be ashamed to be associated with, I was ecstatic. If only I'd known about The Home Teachers or Day of Defense or the rest of that deluge of embarassing swill that is still being made in its wake, I'd have destroyed all the prints of God's Army before they made it to the theatre.
Oh, my sides hurt!
I wonder how long it will be before we have real time rips of 24. Posts: 2445 | Registered: Oct 2004
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When I first saw this thread title, I thought Baron Samedi was referring to Rush's cover album Feadback.
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Editing the literary magazine in high school was excruciating thanks to him, but his poetry is completely amazing.
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quote:Originally posted by Juxtapose: I have yet to see a reality show with any redeeming qualities.
There were actually a couple of decent ones on PBS. I enjoyed "1900 House" and "Frontier House".
Of course, when I wanted to talk about them at the water cooler the next day at work, everyone just looked at me blankly, and resumed their discussion of "Survivor" or whatever show it was that I had never seen, never wanted to see, never planned to see.
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Lord of the Rings. Close your eyes and pull out a book from the fantasy section and I'd say there is a 1 in 3 chance of that book having unmistakable versions of trolls, elves, orcs etc. I don't think it ruined the genre, but definitely stilted it for some time.
Tante: Frontier House is awesome! One of the things I miss most about not having cable anymore (besides Iron Chef, L&O reruns, and the SciFi channel).
Posts: 484 | Registered: Feb 2006
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Kristen, How true, I can't believe that didn't pop into my mind the second this topic came up.
SO where does Harry Potter fall into this category? It grabs folklore from all kinds of sources. It has definitely copied from lots of things, including LOTR and Star Wars, but I am sure there are tons of HP want a be’s out there and even more in the works. Eragon being one. I kind of enjoyed the first book considering it came from a 19 year old, but the second got really ridiculous.
Posts: 555 | Registered: Jun 2005
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quote:Originally posted by katharina: e.e. cummings
Editing the literary magazine in high school was excruciating thanks to him, but his poetry is completely amazing.
Right on.
Another one I thought of today is Gladiator. It was a pretty good movie (although I didn't like it quite as much as the hype prepared me to). But it was responsible for the renaissance of the historical epic, and most of the copycats have been bloody awful.
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quote:Close your eyes and pull out a book from the fantasy section and I'd say there is a 1 in 3 chance of that book having unmistakable versions of trolls, elves, orcs etc. I don't think it ruined the genre, but definitely stilted it for some time.
I think it would be more accurate to say that Tolkien created the genre than that he ruined it. True, it's taken a while to cut the umbillical from Tolkien, but before him there was no genre there for him to destroy.
Posts: 16551 | Registered: Feb 2003
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So many things are bad copies of better things. Even in Japan there are a TON of bands that immatate Dir en grey from their looks down to Kyo-san's screams and growls. The funny thing is as soon as they think they got the Dir en grey sound down, Dir en grey changes! That's what makes great art. Changing and evolving so that you're better than the pale imatators.
What I hate are bad American versions of good foreign movies.
Posts: 9942 | Registered: Mar 2003
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quote:Originally posted by Irami Osei-Frimpong: Stasia, from now on, I, and the rest of the western world, expect you to be an upright lass, stable and standing even amid the worst storms. [/QB]
Consider it done. Posts: 82 | Registered: Jan 2006
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Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. I loved the book, liked the original movie, and now... my childhood memories have been ruined. It's a terrible shame.
Posts: 36 | Registered: Dec 2005
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I don't really mind so much repetitiveness in books or movies. The can be really almost-identical to something else, and I can still enjoy them. What really irks me is when someone does it with painting or sculpture or music. That's probably because in a book or a movie there still is some kind of action, even if it's completely parroted. But when I look at a painting and see, let's say, a single black dot on the white canvas, I really can't help but wonder: did the author really wanted to convey a message? Or did he/she just thought: oh, the fools will think that I meant something by it anyway, so why take the trouble if I can just paint a dot here?
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Doom is most definitely not art. If you're going to single out something from a specific discipline as art, don't choose something that is so base and without much creativity or originality.
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quote:Originally posted by Mirrored Shades: Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. I loved the book, liked the original movie, and now... my childhood memories have been ruined. It's a terrible shame.
I am no fan of Depp, but I think that the recent movie is much better than the original one.
Posts: 16551 | Registered: Feb 2003
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narrativum, if you could call the programming of a smooth and functional first-person-shooter as art, then it would fit. Not to say the game has any redeeming artistic merit, but the coding for it spawned countless spinoffs (and improvements).
If you wanted to go for a video game, I'd say Tetris would be a good fit for this thread. It was elegantly simple and amazingly addictive, and there have been plenty of "piece falling from the sky" puzzle games since that haven't been nearly as good.
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