Interesting take on copyright laws over at Reason.
Quentin Tarantino is the perfect artist to use as an example of what it must have been like way back when when nutcase geniuses hammered on a piano or wrote books as if they had way too much time on their hands (I mean, I could write a book if I wasn't hooked on Chuck). Tarantino is the master of borrowing and incorporating into an American sensibility all the film ideas and influences found around the world. He brings various techniques into one film and voila! Instant sensation.
By the way, when I used to take art classes, everything was rules based. Same with writing an essay or novel. Rules, rules, rules. You "must" introduce a character early, or you "must" follow a plot pattern or whatever. Sez who?
I always struggled with that. I used to mix things up a lot and while teachers liked it, they weren't sure about it either.
Tarantino's Italian-Irish-Cherokee heritage also points to something else. What made, in part, Italy a dominant (and once that waned a major center) cultural and scientific center for a good long period, say, 1100s to 1500s was its maritime advantages. Venetian and Genoese merchants were constantly trading with the East. This meant a constant energetic flow of exchanging ideas. Needless to say, it had major implications for the rest of Italy and Europe. As gatekeepers to the world's goods and services, they imported a wide variety of stuffs at which point the Italians borrowed and then (some say) perfected and mastered in la manniere Italienne.
I always say a Ferrari is the aggregate work of many cultures that pass through the veins of the Italians.
The article points to Bach but he's hardly alone in behaving the way he did. History likes to settle on "one" person as if they "invented" something out of a vacuum. That's not usually the case. How much of a difference in quality was there really between Marlowe and Shakespeare? Why did the Wonder Years work, but Freaks and Geeks didn't?
Anyway. It was the same for Britain and its empire in all it's "white man's burden" albatross.
What do you think the Americans do? Yes, they're innovative and dynamic but they too are merely building on the legacy left behind by many great civilizations.
Copyright that.
Yes, innovative as the Americans are, we are indeed building on the foundations of the past. The more inclusive we are of past people's works, the more material we have to draw from too.
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